I totally resonate with this approach to fear. Thank you for timely post, Open! I was exploring and contemplating about fear or fearful situations and intentional manifestation of such situations. For example, it seems i have a fear of downing and had close encounters with drowning this lifetime. I can feel tightness around it and well aware of it. So on a recent trip to the beach, I felt while in the ocean, not that i was avoiding going to the water but it seems i was overly cautious and seemed to have had conflicting feelings. One was to explore fear cautiously but in a limited way by staying closer to the shallow waters. The other impulse was to go deeper intentionally possibly without feeling any ground under the feet. I went with the first option at the time so feel like i haven't fully exploded the fear.
So my question is the following. Do we need intentionally manifest the situations where we can explore and burst the fear or it just happens naturally? I resonate more with natural approach but the something wants to intentionally manifest to bring about the fearful situation, probably coming from ego? But how can it be - ego trying to burst itself?
BTW, all the true fearful situations of drowning in this lifetime happened naturally for me without any kind of intention. Also, I feel like there maybe other ways of dealing with fear like contemplating about it as mentioned in this article or spontanious karmic experience as i witnessed on some Openhand retreats. Just some explorations ...

With gratitude,
Anatoly