Fear is a strange phenomenon…
In the animal kingdom, fear helps avoid danger, triggers an adrenaline rush that helps with quick reactions and keeps animals alert..
Among us humans however we now have a love hate relationship with fear…
Generally we don’t face life and death situations on a daily basis, so this innate fear gets projected on rather trivial daily matters…
Our fears get attached to what matters to us…fears of not being accepted by our friends and loved ones…fear of financial insecurity for our family..fears regarding health..fears when meeting new people..fears of reaching out to dear old friends we have lost touch with…fears of trying new adventures..fears of changing our jobs…fears of relocating…fear of not doing our best when it matters…
All of these share a common thread, that we fear an adverse outcome…but the key difference from our cavemen ancestors is that here the fear doesn’t help to trigger a life saving response…and the so called adverse outcome may be highly unlikely or isn’t necessarily that bad either…
Instead the fear just hinders us from trying out starting a new gig..it stops us from reaching out to that old friend…makes us fear the unknown…prevents us from doing our very best…
At this stage of our evolution, the fear itself has become an obstacle rather than a support to overcome life threatening situations…we have outgrown our past animal stages and now need to move on forward…it’s time to look within, find the causes of the fears and work on rooting it out…
Sometimes rationalising through the fear helps, thinking about the worst possible outcome, how likely it is, and then psychologically accepting it…
Some train themselves to face fear regularly through thrill seeking hobbies, watching horror movies etc…
Some train their minds through meditation and learn to release fear gradually from their minds…
Others still go further and find that the perception of duality is the root of all fear, that death is merely an illusion, and achieve fearlessness by realising their oneness with all of existence…
Whatever our methods may be, let us train ourselves to transcend fear… to go beyond this old crutch which no longer has much value for us…
Life awaits us on the other side of fear…
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