The Root of Contentless Fear
La Raíz del Miedo Sin Contenido
A student describes an experience of deep sensual pleasure and bodily dissolution during meditation, alongside recurring periods of fear without any identifiable content. The teacher explores how this fear relates to the process of dissolution and suggests a way to investigate its source.
The Root of Contentless Fear
A student describes an experience of deep sensual pleasure and bodily dissolution during meditation, alongside recurring periods of fear without any identifiable content. The teacher explores how this fear relates to the process of dissolution and suggests a way to investigate its source.
Total pleasure. Sensuality, extremely sensual. And dissolution. My legs, my body, my arms, my hands: everything was dissolving into something that wasn't, that was not. And the pleasure, this swimming.
Beautiful.
I've been feeling periods of deep fear the last couple of months. Not with any real content. All I could do the last few days is say, "Okay, I'm going to relate to that fear and talk to it, because I can't reject it. It will kill me. But if I relate to it somehow..." And the place we were just at: there was none. It's not that the fear isn't there, but it doesn't matter. Just breathe and that's it. Without avoiding. I don't know how to explain it. It's that. Thank you.
Are you interested if I have a few words about what you're saying?
Of course, yes.
Fear that has no content
You would know that there are fears about things we need to act on, and you would recognize that kind of fear. When you say it's a fear that has no content, it's because you're aware it isn't about anything specific.
When we start to relate to that fear, and when it starts to come regularly, it is because we are coming to a point where dissolution is happening. What we were doing today in the meditation is to explore that edge. It's where terror originates from. It is the root of all terror.
To have the intention to relate to it is the right intention.
Investigating what is endangered
Then there's one more thing I suggest you can do, which is to explore what we did here, in your own way, creatively. Really look into what is endangered, because the fear is pointing to a loss, a resistance to letting go of something. Even if it's the fear of a pain or something happening, it's always an attachment to something that is.
I would suggest you explore that core sense of "I" that is endangered. Explore it in the sense of what we were doing today: where is this? There is an "I" which is a thought, and then there is the "I" which is the source of what we feel experience to be. If you look for that and look for its boundaries, asking what is inside it and what is outside it, it might bring up this fear. But it is the way to truly understand what is at the root of it.
Thank you.