Face Your Fears and Be Free🔗

Fear is a deeper dimension of worry. Worry can cause ulcers. Fear on the other hand can even destroy life. However, unlike worry without which life is possible, fear seems woven into our lives. It is possible to face fear without fear. A person who we call courageous is not one without fear, but one who has learnt to face fear without fear.

Fear is a form of energy inside us. That is why it cannot be destroyed. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it can only be changed from one form to another.

Understand, your fear is directly connected to your life energy. Whenever you are facing a survival threat, you will see your fear rising and the adrenalin release happening in your body. That adrenalin release gives you so much energy that you can almost fly. We call it the fight or flight response; either you face the fear and fight, or you run away. There will be so much energy in your body the moment you face a survival threat. Whenever that threat is real, the swadhishthana chakra¹, the seat of life, gets completely shaken!

When there is pure desire or pure greed in you without any object in particular, it becomes the overflowing energy of creation, expansion, or Big Bang²! For no reason, you simply explode with energy. In the same way, when there is pure fear in you without any object in particular, it becomes contraction, black hole³.

Fear is your nature, but don’t direct it towards any object. Having fear is natural.

initial state at some time in the past, and continues to expand to this day.

escape from it.

Enormous energy radiating from you for no reason is pure greed. If it is because of an object, it becomes ordinary greed. In the same way, energy settling back within you for no reason is pure fear. If it is because of an object, it becomes ordinary fear. Unless the black hole happens, the Big Bang cannot happen. It is part of life, part of the drama, part of the game. Pure fear means you are relaxing into yourself, settling inside you. That is what we call destruction. The birth of this cosmos is the Big Bang, and death is the black hole. Birth of your being is big bang for you. Death of your being is black hole for you. The inhaling breath is pure desire. The exhaling breath is pure fear.

Prana – the life energy that enters along with the air - goes into you because of the Big Bang. Prana leaving your system with the outgoing air is the black hole. When you resist or fight with the Big Bang or black hole, you create disturbance in your system.

When fear happens, when the black hole happens, it means that you are turning towards peace or getting ready for the Big Bang. Whenever pure fear happens, you become rejuvenated with a tremendous relaxation which surges as courage and energy in you!

Whenever you are afraid of losing something that you have, or you fear you cannot achieve something that you want to have, there is a fight going on between your potentiality and your negative approach to the future.

If you are sure there is no possibility of achieving something, that you don't have the potentiality, you will not have fear. If you are sure that you can achieve something, then also, you don't have fear.

Fear is the fight between faith and belief in oneself on one hand, versus the negative idea or expectation you have about your future on the other hand. You are literally fighting with your own positive and negative energies.

If you are very sure you don't have the potentiality, that you can't achieve, then you won't have fear. If you are very confident you are going to achieve, then also you won't have fear. However, if there is something you want to achieve, but you are not sure that you can achieve it, then you will have fear. The

Big Bang – Cosmological model of the universe where the universe is considered to have originated from a highly dense initial state at some time in the past, and continues to expand to this day.

Black hole - A theoretical region of space in which the gravitational field is so powerful that nothing, not even light can escape from it. fight between these two ideas, the dilemma is what we call fear.

There are two ways to escape fear. One way is to block all possibility. This means you can die, then there won't be any more fear! The second way to escape fear is to break the boundary of possibilities. If there is infinite possibility, if there is no boundary, if there is nothing that limits you, then you become fearless. Just by having this understanding, something will click in you and so many fears will disappear from your being!

There is a beautiful story:

One person wrote on the wall of a temple where the teachings are written, ‘Soham’ - ‘I am That.’ It means, ‘Everything is possible by me.’

Another person came and wrote, ‘Dasoham’ - ‘Nothing can be done by me. I am a slave.’ Again that is also okay.

A third person came and wrote, ‘Sadasoham’ - ‘Always I am That.’

If you are in tune with the idea, ‘Nothing can be done by me,’ you are a bhakti yogi^* you surrender. If you think, ‘Everything can be done by me,’ you are a gnana yogi* - you explore and experience. Whether you work in this path or in that path, going beyond fear is possible. But you should be completely connected to one ideology or the other. Either you should be ready to work with ‘Everything is possible for me,’ or you should be ready to work with ‘Nothing is possible for me.’

