How meditation helps overcome fear

Not all of us are brave enough to admit it, but we all feel fear to a certain extent. Can we get rid of it? I don’t think so. We are yet to see a person who doesn’t feel any fear at all.

Well, if we cannot get rid of it, what is the best way to relate and cope with it? We can encourage our awareness to grow beyond it. Fear, like any other emotion is a part of the mind.

Meditation helps us to grow beyond it and relate with it in a new healthier way. Then, fear won’t be able to immobilize us. It will help us to act in rational ways even under the shadow of fear.

Let us think of our mind as a turbulent river. What would our experience be if we were caught up in a river like that? We would be tossed from here to there with its strong currents. We wouldn’t have much choice in such a scenario. Now, consider this. We start moving out of the stream and start climbing the nearby cliff. If we see the river, from the top of the cliff, we would realize that it doesn’t affect us that much. We have created a distance between the river and ourselves. We would be able to see where the river is coming from, where it is going and how to make the best use of its waters. Maybe, we would construct a dam across it and generate electricity!

That is how we start relating with our mind as our awareness grows with the practice of meditation.

Before meditation, our mind (thoughts and emotions) carried us from pillar to post without any control or authority. With growth in awareness, we can remain detached from the mind.

That way, we can think and act rationally without being ruled by fearful thoughts or emotions. In fact, under such circumstances, we can make best use of fear. Instead of a noisy siren that is continuously wreaking havoc in our inner world, fear becomes a sweet gentle bell that reminds us of our priorities from time to time.

We can even direct our fear and use it as a fuel to feed our devotion (i.e. our desire for the truth). Fear can inspire us to ultimately grow beyond the reach of fear. That is the best use of fear.