Tara Brach - Awakening Your Fearless Heart: Tara Brach on Facing Fear (Part 2)

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

Fear is a universal human experience, but when it dominates our inner world, it can trap us in a sense of separation and suffering. In this profound talk, Tara Brach introduces how the transformative power of the RAIN meditation can help us face fear with courage and compassion. By bringing mindfulness and loving awareness to fear, we can move beyond its grip and reconnect with the boundless freedom of our true nature.   What You'll Learn: Understanding Fear: How fear arises and creates a sense of separation. The Power of RAIN: A step-by-step guide to using RAIN meditation to work with fear. Awakening Awareness: Discovering the boundless love and presence that holds all emotions, including fear.   Highlights: Gain tools to transform fear into a gateway for healing and spiritual awakening. Explore the compassionate practices that lead to a fearless heart. Learn how to navigate fear with mindfulness and loving awareness.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste friends, welcome. This is part two of our two talks on facing fear and I wanted to take a moment before our reflection together a few comments from the vantage of 2025. you've probably noticed when you're greeting friends, you might ask, well, how are you doing? Given the world, there's this caveat, given the world, or maybe I hope you're doing well in the midst of all this insanity. We have these kind of shared understandings that, wow,

it is pretty intense out there, a very charged, unhealthy, threatening atmosphere we're all living in. One of the differences I've observed between those who are having a really hard time and those who feel fear but have enough space for it, those who are struggling have the perception of going it alone. In some way they're feeling more isolated in the midst of our devolving world. I saw a cartoon some years ago of a woman in a mall and she's having a panic attack. and she's saying, does anyone have a Xanax? And in the next frame, she is surrounded by a mob of willing strangers.

Everybody's offering her, their meds. And, you know, we're just, we're not alone. Today's reflection primarily has to do with the inner ways of working with fear. But I've noticed that when I'm guiding groups, one of the most healing elements people talk about is the recognition others are feeling this too. And here's the thing. Fear feeds on the sense of our separation

and it loses its power when we feel belonging to something larger. So as you explore this week if you're struggling with fear, I invite you if you have a trusted other that you haven't really talked to about whatever feels vulnerable share how fear is living through you. Just name it and invite that person to name what it's like for them and create a shared space of care and presence because we need to be real with each other.

We don't need to get stuck in our fears and if we can feel our togetherness, we have space for them. And if you're meditating alone and you can't connect with others in this way for whatever reason, just reflect, others feel this too. others feel this too. You know, that image of shoppers in the mall has some truth, that everyone is struggling with fear. And we each need to find a way to befriend it, to wake up through fear. So, friends, the more we feel and trust we're in this together, the more fully will discover that fearless heart that can hold fears and yet respond to the world with courage.

All blessings. So tonight is, class is the second in a two-part series on facing fear, awakening your fearless heart. And we're really exploring this shift we can make in our relationship with fear. So we move from being caught up

and fight-fight-fries to that space of fearless presence where waves of fear can be there, but they don't dominate us. And I thought I'd begin with a favorite story that has to do with fear, and it also has to do with poodles, and I have a poodle, so I like the story. A wealthy man went on a safari and brought his poodle with him. And so one day the poodle was chasing around after some butterflies and found himself totally lost.

And he was trying to find his way back, and he saw a leopard rapidly heading his way. So he goes, uh-oh. And luckily, the poodle noticed some bones on the ground close by and immediately turned his back to the approaching cat and started chewing on them. And just as the leopard was about to pounce, the poodle called out,

boy, that was one delicious leopard, but I'm still hungry. I wonder if there's another one around. And upon hearing this leopard halted his attack, mid-stride, a look of abject terror on his face. He crawled off into some nearby trees thinking, boy, that was a close call. That creature nearly got me. So meanwhile, a monkey had been watching this whole transaction from a high tree, and he called out to the leopard and promised some valuable information in exchange for the leopard's protection. And so, of course, the leopard's furious to know

that he had just been made a fool of, and with the monkey on his back, he takes off to find that conniving canine. Again, the poodle saw the leopard, this time with a monkey on his back and being a smart poodle, they are smart, put two and two together, and realized he wouldn't have time to escape.

