Meeting Fear, Anger and Everything Else

The way to be intimate with fear is to experience it. When we feel the fear arising can we let it reveal itself and allow it to be felt in the body? Can we experience the rush of energy, the churning stomach, the pounding heartbeat, the bodily contraction and all else that fear is?  Can we take away the judgments and opinions about it and experience it directly, become intimate with how it feels? In my experience this goes for any disturbing emotion. If I stop running or trying to control it in any way then I can turn toward it, and get to know its many different qualities. I come to realise that I don’t have to run from it and it doesn’t have to run my life. After doing this for some time we start to see a shift. We begin to relax in the face of fear and any other strong emotion.

To begin with we may find that we are still overwhelmed with fear. For a while we may find that its presence still paralyses us on occasions. But if we have the courage to turn toward it time and again the shift occurs. It is not a shift that we can bring about by brute effort. It is a shift based on wisdom, which comes from a willingness to face our own life directly. It is a shift from feeling trapped and imprisoned to an experience of greater and greater freedom and happiness ....