Moving toward fear can help us grow more authentically alive.
“Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.”
Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön
- Connecting with fear, we get up close and personal with the vulnerability and fragility of being a human being.
When we take a sacred approach to fear, we begin to resensitize and overcome our numbness.
- Fear becomes a motivation to open up, to be a brave and flawed person among other flawed people.
- Working with fear forms the basis for accommodating every other difficult emotion.
A person facing her fear models a kind of authentic realness.
- The energetic quality of fear is no different from the energy of being alive.
- fear runs through our veins and our nervous system as our most basic power source.
Fear, when we can face it, grounds us in our body and annihilates the pretense that we are supposed to be anywhere else.
- Fear destroys the naïve spiritual premise that we might “transcend” our human experience, and encourages us to be right here.
- When we accommodate fear, we just show up, perhaps shaking a little, but good enough to be worthy of what’s in front of us.
- Fear is saying to us, “This is really happening. You are really alive right now. These jitters you feel are the basic life force of your heart and mind. Please stop wishing for another now!”
This approach to fear as the most fundamental emotion connecting us to our humanity still does not mean we have to seek it out.
- We don’t need to go looking for fear— we just need to work bravely with whatever fear we naturally experience.
We might experience fear so many times each day that we can’t even keep track.
- Fear is always with us, yet if we can take a friendly approach to viewing it as a valid and meaningful experience, it becomes a recurring energy that shows us our own beating heart, and shows us that we are alive and awake.
The full experience of fear is a prelude to every moment of growth along our journey.
- Fear is the most sacred emotion of all.
Re-source: Reintegrate
restore to a position as a part fitting easily into a larger whole
As we confront our fears over and over again, we gradually learn that true fearlessness is about moving toward fear, not away from it.
- True “fearlessness” is not some idealized state where the emotion no longer occurs.
- In fact, idealizing some imagined state actually makes fear worse, as we can become terrified of being with the emotions and thoughts that move through our minds moment by moment.
- Rather, true fearlessness means to see fear as a profound emotion, and move toward it as a sacred experience that links us with every other human who has felt terrified at one time or another.
When we experience fear, no matter how irrational it may seem, we can use it as an occasion to remember what unites all human beings together, and to hold that with compassion for ourselves and others.
craving and resource from Ten Percent Happier – “Your Fear is Sacred” by Ethan Nichtern