So he sat down again with his back to his attackers, pretending he hadn't seen them. And just when he came close enough to hear, he exclaimed, where is that damn monkey? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another leopard. So, I love that because our fear and the conniving and planning and whatever we do out of our fear

sometimes is absolutely necessary and it helps. And fear is an intelligent emotion. It has a place in our nervous system on purpose. And it's often called nature's protector. You know, it protects us. And yet, as most of us know, it goes into the world. to overdrive and we get over self-protective. And when it's that way, when fear takes over, we cannot live fully. We can't be intimate with others. We can't be creative.

And we can see it directly as we look at our day and how much we are tensing against what's around the corner. Have you noticed that? How much time we're kind of of tensing and worrying about what's to come. I heard a story years and years ago about a monk who lived in Australia and he lived in a monastery really far from town and from doctors and at some point, at one point he pulled out his own tooth without any anesthetic using the clause of an ordinary plier. And so others asked him how he could do it, like how could you do that, you know, and he explained, And he said, when I decide to pull out my own tooth, you know, such a hassle going all the way to the dentist, that didn't hurt.

And when I walked to the workshop, that didn't hurt. When I picked up the pair of pliers, that didn't hurt. When I held the tooth and the grip of the pliers, that didn't hurt either. When I wiggled the pliers and pulled it, it did hurt then, but only for a couple of seconds. Once the tooth was out, it didn't hurt much at all. So there were about five seconds of pain, that's all. So we hear that story, and we might have really grimace. like, that sounds pretty horrible, probably felt more pain than he did, you know.

But the point is that if we have been doing it, we would have sent that whole time anticipating the pain and suffering from that. And so it is that the major ingredient in fear is that anticipation of fear. Some of the unpleasant things we anticipate do happen. A whole lot of them don't. And what's compelling in this and really worth our attention is how many life moments get co-opted, get taken over because we have this idea of a future with something bad that's going to happen and we are tensing against it.

And to me it's captured by an email of a mother to her adult son and she says, start worrying details to follow. I'll have to share you. The original story was actually a telegram, which meant that it would take even longer for the details to come. So you might reflect for a moment. First of all, the word worry derives from the word strangle. Okay? So just keep that in mind and you might scan your life right now and just notice, is there something coming up, for you, it could be a social gathering or a work deadline or something to do with your own health that's coming up or getting worse or a financial crunch, or something coming up for somebody else that you're anxious about.

But is there something in the future that in some way is squeezing your present moments? How much are you on some level on the way to the dentist? or to the pliers in the woodshop or however you want to think of it. So, this is just a brief scan to sense how much of today in some way was being contracted by the idea of what was ahead. Now in our last talk on this, which I gave two weeks ago, we covered what happens when we're caught in fear that our perceptions are like the lens, narrows and we fixate on threat. And to some degree, depending how much is going on, we go

into fight-flight-freeze. And so there's cortisol and other stress hormones going and our muscles pithen and our body extremities get, you know, fired up and the digestion goes, you know, kind of halts and our thoughts are circling around what we're anxious about that creates more anxiety in our body and our brain because our limbic systems activated, the frontal cortex is deactivated, which means less access to executive functioning, to mindfulness, to kindness, to empathy. And we know that when we're all worried, our heart's not wide open and we're not feeling tender about others or the world. So this is, for many, again, it's a matter of degree, a kind of habitual state, and it's a trance.

We're in a contracted, agitated state, we don't have access to our whole being, and it's often described as the body of fear or the fear body. And the fundamental feature of it is that our sense of self has narrowed into being a fearful self. We're no longer in touch with a sense of awareness or spirit or heart or any of that vast mystery of what we are. We are a fearful self on our way into trouble. So, the first step of awakening from this trance, and this is really what we're looking at in this class, is to recognize, okay, body of fear, trance, caught in something. And we start sensing the body and its tension and we start feeling the squeeze. And we might notice, and take a little time

with this, there are a couple major domains that we get caught in when we're tensing against the future. And one of the big ones that many of us have is a fear of failure, that what's coming up, I'm going to fail, I'm not going to perform well, and then there'll be consequences, I'll be rejected. So we each have our version of how we're going to fall short, but it matters a whole lot to us because falling short means we get kind of pushed out of the tribe, so to speak. I saw a while ago a cartoon with these two sharks in conversation and one saying to the other, the pressure to be great is too much.

