All of us live with at least one fear. Fear of darkness, future, pain, performance, finances, failure, health, loneliness, children’s education, other’s judgement, losing dear ones, making mistakes, not being number one, ridicule, not being validated, job, so on and so forth. Add what you like, the list is endless.
Take a deeper dig at fear. It could be a feeling of uncertainty. Or for some it could be a feeling of punishment, guilt, shame, loss, hatred, anger, etc attached to it.
All fear is not negative, otherwise you would be jumping off buildings, assuming to be spiderman. So, when does it become self-destructive? When we construct the parameters of our lives based on fears. These may have the origin in child-hood, challenging life experiences, superstitions, group of people you hang out with or general public consciousness. There maybe many more reasons for fear to originate and stay in your system. What is important to understand is: Were you born with it? If yes then you shouldn’t have learnt to walk for the fear of falling.
What does this fear serve? I ask this question to the people who come for healing, and they usually come up with something which present does not exist. It is either an old pattern or an unknown future worry. Being in the state of fear for something which does not exist make the back drop for our existence? I ask them, are you trying to control the unpredictable? Or reducing the probability of failure which again is self-defeating as this only increases the fear factor, giving it enough traction to engulf you further.
What does it do to you? It takes you to an unknown space, which is dark. It contracts your awareness; it shrinks your thinking. It dwarfs you to someone really small. In this state of shrunken awareness, can you think straight? It makes you a puppet of illusion clouded in safety of insecurity. Your judgement gets distorted, it reshapes itself to suit the parameters of anxiety created by fear. In this state nothing works and everything is doubtful.
Would you like a life expanded to maximise each moment or one contracted to the realm of breathlessness?
Most ancient texts across beliefs advise living life to its purpose and fear is one such factor that has the immense capacity to throw you out of the path while in the pursuit of that purpose.
To live a life of expansion, do not run from, hide, supress, repress fear. Look into its eye and ask what is the purpose of its existence in your life? What does it serve? Why is it here? Why is it in your space? Is it even yours or someone else’s defeated reality you have absorbed?
J Krishnamurti goes a step further to ask you to be the observer and watch the fear. As an observer you are not one with the fear, which means you have the power to expand yourself and dissipate it. According to him, just the realisation that you are an observer and the awareness of observing the thought will act on it. It is something similar to the concept of ‘Detachment’. Detachment from the fearful thought and its supposed unknown outcome can completely change the reality.
Fear is an energy that depreciates your reality. It burns the energy faster, deteriorates the body, its organs. It devitalises the normal brain function. This energy also gets transferred from or to people you interact with. This is precisely the reason why some people recover faster from illnesses or even pandemics and why many take a long time. They get stuck with fear of death, maybe.
The point is to be aware of your inner compass. Where are you operating your life from? From complete expansion of being infinite or from a contracted falsehood. Are you living for what you came here for or have got lost due to delusion?
To live a light, expanded, fulfilled life, you could try this:
1. Be aware of your current challenge. If you don’t have, don’t create one.
2. Get to know the deep-seated emotion/feeling behind your thinking pattern around this challenge
3. Bring out the fear. One way of doing this is by asking a series of questions such as, so what will happen? Or why this? Or what if?
4. Once you know your fear, ask, is it real, the truth?
5. Ask, Is it mine or someone else’s?
6. As you corner the fear, put it in the center, detach yourself, as if it doesn’t belong to you then observe it.
7. Tell the fear, you have served your purpose of making me smaller than who I am, you are allowed to leave.
8. Visualise your mind, body, feelings, emotions, every being expanding
8. Continue this process till you feel lighter and stronger.
Remember, what doesn’t serve you will make you smaller, and your true inner guiding light will always, always make you feel lighter and expansive. Take that plunge.
The light is always shining, take a pause to find, follow and radiate it.