People come and say to me, ‘I have too many fears. What can I do?’ I tell them, ‘If you have too many fears, the possibility for enlightenment is more. So many doors are available to you!’

For a person who doesn’t have too many fears, the possibility, the number of doors is also fewer because he leads a dull life. A person who leads a dull life will not have much fear. He has nothing much to lose, nothing much to decide. He is not taking many risks.

All you need to do is this: every time you feel fear, do not disrespect yourself. Do not lose confidence or condemn yourself thinking, ‘What kind of a being am I?’ Actually people who can face their fears do not have so many problems. People who are afraid of their fears create more problems for themselves. When you brood too much about your fears, you start thinking you have problems.

Sometimes, just by switching your attention to something else, you can come out of fear. But that is not fearlessness. Fearlessness means taking a quantum jump into the consciousness where you will never experience fear of losing anything!

Be very clear: the fears that you have about your life - fear of failure, fear of losing

Gnana yogi - One who follows the path of knowledge for Self Realization.

your near and dear ones, fear of losing your wealth, fear of the unknown - every fear can be used as a door to enlightenment.

Another important truth you should know:

There is something within you that never dies which is your source of energy. There is also something within you that dies; something that is actually never alive, even now. The fear of death exists in you because you think there is something you have now that will be taken away from you. No! Anything that you have now cannot be taken away. Anything that can be taken away, you never had in the first place. Anything that can die can never occupy your inner space.

You cannot conquer fear. Fearlessness means intelligence to live the intense fear without directing it towards any object. When there is no object to be afraid of, the intense fear will give such an intense relaxation and peace.

Fear is a powerful energy which gives a deep relaxation, self-centeredness. The fear center is the rejuvenation center.

Be very clear: fearlessness does not mean non-existence of fear. It means the fear is there, but you have tremendous energy or courage to live with it and face it. Fearlessness means having the energy or the courage to live even with the maximum fear – going beyond that fear and being neither attached to nor detached from the fear.

One more important thing you should know is fear is part of the nature of life. You can be fearless if you are already in your grave! Then there is no need to be afraid of anything because you have nothing to lose! If you have something to lose, you will have fear. That is the nature of life itself.

Fear does not exist when things are definite and known. Fear exists only when things are not definite, when they are mere possibilities and unknown in that sense. For example, death is a possibility. As an incident it is definite, but when and how it might happen, is not clear. So there is always fear associated with it.

If you can just look into the darkness, the fear, with awareness, you will live through it and get over it.

The biggest fear human beings have is the fear of losing their identity. Even the fear of losing one's life is not as great as the fear of losing the identity. The fear of losing your identity is much worse than the fear of death.

All our fears – losing physical health, mental stability, wealth, name and fame, or loved ones - are actually fear of death under various disguises.

A small story:

A man had prepared thoroughly to deliver a speech at a public function. He suddenly went blank when he stepped on stage and took the microphone in hand. He was gripped by stage fright! He just stood speechless in front of the huge crowd for a few minutes.

Then suddenly, after some time, he said, ‘The human mind is the most amazing thing in this world. It starts working from the moment you are born and never stops working until the moment you die – except when you have to make a speech!’

The social fear – fear of being rejected by society – makes us do things to please society, even when it is not good for us. In this process, many times, we sacrifice what our being really wants to do. That fear of not being accepted by society is just another form of the fear of death – death of the ego.

Every act of ours is unconsciously related to death and the fear of dying. Understanding death can change your entire perception of life. It can simply transform the way you handle all your fears. (A detailed understanding of death is provided in the chapter on ‘Death’.)

Fear is what leads to anger. Fear is the passive form of the energy while anger is the active expression.

A small story:

A man rushed into the post office very angrily with a bunch of papers in hand, saying, ‘How dare they send me threatening letters like this!’ The official at the post office said, ‘Yes, sending threatening letters is a legal offense. Do you know who has been sending you these letters?’

The man shouted back, ‘Of course, I do! It is the Income Tax people!’

When you are angry, just look into the anger. At the root of it, you will find a deep fear.

Try this for yourself: if you are feeling fear, express anger at that time. Throw your hands, stamp your feet – express the energy. You will see the fear disappears. You will see for yourself how fear can simply transform to anger. Similarly, fear can also transform to hate. You just need to be aware of yourself and witness how the emotions subtly change from one form to another. When you understand this play, you can easily get out of the game.