I'd rather be known as the just okay white shark. So I was having a conversation about the fear of failure with a friend last week and she said, all my life, I have been trying to figure out what my deepest fear was and I've just toggled between, is it the fear of being bad, you know, being a failure or is it the fear of loneliness being separate? And we started talking about that and she said, you know, she said that she would play it out, she'd say, well, what if I was just really bad but I wasn't lonely or what if I was like completely lonely but I wasn't bad?

and she realized when she really sorted it out that the worst was the fear of separation, that it was the isolation, but usually they came together because when she felt bad she felt cut off. But I think it's really powerful to realize how much our sense of not okay goes hand in hand with them we're going to be cut off and removed from any real connection with others. So there's fear of failure. And then there's the fear of missing out, FOMO, which many of us really know close in daily of not getting something we want. We're fear of not getting that connection with another person, fear of not having something

work out financially or a chance to impress or gain an influence or have an adventure or have another experience that matters. So we grasp after gratification. And it goes to spiritual realms too, the fear of missing out. I notice people at retreats will be sharing experiences and there's a fear like, God, that person was sitting and all blissful and dissolved into rainbow light and I've just been like dealing with my neurosis. So it's like in spiritual life too, fear of missing out.

I remember a long time ago, it's actually one of my father's favorite stories of two men who would have this, their friends that would have these spiritual conversations about what was possible and really they believed in, you know, the afterlife and they were really fascinated with what they would be able to experience and they made an agreement as they got older that whoever died first would in some way send a message about what it was like, like what was the experience, you know. And so one of them died and just, took some months, but the other one started having seances and so on.

And finally, he heard his voice and he confirmed it was him. And he said, so, what's it like? What's the afterlife like? And his friend said, well, we eat and we have sex and we sleep. And then we eat and we have sex and we sleep and goes over and over. And his friend said, wow. So that's what heaven's like. And he goes, heaven. I'm not in heaven, I'm a moose in Wyoming. I don't know what you believe, but that's one version of reincarnation.

So a fear of missing out. And then our deepest fear, really, and this is the fundamental one of the loss of our life. And that's the sense of living with the uncertainty and fragility of our own existence. And we each have that. It's again rigged into our nervous system. And so while we might be fixated on a particular thing, if we scrape beneath the surface, we'll find that there's fear and often it's that deep fragility of, you know, how to preserve me, this existence itself.

So the path to waking up from trance is to get it, okay, in the trance of fear. That's the beginning of waking up just to know what's happening. And once we identify it, then there's enough presence to pause and deepen attention. And this is where we're going now. How do we deepen attention? So we've noticed it. Okay, I'm caught. I'm shrunken.

I'm fixated. I'm, you know, spinning and strangling worries. Okay, now what? But if we notice it, we can pause. Now, in Asian artwork, and this is also the gateways of temples and the mandalayas and so on, a lot of the way it's depicted, the spiritual transformation is depicted, is with these animal-headed deities, these very aggressive and fearful and rageful-looking gods and goddesses. and that the only way you can get to the center of the mandala

are in through the temple gates is to go through a passageway through these rageful scary deities. And the message in that, and the message that we get really in the wise teachings of all cultures are to wake up from the trance of fear, we actually have to go through the fear. and as a wake away as possible. So there's a story that kind of gives a motif of how this can happen

about a Tibetan yogini, really deep practitioner. Her name is Manchik, and I heard about the story through Sultramalioni. Some of you may know are a wonderful contemporary Tibetan teacher. She's really great. And so the way the story goes, Montchegh hundreds of years ago, and she's just, again, in this, she'd go into these deep meditative absorptions. And as the story goes, she floated during that meditative experience to a tree, up into a tree that was at the edge of a lake.

