Fear is seen as a negative feeling that sometimes leads to positive outcomes. It is a primal instinct that preserves life. Fear should be like salt in food. It is useful, but excessive fear can put us in a shell.
Do not try to eliminate fear. Meditate. Know that you are nobody. Or that you belong to someone special.
Fear is complementary to its opposite – love. It is love standing upside down. Fear is distorted love. Everything that can be interpreted with love can be interpreted with fear. For example, a child clinging to his or her mother may be attributed to love or fear.
Fear is an impression of the past reflecting on the future of the present. When people deny fear, they become egocentric. When they recognize and accept fear, they go beyond, and become free of it.
Total lack of fear is possible only in utter chaos or utmost orderliness. A saint or a fool has no fear. But everywhere in between there is fear. Fear is essential to preserve orderliness in the world.
What is Fear?
Every seed has a membrane around it. That shell is there to protect the seed, but when you soak the seed in water, at some point the membrane breaks and the sprout comes out of it. In the same way, fear is a mechanism around life to protect it; at the same time, there is a way to get out it. Fear comes when a child becomes independent and disappears when the mind or the intellect to mature. A mature intellect has no fear.
Fear could be attached to anything.It can be attached to losing your prestige and life; or it could be fear of disease, spouse, children, or parent or of losing money – all these are possible.
You are hanging that fear on different things, which are just hooks to hang the fear on. How do you respond to fear? It is through knowledge – knowing the very nature of fear. When there is love, that same love turns upside down and becomes fear. And hatred is also again of love. So love distorts itself and forms in all these other emotions. Dedication, faith, meditation and prayer are ways to transform fear to love.
When you experience fear, know that you have the ability to love too to that level. When you fall in love or raise in love, your fear will simply dissipate. Fear is nothing but another way of love.
Fear has Its Uses
Fear of death preserves life. Fear of wrong keeps the right. Fear of sickness brings hygiene. Fear of misery keeps you righteous. A child has a pinch of fear so she is careful and alert while walking. A pinch of fear is necessary to keep things moving.
Nature has put an amount of inbuilt fear in all living beings. This fear makes life defend itself, protect itself. Like salt in the food, a little bit of fear is essential for people to be righteous. Fear of hurting someone makes you more conscious. Fear of failure makes you more keen and dynamic. Fear moves you from carelessness to taking care. Fear moves you from being insensitive to being sensitive. Fear moves you from dullness to alertness.
Nature has put an amount of inbuilt fear in all living beings. This fear makes life defend itself, protect itself.
– Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Total lack of fear may lead to destructive tendencies – a distorted ego knows no fear. Neither does the expanded consciousness! Whereas the ego dismisses the fear and moves in a disruptive manner, the wise one acknowledges the fear and takes refuge in the Divine.
When you are in love, when you are surrendered, there is no fear. Ego, too, knows no fear. But there is a difference – like that of heaven and earth – between these two types of fearless states. Fear makes you righteous; fear brings you close to surrender; fear keeps you on the path; it keeps you from being destructive. Peace and law are maintained on the planet because of fear. A newborn child knows no fear – she relies totally on her mother. Whether a child, a kitten or a bird, when they start becoming independent they experience fear, which makes them go running back to their mothers. This is inbuilt in us by nature to sustain life. So, the purpose of fear is to bring you back to the source!
Ten Fears That can Consume Us
- Fear of rejection
- Fear of obligation
- Fear of responsibility
- Fear of the unknown
- Fear of failure
- Fear of abandonment
- Fear of confronting the truth
- Fear of separation
- Fear of opinions and humiliation
- Fear of not having enough
The Antidote of Service and Oneness
The antidote for fear is love and service. If you keep yourself busy in doing some service, where is the time to think about anything? It is the same energy which manifests as fear, hatred or love. If you channel the energy towards love, then it will not manifest as fear or hatred. So, keeping busy, being active in doing some selfless service will help.
Separation brings fear. If there is oneness, there is no fear.
– Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Fears arise when you do not know that you are connected to the infinity. When it is forgotten that ‘I am part of the infinity’, fear comes.
You will always exist because you are connected with the ocean. A drop is afraid because it thinks it is alone, it is not connected with the ocean. But when the drop is in the ocean, the drop has no fear. It will never get extinguished because it’s in the ocean.
Separation brings fear. If there is oneness, there is no fear. So how to get over fear? By remembering the oneness.
