A small story:
On a dark night, a man was walking on a narrow path. Suddenly, his foot hit a rock and he stumbled and slipped down. He managed to catch hold of a branch hanging over the rock. It was completely dark. The man tightly held onto the branch. He shouted for help but the only response was his voice echoing back. Hearing the echo, the man was terrified that he might be at the mouth of a huge abyss.
The night seemed endless and the man was desperately holding on, hoping he could get some help. Finally dawn arrived. The man looked down to see how deep the abyss was, but there was no abyss, just two feet down was a big rock!
Your fears are exactly like his. You think it is an abyss but it is actually just a few feet. If you can face your fears, you see they have no depth. Because you magnify the fears, you imagine them to be an abyss. It is your choice, to let go of the branch, the fear, or to keep clinging onto it and torturing yourself.
Acceptance is the only way to conquer inevitable things. When you accept, suddenly you see the fear disappear. The moment you accept, fear loses its power to frighten you. When you don't fight with it, you will see fear as deep peace. When the fear stroke happens, just live it. That is the only way.
When you have an object connected to fear, accept it. That acceptance transforms. The more you fight, the more you empower fear. Diverting your attention away from the fear is also not the way because then the fear still remains with you. It does not mean that you are out of fear.
Allow the fear to take over itself. Go into the fear two to three times. Live the fear intensely without any reservations. Suddenly you will find that it doesn't touch you anymore!
Fear is associated with the swadhishthana chakra, the subtle energy center two inches below the navel region.
This is an incident from my life when I was young:
I used to circumambulate the Arunachala hill every day. I would start early in the morning at around four am, and go around the hill chanting and singing keertans.
One morning I started very early, soon after midnight. In those days there were no roads or lights on the path around the hill. It was a dense forest all the way. I was happily singing and walking with my eyes down. Suddenly, at a spot near a small river, I looked up and saw a pack of fierce-looking hyenas staring at me intensely ready to pounce on me!
In that sudden deep fear, I just let out a scream from the depths of my hara, the swadhishthana chakra. It was a scream of pure fear that I had never experienced before. It was so complete that never again did I feel shaken by fear again in my life!
I felt a total surrender to Arunachala and a deep trust that Arunachala would take care of me. Suddenly, from nowhere, an elderly sannyasi appeared in front of me with a big stick and chased away the hyenas. As soon as the animals ran away, the old man disappeared!
With that primal scream, I found that my body had suddenly become much lighter. I was almost floating rather than walking, as if the frequency of my being had increased. In modern psychiatric treatment, 'primal theory' is applied where patients scream as a catharsis, from the depths of their hara, to relieve fear and other suppressed negative emotions.
A very powerful way of overcoming fear is to visualize going through that fear as clearly as you can. The beauty with this technique is that it can be used when you are not in the fear situation, when you are calm and able to handle yourself.
You can sit by yourself and visualize the situation that causes fear. Feel clearly the fear coming up in you; face the fear with deep awareness. If you suffer, if your body feels uncomfortable, it is fine. Don't suppress the fear, just allow it to happen. When you experience something completely, you drop it.
A M editation