And the lake belonged to a fierce Naga king, and a Naga is, a water spirit. Okay, so there she is in the Naga King's territory, meditating on the top of a tree, and infuriated by her disrespect of his territory, the Naga gathers this great army of fierce and wild Naga's and they mount an attack on this single naked girl sitting in total equanimity in this tree. So rather than fleeing or attacking, Mache again said turns and she offers her body and her being as food to the Nagas. And they're stunned, and then they vow their allegiance and eternal protection to her.

So this is the seminal story of what's called feeding rather than fighting your fears. And it's described as feeding your demons. So the deep teaching here is that when there's fear and we resist it. And by resist, I mean, we ignore it, we judge it, we numb it, we do everything that we know we do, all our strategies not to sit with our fear. Fear times resistance equals suffering. It's like, it's a kind of faux equation, but it's actually a very wise one that to the degree that when fear comes up we do anything other than, okay, let me feel this.

let me be with it, let me feed my whole being into it, that equals suffering. It locks it in. And that in contrast, fear times a full embodied presence where we actually surrender and open equals freedom. So that's the idea of feeding the demons and it's actually the kind of key teaching of transforming fear that you'll find in many Western psychologies, Buddhist psychology and other mythologies. So, when I saw one person wrote, when a dog is ferocious and coming at you, whistle for it. So it's that idea that we don't fight, we're like actually calling it in.

And to translate this a little bit into what we've been practicing here, the primary teachings we've been exploring when difficulty comes up, meet it with mindfulness and compassion. And we have the rain acronym as a way to guide us through that. And so it is that when we do our relationship to the fear shifts. And imagine fear is a demon. It's like this twisted, torqued energy in us that when we meet fear, with presence and with care, it untwists. And the demon turns into what's called a daemon, a daemone, and a daemon is the Greek origin of demon, which is a guiding spirit. And this is really an important understanding, that we don't just face and process fear, that when we face

it and process it, the fear which seem like a demon becomes a guiding spirit, that energy shifts and it actually serves us. It's still energy but it's freed up energy and it's got a wisdom and a guidance to it. So I want to kind of share a story with you that really touched me on seeing the shift as possible and then we'll actually land up tonight giving you a chance to pick something you'd like to work with to see, just get a taste of it, how it can work. But this is a man I was, came to retreats and, you know, practiced in our community for a number of years. He was a public defender. And he carried a very, very large load of low-income clients, completely underfunded department, as you can imagine. And he had a lot

of anxiety about not performing well, about failure, about his reprimanded. about looking bad, mostly failing his system because his, I'm sorry, failing his clients because the system is so rigged against the poor. And so he was fighting against that and so he had a lot of reaction. So we did the Rain process which is mindfulness and compassion bringing it to the demons. And Rain, for those of you that are not familiar, quite simply is ours recognized. A is allow, I is investigate, and then the N is nurture, feeding the demons, and then you just rest in presence.

So we practiced that. And with the R, he recognized he was feeling anger and fear, you know, at what was going on in his department and with his clients and the A. Wow means like you're recognizing you're in a trance and A means that you let it be there. You don't try to bury it or do something else or judge it. You just give it space. It's a pause, okay? That's what he did.

And then with the eye he started investigating, okay, what's going on in here? And he had a belief he was going to fail and he said it was like this malevolent inner hiss where he'd hear a voice saying, you're screwing up, you know, you're blowing it, you're going to mess up, you're not going to win, you're going to, you're going to fail. And then when I asked him what most wanted attention as he was investigating, he felt the squeeze and twisting pressure in his throat and his heart. And then I said, is this familiar? And he said, well, the image that comes up is like a python that's strangling me.

Now, I want to note here that when you're doing rain, when you're investigating, some people may have very rich imagery, some people might not have any at all. It's okay if you don't have some demons spring up in your imagination, you can still do the process. But this was very, I thought this was very, this illustrates how it can work. So he had this kind of image and sense of being strangled, okay? And as he was investigating, I said, what is this thing that's strangling you want? And well, it wants acceptance because it's trying to help me.