Psychologists talk about fear strokes. Say you are walking in the garden in the dark, and you see a coil of rope - you start shivering, imagining it to be a snake. That sudden shock you get before realizing it is just a rope and not a snake, is what is called a fear stroke. A fear stroke is like shaking a rose plant from its roots - if you keep shaking it long enough, it will die. It is said that we undergo six to twelve fear strokes every day and night, in dreams and also in wakefulness. Imagine what happens to our being! Fear strokes originate from unconsciousness. When they are viewed with awareness and consciousness, they can be substantially reduced.

When you are faced with fear, don't try to resist it or suppress it. Just look at the fear, note the fear and accept it. Acceptance of the fear dissolves the fear. Allow the fear to shake you. If your body trembles, let it tremble. If your eyes water, let the tears come. Just be like a blade of grass in the wind - bending without resistance.

A small story:

On a dark night, a man was walking on a narrow path. Suddenly, his foot hit a rock and he stumbled and slipped down. He managed to catch hold of a branch hanging over the rock. It was completely dark. The man tightly held onto the branch. He shouted for help but the only response was his voice echoing back. Hearing the echo, the man was terrified that he might be at the mouth of a huge abyss.

The night seemed endless and the man was desperately holding on, hoping he could get some help. Finally dawn arrived. The man looked down to see how deep the abyss was, but there was no abyss, just two feet down was a big rock!

Your fears are exactly like his. You think it is an abyss but it is actually just a few feet. If you can face your fears, you see they have no depth. Because you magnify the fears, you imagine them to be an abyss. It is your choice, to let go of the branch, the fear, or to keep clinging onto it and torturing yourself.

Acceptance is the only way to conquer inevitable things. When you accept, suddenly you see the fear disappear. The moment you accept, fear loses its power to frighten you. When you don't fight with it, you will see fear as deep peace. When the fear stroke happens, just live it. That is the only way.

When you have an object connected to fear, accept it. That acceptance transforms. The more you fight, the more you empower fear. Diverting your attention away from the fear is also not the way because then the fear still remains with you. It does not mean that you are out of fear.

Allow the fear to take over itself. Go into the fear two to three times. Live the fear intensely without any reservations. Suddenly you will find that it doesn't touch you anymore!

life and death

Fear is associated with the swadhishthana chakra, the subtle energy center two inches below the navel region.

This is an incident from my life when I was young:

I used to circumambulate the Arunachala hill every day. I would start early in the morning at around four am, and go around the hill chanting and singing keertans.

One morning I started very early, soon after midnight. In those days there were no roads or lights on the path around the hill. It was a dense forest all the way. I was happily singing and walking with my eyes down. Suddenly, at a spot near a small river, I looked up and saw a pack of fierce-looking hyenas staring at me intensely ready to pounce on me!

In that sudden deep fear, I just let out a scream from the depths of my hara, the swadhishthana chakra. It was a scream of pure fear that I had never experienced before. It was so complete that never again did I feel shaken by fear again in my life!

I felt a total surrender to Arunachala and a deep trust that Arunachala would take care of me. Suddenly, from nowhere, an elderly sannyasi appeared in front of me with a big stick and chased away the hyenas. As soon as the animals ran away, the old man disappeared!

With that primal scream, I found that my body had suddenly become much lighter. I was almost floating rather than walking, as if the frequency of my being had increased.

In modern psychiatric treatment, 'primal theory' is applied where patients scream as a catharsis, from the depths of their hara, to relieve fear and other suppressed negative emotions.

A very powerful way of overcoming fear is to visualize going through that fear as clearly as you can. The beauty with this technique is that it can be used when you are not in the fear situation, when you are calm and able to handle yourself.

You can sit by yourself and visualize the situation that causes fear. Feel clearly the fear coming up in you; face the fear with deep awareness. If you suffer, if your body feels uncomfortable, it is fine. Don't suppress the fear, just allow it to happen. When you experience something completely, you drop it.

Arunachala hill – A sacred hill located at Tiruvannamalai, in Tamil Nadu, South India. It is considered to be the embodiment of Lord Shiva, the great enlightened master. Keertans – Devotional songs. Hara – Seat of energy and life according to the Japanese and Chinese traditions, situated near the belly region. Sannyasi – Monk or renunciate.