When You Can't Win the Fight with Fear
Cuando no puedes ganar la lucha contra el miedo
A student is exploring how fear manifests as mental spinning, and the teacher explains the difference between suppressing fear's energy and learning to be with its direct sensation in the body.
When You Can't Win the Fight with Fear
A student is exploring how fear manifests as mental spinning, and the teacher explains the difference between suppressing fear's energy and learning to be with its direct sensation in the body.
Because you are unable to be with the intensity of the energy, the direct energy of the fear, the heat. But once you are able to be in touch with the heat, all of that dispelling of energy becomes unnecessary. If you are trying to stop the steam, it is just going to push. It is just going to pop the lid open, and you are fighting something you cannot win.
The direction of practice
The direction is to turn toward sensation. This actually changes your whole nervous system. It is not something you see overnight and then it happens. Your body, your brain, your whole nervous system needs to shift in how it operates, and that is why it takes time. But the direction is to ask: what is the actual sensation? Look for it in the body. You will notice your breathing is tight or shallow, your chest is contracted. Then what happens if you just slow down your breathing, bring it into the belly, pay attention to the sensations, and pay less attention to trying to stop what the mind is doing? That is going to get you more in touch with the energy, the heat of the fear.
Fear as the anticipation of loss
So that is one thing. There is a similar dynamic with pain, but the main thing that is coming up for you now is the fear. That fear is connected to ending: the ending of a relationship, the losing of something, something coming to a close. And in the imagination (sometimes very accurately), what follows ending is pain. Something ends, and what comes is pain. So the fear is really the avoidance of pain.