I must say a word about fear

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. I has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in you mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.
Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while you jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your spincter relaxes to much. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear. Quickly you make rash decisions.You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.
The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundations, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory life a gangrene; it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. 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.

from the "Life of Pi"

Thank you, Walt

This is what you should do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season or every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body..........

Walt Whitman

Letting go of Control

Spiritual maturity is usually considered a necessary for true awakening, and I am often asked if there is a sign of spiritual maturity. It is true that spiritual maturity is a necessity. 

This kind of maturity, however, has little to do with how people usually conceive it. 

It is not related to the number of years you have devoted to spiritual practice; or the number of years that you have prayed, or the number of years you have "been good". 

At the most basic level, spiritual maturity has to do with the realization that you are not in control. 

This is, of course, a shattering realization, because from the age of two you have believed in the possibility of control, and much of your attention and energy has been funneled into the fight for control. The desire to be in control, the illusion of being in control, and the hope of being in control, are all based on the megalomaniacal belief, that you know when and what the outcome should be.

 Obviously, you can control many things to a greater or lesser degree, but there is nothing that you can totally control. 

You can control your bodily functions to a degree, as well as circumstances, thoughts, emotions, position and survival. But you can never have complete control. 

You need no model for letting go. You cannot "do" letting go. Neither is letting go a kind of saintly passivity; not being bothered by anything. The mind is very slippery. And can even use the desire to let go as a tactic for control.

 Letting go of control is a deeper relaxation, a floating on the ocean. You can become aware of where you are holding on and you can just let go and allow the ocean to hold you. You can become aware that all your tension and clinging are unnecessary. And then relax and let yourself be supported. 

In this same way, you can become aware of all the mental and emotional energy that gets exerted in holding on to a particular story, and you can just let it all go. 

There is a deeper intelligence than the one you use to control, and it is present to be recognized in all of our lives, at all moments. Different emotions may arise including fear, because to let go means that you could fall or you could lose something. 

Yes, be willing to lose everything. It is the same as meeting your death. 

Consciously meeting your death, means discovering what cannot be controlled and what is bigger than anyone's power to control. There can be a blessed surrender to that.

 If you are searching for a safe, comfortable life, than the freedom I am pointing to is not for you. The invitation to accept the "diamond of life" is not an invitation to safety and comfort. It is an invitation to live life fully and completely, which is never safe and is often uncomfortable. Comfort and safety are often searched for because of the belief that they will bring happiness and fulfillment. "If I am just safe enough, then I can relax." 

But I am talking about recognizing that you can relax right now, even though you aren't completely safe and you never will be. In that understanding, is more than safety for the body, mind or emotions. There is safety not in any particular form of being, meaning "your" body, or your loved ones bodies, but of "being-ness", which is eternal. "Diamond in your Pocket".....Gangaji

Meeting Fear.....

At the root of every fixated pattern of suffering, is the avoidance of one core emotion, fear. 

Fear is not the real problem.

 The problem and the continuing complication is all of the mental activity that gets generated in order to avoid really experiencing fear. 

Meeting fear is actually simple. It is so simple that there is really no "how to". The skill is in seeing how this meeting is continually avoided. Within this avoidance, all of the unconscious, fixated, habitual patterns of suffering are structured. 

How is it that you avoid your fear? Do you go numb? Do you deny it? Do you dramatize it? Do you go against it? Do you talk to yourself incessantly? Do you continually fantasize about some future gratification, such as sex, food, power, money, or enlightenment? All as an avoidance of fear. 

Right now, you have the capacity to stop avoiding your fear.

 It is that simple. You can stop telling yourself whatever you are telling yourself and meet what is here.

 In meeting any emotion without telling a story about it, you can meet the truth of yourself. More importantly, you will recognize that this truth has been here all along. 

Fear passes through it. Anger, sadness, fixated behavior and despair, emptiness, fullness, ignorance and enlightenment, all pass through the truth of yourself. All emotions and mental strategies come and go.

 You are here. You have always been here. Unchanging, radiant, pure and unafraid of any fear that appears.

 If all that you desire is to be rid of fear and you run from it or deny it, fear will haunt you. As anything that you run from, it will continue to haunt you. 

In turn, if you chase whatever it is you desire, it will remain just out of reach. This is also true of the spiritual search. If you want God and you chase God, God will be just out of reach. If you stop and drop every concept of God, you are enfolded in the living presence of God. The complications that arise in your life, reflects either an avoidance of what haunts you, or a grasping after what you desire. 

In an instant of being fully conscious all complications disappear. Even in the most complicated circumstances, it is possible to be simply clear. Whatever fear may have haunted you all your life, when you stop and say, "alright fear come, I am ready to meet you" you will find that it will start to dart between the corners. If you will send your consciousness after it into every corner, what a discover you will make. Where is fear? What does it feel like? What is close to it? What is underneath it? In this moment, if there is not fear present, you can tell yourself some story that will generate fear. And then ask yourself directly, where is fear? Maybe you will feel it in your heart. Maybe in your belly. With your consciousness, drop into the middle of the fear. If a story is still going on in your mind about the fear, let that story go. Let your consciousness fall into the fear, that it may have been avoiding for millions of years. When there is an openness to fear, where can it be found? What a strange creature fear it. It exists only when there is resistance to its existence. When you stop and open to what you have resisted through time, you will find that fear is not fear.

 Fear is energy. Fear is space. Fear is the Buddha. It is Christ's heart knocking at your door. 

 from "Diamond in Your Pocket" by Gangaji