Fearlessness is not suppressing fear
Sometimes, just by switching your attention to something else, you can come out of fear. But that is not fearlessness.
For example, when you are afraid to cross a dark area in the night, you start thinking of and repeating God's name. Because of fear, God's name will be topmost in your mind!
You feel that you don't have fear because your inner chatter is en gaged in something else!
When you engage your inner chatter in something else, you feel that you are out of fear.
But you have only diverted your attention, you haven't solved the problem completely.
Fearlessness means taking a quantum jump into the consciousness where you will never experience fear of losing anything!
Fear strokes shake the swadishthana chakra
The swadhishthana chakra is the seat of the being. That is why, when your perceive any threat to life, this chakra gets completely shaken! Suppose you are walking in the garden in the dark, and you see a coil of rope. You start shivering, imagining it to be a snake. That sudden shock you get before realizing it is just a rope and not a snake, is what is called a fear stroke. A fear stroke is like shaking a rose plant from its roots. If you keep shaking it long enough, it will die. It is said that we undergo six to twelve fear strokes every day and night, both in dreams and also in wakefulness. Imagine what happens to our being! Fear strokes originate from unconsciousness. When they are viewed with awareness and consciousness, they can be substantially reduced. At the time of the fear stroke, you may not have any time to go into aware ness, because it is just like a spike. But after the fear stroke passes, you can analyze the stroke and get a deeper understanding of your fears. This will help you dissolve the whole idea of fear. The intensity and frequency of fear strokes can be greatly reduced by re ducing the intensity and depth of the basic level of fear in us. Only from this baseline fear, do the fear strokes arise. With deeper understanding and clari ty, we can reduce the baseline fear, and the fear strokes will also reduce.
Fear can become a door to enlightenment!
People come and say to me, 'I have too many fears. What can I do?' I tell them, 'If you have too many fears, the possibility for enlightenment is more.
So many doors are available to you!'
For a person who doesn't have too many fears, the possibility, the number of doors is also fewer because he leads a dull life. He has nothing much to lose, because he is not taking many risks.
But a living being who is doing many things and making many decisions will experience fear. If you are experiencing too much fear, then so many doors are available for your enlightenment!
One more thing: only if you can open it can it be called a door. If you don't know how to open it, then it is more like a wall!
If you know the right technique, all those fears can become doors and you can be liberated.
All fears are the fear of death
All our fears, be it fear of losing physical health, mental stability, wealth, name and fame or loved ones, are actually the fear of death under various disguises.
The fear of failure, or the fear of not being accepted by society are just others form of the fear of death. It is the fear of the death of the ego. The biggest fear human beings have is the fear of losing their identity. The death of the ego is felt to be worse than the death of the body! Every act of ours is unconsciously related to death and the fear of dying. That is why, understanding death can change your entire perception of life. It can simply transform the way you handle all your fears.
There are two ways to overcome fear
One way is to block all possibility.
When you feel that nothing can be achieved by your efforts, then there won't be any more fear!
The second way to escape fear is to break the boundary of possibilities. If there is infinite possibility, if there is no boundary, if there is nothing that lim its you, then you become fearless.
Either nothing is possible, so you won't have fear because there is nothing to be taken away from you. Or everything is possible, so you won't have fear because you feel all-powerful.
Just by having this understanding, something will click in you and so many fears will disappear from your being!
These two possibilities are actually used as techniques by masters.
When masters say, 'Nothing can be done by you,' it is to create that deep surrender, a psychological death. When all possibilities are closed, you naturally relax. This is what Ramana Maharishi* calls atma sharanagati or self-surrender. The second way to go beyond fear is by opening all possibil ities. When everything is possible, again there is no cause for fear. You can explore and experience.
This is called atma gnana or self-realization.