June 9, 2025
How to get rid of fear?
But what is fear? How do we observe and see what fear is?
There is no special technique, except to become like a child and experience the fear without labeling it as 'fear'. When the baby experiences fear it reacts to it spontaneously. The baby does not cry, as it were, it is the fear that cries! Later we are taught to identify the fear, to label it and learn 'not to be afraid'. This, however does not mean fearlessness!
Even now we are afraid but immediately we experience fear we push that experience away and pretend that we are not afraid. We are afraid, and we are afraid to express that fear! hence we are ignorant of fear.
All our fears and confusion are born of this ignorance. Even when we turn within to look at fear as it rises, we are only looking at the label 'fear', which simultaneously rises to cover up the pure experience. We continue to be ignorant.
If we understand this, and we see how this ignorance stops us from this vital understanding, we shall drop the label (and with it the inhibitions and repressions that we were taught to cultivate) and come face-to-face with fear and realize its true nature. Fear understood is fearlessness.