From the perspective of Kabbalah, we have six core emotions, the most fundamental of which are love, respect and empathy. And although we may experience some more than others, we’re assured of one thing: if our Creator put the emotion into the world, we’re going to feel it sooner or later!
G-d created many feelings. There’s no way to go through life without experiencing them. You're never going to be able to escape jealousy, anger, desire, feeling small. The secret is to have those feelings play themselves out over the chords of your G-dly soul.
The same applies to the attribute of Gevurah, fear. It’s coming your way no matter what. The only thing you get to choose is in which context you’ll feel it. G-d wants you to fear Him. What that really means is He wants you to appreciate His greatness and minimize your sense of being independent of Him. You can choose to reject this fear of G-d—in which case you’ll fear everything else.
People all over the world do that every day. They’re afraid of not having enough money, of missing the bus, of speaking in public. Instead of letting go to the One who created everything, they somehow think it’s a safer bet to take things into their own hands and manage their lives “independently.” But that leads to fear-driven behaviour. At the highest level of the chain, we could call that neurotic behaviour—putting our real fears into things like the bus and having to give a presentation at work. Down the chain, there are states like anxiety disorder ... paranoia ... a whole slew of painful ways to live.
Your other choice is to fear G-d. If that’s your guiding light, you’ll be freed of all other anxiety! I don’t mean to say you shouldn’t be responsible and cautious where necessary. What I am saying is that when you experience healthy fear, or awe, then your other worries dissipate and disappear.
This basic element of fear or awe can also be framed as hatred or opposition. It doesn’t function only in isolation, but plays itself out together with all our other emotional attributes. Take it in combo with love, for example.
The animal soul loves selfish pleasure and gratification. The G-dly soul loves – well, G-d, and goodness and truth.
Fear within love, then, is the extreme dislike of your beloved’s enemy. In unholy form, that means you hate anyone or anything that stands in the way of getting what you want. Maybe you hate the laws of keeping kosher because they deny your palate the cheeseburger it craves, or the person who stands for truth when you want to live in denial.
At the bottom of the barrel, this hatred born of love manifests as resentment of Torah, and even of G-d Himself. After all, He’s the one standing between you and the object of your desire. G-d is the one who requires of you to relinquish your ego, and none of us is giving it up too quickly.
Its holy form is a resistance to anything that obstructs G-d’s presence in the world. In other words, a hatred of evil because anything that opposes G-dliness is evil. When experienced strongly, this fear within love prompts us to act on behalf of what is holy and good and true.
Animalistic behaviour that intimidates others brings oppression, estrangement and abuse in its wake. However, there’s the G-dly side of the coin. Whereas love is expansive, fear is contractive. We need both impulses—sugar and salt, attraction and repulsion, connection and boundaries.
Life without boundaries or awe would overpower and destroy us. Think of rain. The blessing of water falling to earth allows us to live, but if it came down in sheets, all growing things would die. We need the spaces between the water that form raindrops. Those spaces are a metaphor for the kabbalistic attribute of Gevurah—or awe, fear, respect, discipline, opposition.
We need to temper our love and passion. If not, we’re likely to steam roll others with our emotions and not allow them space to be themselves. We run the risk of tripping over our own feet in the heat of our passion and vision for a better tomorrow. The blessing of rain is in the spaces.
When we incorporate restraint into our lives (whether its origin is fear, awe, respect or opposition), we counter-intuitively open another realm of possibility, and actually enhance our loving connections. Certainly, unholy fear is to be avoided at all costs; but holy awe and respect is to be embraced. It frees us of our neuroses, and creates the space for love to flourish.