So keep in mind, it doesn't always seem like it makes sense, but somehow the strangling Python was trying to help them. So it wants to be accepted. And so I said, well, what would, what does it really need to feel accepted, that I love it? Okay, so there you are. So that's when he imagined offering love to the Python. and it was really difficult because when you're being strangled by a python, it's hard to feel

intimately tender towards it. So for him what helped was because now we're entering the N of Rain, which is nurture. He had an Akito teacher who really a steady, caring, trustworthy being. And he imagined his teacher just putting his hands on his shoulders. And so when his teacher could do that, then he could start to sense his teacher's caring, kind of flowing into the python and then his own caring. And things loosened, that strangling ceased to be strangling. And afterwards he felt this very open, caring presence. And so every time he, this is this practice, every time he would start getting agitated about failure and feeling

angry in his job and so on, that he could, and he couldn't do it during the day, but he did it on the sidelines when he had time. He would recognize what was going on, he'd allow that he'd feel that kind of strangling feeling, you know, he'd sense the feeling of, you know, going to fail and the strangling. He'd feel his teacher's hands on his shoulders and they'd offer care. And the Python gradually transformed to being just an energy in that area of the of the throat and the heart that was very clear and alive and warm and passionate. And he described months later that that malevolent hiss that he'd heard all his life

saying you're blowing it turned into this kind of soft whisper that said, you know, remember what matters, remember what you care about, trust in the power of your caring. It was a wisdom message. So his demon, that strangling python of fear, turned into a daemon. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing it right, but I think you know what I'm talking about, a spirit that was guiding him to trust his caring. It's really beautiful. I have seen again and again that when we're willing to face the energies in us that we

typically run away from our fight, those energies. energy shift and become allies. I've seen it again and again. So some, as I mentioned, the visualizing can be helpful when you're investigating the fear, if there's some image that comes, great, that can help to deepen the intimate contact with it. But what freedom, again, was these two basic elements we find in rain, which was recognizing and allowing and investigating, which is really.

really getting in touch what's there mindfully and then nurturing the compassion. So, when we explore this, meeting fear with these two wings of mindfulness and compassion, the key is sensing that we can shift our relationship with the fear. And now I want to step back and say, yeah, but what if you're having fear that is super strong. And there's no way you can sit there and breathe with it and feel it and ask it questions. It's just really, really strong. And so, I feel like it's a really important question because there are many times for all of us, especially if we've been traumatized, but even if you haven't been traumatized, that people will give you the basic message of

mindfulness and compassion with what arises. And it won't be, it won't work because the energy is too strong. So I want to take a little bit of time to explore that with you. And again, I start with a cartoon, which was again a Great White Shark. You can tell where my fixation is. I actually spend a lot of time in the summer swimming in areas with great white sharks nearby. So they are on my mind. But in this cartoon, you have to visualize it. here's this great white shark with this huge gaping mouth, and you can see all the teeth, shouting after a person who's frantically swimming away,

come back, come back, I just need a hug. Oh, you really need to see it. It's so good. Okay, so the key thing to know when there's trauma or really strong fear is rather than attempting to pause and go inside and be with it. In other words, you know, remember the mandala and going through the fearful deities, you know, the animal-headed monsters and goddesses, don't do that. First, you have to take some time to do whatever resourcing you can,

they can help stabilize and calm and bring balance to your body-mind. And I found this in my own life, you know, kind of metaphorically through kayaking, which I do a lot on the Potomac River. And mostly it's gentle currents, but now and then there's these areas where there's little whitewater and it can get tippy and so on. And one of the tricks when you're moving along in your kayak and the flow is really strong, For me, if I get tired or anxious or off balance or whatever, it's just go right in front of one of the big rocks because the current rushes around the sides and that's a still area.

And I can rest and I can catch my breath and I can look at the river and decide how I'm going to navigate and so on, I can regain perspective. And when we are hit by fear we need to find our way to a at least somewhat more than we're more balanced, calm place. We need to basically increase our parasympathetic nervous system and decrease the activity of our sympathetic nervous system. And there are a number of ways of doing that. And I want to name some of those ways because you don't have to wait for a therapy session or for anything to know there are ways you can quiet yourself and calm fear. There are a number of ways that have to do with breathing.

