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
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