Hi, in the marvellous book "The Invitation" by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Chapter 2 is entitled "The Fear". It explains a lot about fear, and at the end of the chapter a practice is described which you can use to help overcome fears. I've tried it, and it was very inspiring.

More about her and the book via this link.

Hi Ana,

As a young boy I was taught martial arts by 5 outstanding black belts. They were awesome characters and absolutely terrifying. They gave no quarter in sparring believing that to attack full on was to pay their opponents the ultimate respect - even if quite young.

I remember fighting the senior instructor one day. He was 6 feet 4 inches tall, shaped like blue twisted steel, had several missing teeth and a bent nose from numerous previous breaks. As we squared up to one another he stared me directly in the eyes and I found it extremely hard to maintain the gaze - I was shaking at the knees.

He looked at me and said, "Chris, all fears are illusionary, there is nothing to fear but fear itself, therefore to be truly liberated in life, confront all fears head on". His words resonated deeply with me even then. I liked the sound of being free from all fear so from that day onwards, I vowed to confront all fears as soon as I recognised them.

So for example, in martial arts training when it came to sparring, I would always be the first to square up to the senior instructor whereas most people would avoid him like the plague. Because I was so keen to fight him, he treated me with respect and I rarely got hurt.

Later on, I was able to transfer this philosophy to all areas of my life. So for example, in relationships if I was afraid of saying something to a friend or loved one because I was unsure how they would take it, I would recognise my fear and make a point of confronting the issue as soon as the right opportunity arose.

If I disliked my job but feared the consequences of giving it up, I would resign immediately knowing that to live with fear was far worse than any period of unemployment. If I feared speaking in public, I would look for the opportunity to do so. If I feared making a fool of myself, I would do so at least once a day until the fear went away.

There were other tips my instructor later gave me. He said when you are in a place of fear, the tendency is for the body to tighten up which means you can't perform as well. To overcome this breathe deeply and bring your awareness down out of the mind and into the body.

Later in life, I discovered that all experiences are preconfigured to bring about self realisation and out of that came several deeper realisations:
1. Nothing has been organised for us that we are not able to handle.
2. The true self is spirit which cannot be harmed in anyway, it cannot die and it cannot go anywhere because it exists everywhere.
3. There is only one moment that matters - the moment of NOW. You cannot change what happened before this moment and the future unfolds out of the present. Focussing on this moment is a tremendous liberation from the perceived fear of something about to come.
4. We are given exactly what we need to be who we are - nothing more and nothing less. Therefore there is no need to struggle for anything or be concerned about lack. If we don't get something, it's because we didn't need it in the first place.
5. If our current pathway is somehow insustainable, because of lack of funds for example, it is because we are on the wrong pathway - we always get the right resources to do what we are meant to.

If you contemplate deeply these realisations, they are tremendously liberating.

The more you confront fear in this way, the more the illusionary bubble bursts. Now I see fear as a sign post saying "this is the way to go next". On the other side of the doorway marked 'fear' is always a wonderful liberation and expansion.

Hope this helps.

Chris

Thanks for that Liberation, I appreciate the pointer - I had 'The Invitation' poem hanging next to my front door for many years, and found it deeply inspirational.

Hi Chris,

Your life's experience is amazing... ever thought of writing a book?

Your words resonate with me deeply. I keep digging deeper and deeper inside myself, releasing fear soon after I become aware of it, although as soon as I have convinced myself that I am fearless, something else comes along to test me.

When I loose peace of heart, I feel fear with much greater intensity. When I am connected to the universal life force, I am fearless! Is it possible to completely liberate myself from fear altogther, or am I seeking the unseekable? I wondered perhaps, if I maintain a permanent connection to 'Source', that I would transcend fear entirely?
Yours Hopefully ;o)
Ana

Hi Ana,

I'm glad you asked that question. I have always questioned both in others and myself whether it is possible to overcome fears completely and never be afraid again.

You often hear of people (mostly in movies) who are supposedly 'fearless' but to me, all I am observing is denial and disconnection from the full experience of life - people become so hardened to certain things (like war for example) that they don't feel anything anymore.

Although I have confronted many fears in my life, including death on several occasions, I still feel fear arising in me from time to time. However the difference now is that I don't identify with the fear - instead I let it dissipate by using the process I outlined in my post above.

Then I find I am fully connected to the experience and yet not victimised by it. This is exactly what it feels like when fire-walking on hot coals for example. You still feel the fire but you don't allow the mind to create a drama around it which then becomes real for you.

It does take practice to release fears in this way but once the skill has been learned, it is my experience that all fears can be released in this way - at least that is my experience until now!

Best wishes

Chris

I'd just also like to suggest that we should aim for non-attachment to our fears, and arguably not to strive mightily to "overcome" them. If we can build the inner awareness that our emotions are not our true self, in the same way that the thoughts running through our minds are not ourselves either, we will establish a bit of perspective on our emotions (and mind). We can see them both as a part, not the whole, of ourselves. If we do too much striving to overcome, we may set ourselves up for failure, guilt, repression, and a vicious circle of negative patterns. Some fear is necessary and OK, the human race would have died out without it!

Once we have some non-attachment, the fears will diminish in intensity to some extent anyway I think. Exactly the same principles applies for our desires as well, incidentally.

Good luck!

I read an snip from a book called "True Love" by Thich Nhat Hanh, a well known Zen monk. It gives us great insight about fear using the metaphor of a wave in the vastness of water. Here goes:-

In the beginning we think that we have a beginning and an end, a birth and a death, and we might think that before our birth we were not there and after our death we will not be there, and we get caught up in the concept of being and nonbeing.

Let us look deeply at a wave in the ocean. It lives its life of a wave, but it lives the life of water at the same time. If the wave were able to turn toward itself and touch its substance, which is water, then it would be able to attain nonfear.

The wave does not have to search for water, because water is the very substance of the wave.

Concepts such as birth and death, being and nonbeing, might in some sense be applied to waves. As far as water is concerned, these qualifications cannot describe the nature of water. When we speak of birth, of death, of being and nonbeing, we are talking in terms of phenomena (similar as a wave is to an ocean).

In Buddhism, we call this the historic dimension. When we talk about waves, we are in the historical dimension, but when we talk about water, we are in the ultimate dimension in which we cannot speak of birth and death, of being and nonbeing. The wave might think that before its birth it was not there and that after its death it will not be there, but these are notions--concepts--that cannot be applied in the dimension of the ultimate.

The Buddha declared the following: “There is no world, but there is no birth and there is no death, there is no high and no low, no being and nonbeing.” If that world is not there, how could the world of birth and death, the world of being and nonbeing, be possible?