Start to Fight Your Fear

Fear comes when we perceive a threat to us. The threat may be physical: harm, injury, illness. Or it may be a threat that could bring some other type of harm to us, such as loss, discomfort, embarrassment, rejection, loneliness, grief, confusion, so on.

Fear is an equal-opportunity response.

It doesn’t matter, really, whether the threat is real or potential. It doesn’t even seem to matter whether potential threats are likely or unlikely. And it doesn’t matter much whether the harm inflicted by any threat would be major or minor. Fear is the blanket response to all threats, and it differs only in degree (how intense the fear is) and duration (how long the fear lasts).

John Lennon

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.”

[Source]

Fear is a response that causes distinct physiological changes in us. These changes can, in some instances, enable us to survive. All that adrenaline, the shut-down of slower, analytical thinking, the redirected blood flow, the focus: we can decide instantly, act faster, do more. A handy response when the threat we face is real, immediate, physical.

How many of those kind of threat–real, immediate, physical–do you face on a regular basis?

The Song of Food and Dwelling

Milarepa

Because of the fear of cold, I sought for clothes;
The clothing I found is the Ah Shea Vital Heat.
Now I have no fear of coldness.

Because of the fear of poverty, I sought for riches;
The riches I found are the inexhaustible Seven Holy Jewels.
Now I have no fear of poverty.

Because of the fear of hunger, I sought for food;
The food I found is the Samadhi of Suchness.
Now I have no fear of hunger.

Because of the fear of thirst, I sought for drink;
The heavenly drink I found is the wine of mindfulness.
Now I have no fear of thirst.

Because of the fear of loneliness, I searched for a friend;
The friend I found is the bliss of perpetual Sunyata.
Now I have no fear of loneliness.

Because of the fear of going astray,
I sought for the right path to follow.
The wide path I found is the Path of Two-in-One.
Now I do not fear to lose my way.

[Source]

Fear is a specific response with a specific purpose: to keep us alive when faced with a real threat.

All too often, facing a world too big to understand, we live in a continual state of fear. We’re just as afraid of potential threats as we are of real ones. We quit distinguishing between likely and unlikely threats. We feel anxious, stressed, worried, upset all the time… But we get used to it. We live with it. We don’t see it for what it is: fear, ongoing, constant, reducing our abilities to think and create and grow, and putting us in a constantly defensive state.

Life of Pi

Yann Martel

I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always … so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.

[Source]

To fight the fear, we can start by seeing threats not as threats but as potential paths.

What we fear from each threat is the effect that it might have on us and our quality of life and the people we love. But any particular effect, or outcome, of a threat is not certain. It’s a potential, a possibility; it’s not predetermined.

We need to separate the effect of the threat from the threat itself. Then we can see that a negative outcome, what we truly fear, is not inherent in the threat. Once we separate the threat from the outcome, we can see that the threat is not a threat at all, but a potential path. If it’s the path we end up walking, we can walk it with courage and wisdom (instead of fear). By doing so, we control the outcome of that particular path.

Holy Bible: Psalm 56:3-4

When I am afraid,
I will trust in you.
In God, whose word I praise,
In God I trust; I will not be afraid.
What can mortal man do to me?

[Source]

Photo Credit: Llima via Compfight cc