Fear – a bad ally, a good teacher. The best ways to fight fear.

Fear is a false experience that feels real. Very often we imagine that we are somehow in danger from a situation when there is no real threat. Since our brains are highly evolved there is not a single thing in the world that someone was not afraid of. And all these fears are driving from one fear – the fear of death. 

Fear vs free will

Fear is one of the best indicators that you have lost control of your life. You are acting out of a mind-made program rather than exercising your free will. It means it is time to evolve, to move higher, to extend your abilities to the next level. I am sure you have all heard that by conquering your fear you can grow the most.

Giving into fear usually makes us feel safe because we think or feel that we know what is coming and we are controlling the outcome. It means you do not have to take the step to the unknown which is strange and scary for the mind. Usually your mind tells you that you are unable to step through it or if you do it, this will be the end of you. But actually you have given your life energy and control over your life itself to fear.

I have seen a man standing at the crossroads in life paralyzed by fear and succumbing to fear and it was the saddest thing that I have ever seen. He wasn’t even able to say what he was afraid of but I could feel the fear oozing out of him. He was terrified of his own happiness.

I have also seen someone step through the fear and it was so beautiful. Even more so because it was my 7-year old daughter who was terrified of water and swimming because it triggered a panic attack that came from a death by drowning from a past life. The moment she learned to swim she was screaming on the top of her voice: “Yes, I am no longer scared of death! I did it! I did it!”

How does fear affect karma?

Fear is created by the unknown. Fear and adrenaline are both the indications of the same process. Very often the unrealistic fear is actually creating the very situation that we are afraid of.

A good example is a modern disease called a fear of missing out (FOMO). People who succumb to it are actually missing out on their life experience and success because they waste their energy chasing after the things they think they are missing out on. It might even feel exciting for some time but then they reach a certain age or get a wake up call and realize that they have wasted their life on nothing.

Most of the time we are not afraid of the actual situation but the fantasies in our head of what might happen. So the thing we are really afraid of is our thoughts.

So the way it affects karma is that once we take one step out of fear, we end up doing many more steps to avoid it in the future. Usually many more or less harmful decisions are made out of fear. This limits our life and the fear is ruling us – we are moving further and further away from our sovereignty. This always results with negative karma.

The fruits of fear

Fear creates energy blockages in the body. Sometimes we might not even notice it, but there is tension there. In time this can either start getting our attention via pain or some disease. Mostly people try to then fix the symptoms rather than analyzing the real reason behind the condition. This results with chronic conditions and in extreme cases in untimely death.

All fights and wars are created by fear. Most illnesses are self-created by fear of something that builds up so much stress in our body that it starts breaking down. Since the source of fear is not in our heart but in our mind, there is never any universal energy flow for its creation. So we end up using our limited life energy (that should only be used in extreme life threatening situations) to feed it and therefore also shortening our life span.

How to overcome fear?

This was a question posed to Sadhguru at one of his teachings. His answer was short: “You cannot overcome something that does not exist.” He further explained that fear is created by using up a lot of your life energy and maintaining it takes even more energy. So all you have to do is let go.

Fear is not reasonable and always fictional, even if based on previous experience. The best way to fight fear is by awareness. Acknowledging your emotions by fully allowing yourself to feel them and at the same time by analysing and reasoning. If using only one of these angles, some of the energy from the fear might still stay clogged up inside and gather its strength over time using up your energy.

One might say that if you come across a real danger, fear is the thing that is making you run and hide and sometimes even end up saving your life. Actually, it is your survival instinct that is activating the most effective program to save you. If you really feel fear – you usually freeze and end up being eaten by the polar bear.

If we bury our fear deep inside us and focus on positive, we tend to avoid the negative event from manifesting but our life force and energy is still tied up maintaining it. The negative karma is on hold in a passive state. This is very dangerous since at our weakest moment, it will unleash at full force.

Fear is always constricting our freedom. Fear should be treated as a teacher – it comes to show us where we can evolve. The bigger the fear, the greater the lesson and reward. Every time we face fear and conquer it, we get back some of our freedom. And since maintaining fear takes up a lot of energy, every time we do something to step out of it we also get a huge energy rush from the release.

How to end fear for good?

Based on my experience and after studying a lot of teachings of many wise people, the only permanent remedy towards fear is total awareness. Eckhart Tolle has talked a lot about the benefit of awareness in his books.

In order to get rid of all fear in your life you would get rid of the root of it. And the mother of all fears is the fear of death.

The way to overcome fear is to become “friends” with death. This does not mean that you are wanting to die every moment, quite the opposite. You live fully, but without fearing death. 

So the key is enlightenment. Especially a part of the soul awakening process called the Ego Death. Once you have experienced death before physically dying, death becomes your friend that walks beside you as you live fully every second of your life. 

However, you cannot make Ego Death just happen. All you can do is work on your soul development every day and it will happen as a natural part of the process. There is a separate post talking about this subject in more detail.

So what should you do?

Jim Carry said in one of his speeches: “You only ever have two options in life: choose love or choose fear.”

So you should try to live consciously every day. Be aware of what you feel, what your heart is trying to whisper you behind all the mind chatter. And if the fear rises, acknowledge it for what it is – a fictional story in your head that is trying to control you. Step out of it, feel it and analyze it to pieces to never feel it again.