Dear Master
I would like to seek your advice on how can I overcome my fear? I am doing my meditation but yet I tend to slip back into thinking about what is going to happen next and start to fear about it. I know I can change myself and I want to but something from the past just builds these unwanted thoughts, and I end up making things even worse. What would your advice be for me Master?
Thank you in advance.
Student
The first and most important thing to be understood is that one can't escape fear, nor change and make this fear go away. No one has overcome their fear. These are just words that are used in the world. Fear is there, and it will go on being there. It's just that people have managed to hide better, and do things in which the fear is not faced or does not come up.
Most just numb themselves and start to feel less, and think they have overcome fear, but it's there, now it's in the unconscious. It's like something I was saying to a student the other day, this student has gone through something that has frightened her. Some mad guy has been calling her at night and saying this and that, and this made her very frightened. I was pointing out to her that this is the kind of incident that makes one in time suddenly become interested in relationships, marriages, and so on. But this comes about when this fear is not totally seen, and when one does not know what to do, then it becomes unconscious, and then a new desire comes up, and one thinks this desire is the real desire, and what is right for oneself, but it's something that has come up because of this fear.
This is how most thoughts come up, and most desires come up. The root of it is something else, some fear that came up and one somehow managed to bury it in the unconsciousness. Most live their whole life by this, but when you just go one step deeper, you will see there is fear, the root is fear, and they think they have overcome it. This is never the case. Someone is bullied in school, and he becomes frightened. Then he starts to develop his body, and can even become a world-class body builder, but the root that started this was fear, and no matter how big he becomes the fear never goes away.
Now the science of fear - it is nothing but an invitation for you to rise in mastery, and this is why this fear is there in the first place. Man was defenceless in the jungle, and every day was a day of fear, but then some of them developed mastery, which was to create weapons and fire, and with this, they rose beyond the fear by just the mastery they had over that.
If your fear did not make you to rise in mastery, the fear will go on ruling you, and the whole life will be nothing but an attempt to pretend safety and to pretend one is not afraid.
You have said that you are doing your meditation, and this is good, but more than this, rise in mastery, do more the mastery meditation, and learn to realise what is the mastery you have to have for one to go beyond this fear. Look at it this way, you could not drive a car or ride a bicycle, and when you tried to do so there was fear, but you learnt and you mastered it, and in doing so there is no fear, and now it's a tool you can use to live your life better.
Only by being a master of that which creates fear in you, is the way to go beyond fear. Know that all fear is an invitation for you rise to your mastery.
This is why mastery is the first lesson I ask all to do, if not all learning is nothing but to hide from fear, or to avoid it and all that, but only when you can see the need to rise in mastery, and you can do so, then all else begins.
In your question you have very innocently has said you can change, but know this, no one ever changes, it has never happened. All that can happen is that you grow and transform, and live in mastery and with this all else changes. The notion that one can change is a lie, one can only master it. It's like before you learn how to drive and now after you have learnt to drive what has changed? Nothing, just your mastery has grown, and this is the real thing. You have grown by the virtue of mastery, not changed.
Now find out what is that you must master and what is that you must rise to, and ask me, and I will see how I can help. Now look into what I have said ...
Dhyan Vimal