Fear is the reaction you feel in the body when the mind senses danger. Fear is simply an energy movement in the body that prepares it for a “fight or flight” response. When there is a real survival threat, like if you are being attacked physically by someone or something, this energy of fear is used by the body to either fight off the treat, or run from it – so fear serves a very useful practical value. However, when your mind creates “illusionary” fears (imagining some made up scenarios), through negative thinking, the energy that is produced has no avenue to get used up because there is nothing there to fight or flight in that moment. In this case, the energy gets stored up in the body as a negative energy and attracts more negative thoughts which end up creating negative realities.
Bring awareness to your fears
Don’t judge your fears, if you make it personal you just end up identifying more with it and hence cling to it. A negative thinking pattern causes fear. A negative energy stored up in the body attracts negative thinking patterns, which creates fear, and this fear gets stored up as more negative energy in the body – creating a vicious cycle in you. This is the reason why most people feel so helpless when they try to resolve their fears.
The secret to dissolving fears, is to stop “thinking” about them and just shine the light of pure awareness on them. You don’t have to “focus” on the fear, just stay as a relaxed awareness. Awareness is a highly creative force which uses a different type of intelligence than the mechanical intelligence of the mind. So instead of identifying with a fear, just stay aware of it. Don’t try to sort out the fear, just stay aware of it and let the energy move through your space. Awareness is just a term I use to point you to a state of relaxed attention where there is no “identification” with the mind.
Fears are not personal
You must understand that who you really are is a pure positive vibration. In other words, you are an energy force whose natural vibration is pure positive akin to feelings of joy, love and peace. There is no fear in your natural vibration. So fear is not your real personality. All fears are created in the mind through “thinking” patterns. When you stop giving interest to a certain mind pattern it simple dissolves on its own.
The problem is that most people don’t allow a mind pattern to dissolve. They just keep giving it more and more attention, and interest, by making it personal. Stop identifying with your fear, stop labeling them as a part of who you are and stop defending their presence. If you don’t give attention to a mind pattern, it will simply wither away.
If you complain about your fears, worry about them, keep thinking about them or make an identity out of them, then the fears will never go away – because you are clinging to them without even knowing it. Whenever a fear pattern comes up in your mind, just relax your attention, stay as an open field of awareness, and just let that thought process die away at its own pace.
Letting your fears die at their own pace. That’s good.
I picture water swirling down the drain.
Just like mind-created manic happiness disappears, so does its opposite, irrational fear.
Keep it up!
Thanks Sen! this is a very informative!
I have a question: How to react when you are aware and you know your mind is forcing you to lead to some random irrational negative thought which is going to give upset you. I have experienced it many times. Sometimes I am having good time like nothing is going through my mind and I am at peace but all of sudden I fear that my mind will do some irrational thought and the force is so strong that you can’t help it. How to react in that situation?
Abhyasi – Fear of the mind is an indication of low level of awareness in your being. The stronger you grow in awareness the less fear you have of your mind, till one day you are fully the master of your mind. The pointer for you would be to develop the courage to just stay in awareness everytime the mind produces a negative thought and see if it has the power to really harm your being in anyway – you will notice that the maximum it can do is produce some fearful sensation in your body, and in the space of awareness you stop shrinking away from this sensation and thus allow yourself to face the thoughts without fear. Your words convey that you have a fear of your mind, it’s purely because your level of awareness is yet to become strong – the more willing you are to stay in awareness when the mind produces negative thoughts, the stronger your awareness will keep growing.
Abhyasi, Sometimes it’s all about our Karmic spaces and what we’re holding onto. I was having a hard time concentrating and would lie awake at night with thoughts. A friend of mine started me on yoga and my breathing especially. All of that led me to the teachings of http://blog.kashiashram.org/. In The 11 Karmic Spaces you’ll see just how anger, jealousy and other facets of our life can really affect our lives. I was blown away.
I wish you peace.
Thank you very much
I continue to be in awe at your incredible insight into
the human mind Sen. I’ve had a few setbacks over
the past month or so, but your posts and your words
enable me to deepen my awareness hour by hour,
day by day. I have no doubt everything will fall
into place, my own patience with my mind is paying off
slowly slowly. Be well Sen.
Will this work for feelings of sadness or depression?
I used to get very depressed on and off for years, but mostly turned that around through therapy and positive thinking.
I’ve been practicing the pointers and meditating for about a month now. It has brought me a lot of relief from some anxiety I had been feeling.
However, now I’m starting to feel a little bit of depression creeping in lately. Usually this would cause me fear that I would go into another major depressive episode (low-grade depressive state that could last for months and is difficult to snap out of) so I would immediately analyze why I was depressed and combat that using deliberate positive thinking. I think this worked fairly well on a certain level.
Now I’m trying not to act out of fear, I’m trying to fully experience the depressed feelings, observe them and ride them out. There is a little bit of “thinking” going on out of habit, but other than that I’m trying to trust life and not put a lot of effort into “doing something” to resist feeling depressed.
This is a completely new way for me to respond to depressed feelings. Am I on the right path?
Sen i want to ask you if any negative thought pop in my mind .how do i stay as an open field of awareness..can u plz explain it .
I have been meditating quite a lot lately but rather than feeling the peace that i m supposed to experience i keep feeling sad and gloomy and a deep sense of hopelessness this feeling seems to increase whenever i start to meditate…plz let me know why this is happening
I have developed a strange pattern of fear in my mind and its plaguing me every day. I have got this obsessive thought pattern in my mind that I won’t get sleep at night ( but I do get some sleep every night ) . I am having hard time dealing with it because it leads to development of loads of anxiety within me and now it has started affecting my relationship with my husband too. I feel totally helpless in front of this fear . How should I overcome this fear? I feel like the more I try to overcome it, the more it gets over me, like a viscous cycle. How should I overcome it. Please help.
Hi Sen,
I have been feeling allot more tension lately, that just seems to linger, and I am wondering, if STAYING with it like you suggested, is a really good idea, after all? Maybe this is part of the problem.
Could you please explain, by what its meant, by staying open to negative thoughts and emotions? Shouldnt my mind be focused on ending the negative emotions, instead of staying with them.
Thank you, in adavance
Natalie
Natilie, the idea of staying open to the negative thoughts and emotions is thus: By letting them come up and feeling them, you let them pass. If instead you try to end them, you suppress them (keep them inside). Focus on ending such energy actually gives it fuel to keep going. Sen has written several posts about this process, conscious allowing. Those posts can answer your questions in detail.
Hi Marcus, but how can you let them pass, if your focus is on staying with them and remaining with them? Here is the conflict, that comes to mind, when I focus on STAYING with the anger.
1.when anger wants to move or pass, my mind wont let it, because the focus is on staying with it. I hear a voice say, “no! If you let them pass, then you can not stay with them, as though staying with them, had more value, than letting them go or pass.
2. when ever I focus on staying with anger, allot of resistance comes up. The more I try to stay with the anger, the more something resist it. This resistance will not allow me to stay with it, no matter what I do. It is like (staying and resistance), are two sides of the same coin and I can not stay with the anger and resist it at the same time and the resistance always wins out. If I completely allow myself to resist, (but not stay)then the tension breaks and I feel relief, but then it usually
comes back. Urg!
3.That means that my mind, wants no part of staying with anything. It only feels free,. when there is no need to stay with anything. It REFUSES TO STAY! It likes to escape and move moment to moment.
I could say allot more.
Thank you for your reply, though, I found it most helpful.
Natilie, I think I understand what you say. It sounds like your mind tries hard to resist feeling the anger. That seems to show a fear of feeling the anger. Be patient, read Sen’s posts on reducing mind momentum. For a busy or controlling mind, the first step may be to lessen the power the mind holds over your behaviour and reactions. Once that is less, letting go may be easier.
Hi Markus,
Just one last comment on this. I think I have refused to remain with what is, only as a reaction to remaining with this suffering for so long, almost 15 years. I read Krishnamurti way back then, and he said, “remain with your anger and do not move to the opposite, and see what happens”. Well for me, nothing happened, just a constant remaining with what is, which was anger. It seems to me now, that this was an error of Jk, because one can only remain with the past, other wise, everything is changing. What I like about Sens teachings, is he seems to balance it out, with words such as, let go, and release, which make a world of difference to me. He speaks about resistance to movement, where as Jk always said, do not make a move. This not making a move of Jk, became my resistance to movement.
I also read on one of Sen’s web pages, where he said, remain with the momentum for A WHILE. Its reassuring to know, before hand, that this momentum, will not last forever. I guess if one were to really remain with what is, without the concept of letting go, one would actually have to resist change and movement, which is the error, I fell into. For me now, it is not a matter of remaining with what is, but a recognoition, that, that is what I am already doing. When I see I am stubborningly remaining with it, refusing to change, then release truly does happen.
Take care Marcus, and thanks for your reply
When you say make an identity out of your fears, do you mean putting a label on them like “I have Aeroacrophobia” “I am the guy who is afraid of high places” Or something like that?
Fingaladinga, yeah that’s one form of identification through creating a mental label/image of oneself as being the victim of a certain thought/fear. Another form of identification is by constantly investing interest in a fear by giving it an extra-ordinary status in oneself.