One's called coherence breathing and it simply means do a matched breath of maybe five count in breath and a five count out breath. It's long, deep breathing. But matching the in breath and the out breath, if you do it for a few minutes to some degree you will quiet down. Grounding means right as you're sitting here right now and you can close your eyes and feel it, just feel the weight of your body on your chair. Feel that weight. Feel gravity. Feel that you belong to the earth.

That you're right here on the earth. Feel your feet on the ground. You might feel the fabric of your clothing or even touch the chair and sense the material of the chair. You're here. You're on the ground. You're on the earth. And if you open your eyes and you kind of get it,

around a little, you can even put names on a few things you see, like another chair, the back of somebody's head, or the windows up front. The idea of grounding is that when you're in fear and trauma, the mind narrows into a trance and usually brought back to some other time, some other place, and there's very little orientation. So grounding brings you right here. Sometimes people just look around the room and keep naming objects that they see just to get here. Another help in terms of, again, we're kind of getting behind the rock and the river and finding so quiet is you can put one hand on your heart and one on your belly and there's a real

quieting and a calming that could come with the touch of your own hands on your body. You can offer phrases of comfort, like whatever phrase you can imagine that would help you feel more comfortable. You can bring to mind like the man in the story, the Aikido teacher, bring to mind someone who helps you feel safe. Imagine them. I'm going to talk more about relating with others in a moment. And the last thing I want to mention is something that was brought up for those

that were here last week, which is really essential when there's a lot of fear, is move your body. When there's a lot of traumatic fear, we get caught in freeze, which means that you know, just like an animal that's playing dead, we just absolutely get frozen. And when animals that play dead, let's say, you know, a mouse has gone limp because a cat's been playing with it. If the cat goes away, there's a shaking out of that animal's body. which kind of gets rid of the freeze response and allows them to resume natural activity. But humans, when we get traumatized, don't know how to shake out the trauma. Shaking out the trauma can happen in any kind of movement that it can start happening.

So you can stand, you can move, you can stretch. There's a lot of shaking activities that actually do help. People dance, people do yoga, do Tai Chi. So explore for yourself. When I do weekend retreats or workshops, often before I'll do a deep meditation that works on emotional stuff, I'll have people do some movement. Makes a really big difference. But the most powerful pathway to resourcing is connection with other people.

And there's been a lot of research on when somebody's in a fierce, holding hands with a trusted other, they can watch, you know, through the, you know, measurements of the activation in the brain, the quieting of fear. It's amazing. It just works. In a documentary, our mother Teresa and her nuns, working around the world, the one scene that somebody reported was in Beirut and a nun was holding a young child about 14 months old, and there was bombing going on all around. We're getting sirens to give you the feeling of the situation. The child was terrified, screaming, crying, thrashing.

His eyes were darting everywhere, no focus at all. The nun held the child in one arm and placed her other hand on his heart. She spoke to him in a soft soothing voice with a steady eye gaze. In less than two minutes, child's eyes locked on hers, his crying stopped. His breathing slowed down, his body relaxed. He was connected and safe. The cortex came back online. That's the magic in less than two minutes, one heart mind engaging with and regulating another.

So this isn't like, you know, ooie-gui, nice fluffy stuff. This is, we humans are pack animals, and when we're conscious and our hearts are open and we're able to be in relationship with each other, we can help each other calm down fear. I heard a story about a family with a young son and there was a powerful storm going on outside and the son kept crying out and asking for his parents to come into his room every time you'd see the lightning and the thunder. and each time the father would come in and try to calm him down and he'd leave the room saying, don't be scared.

God is with you. And so this happened a bunch of times until finally the boy said, I know God's with me, but right now I need someone with skin on. So this is what we mean by resourcing is that whether we do it through moving around and getting our body shaken out or whether we put our hand our ability and our heart and offer a message to ourselves or do that breathing. We need ways to get back and get somewhat regulated, be safe enough to then be able to move through the fear. And a lot of times it's a meditative practice of bringing to mind some sense of a loving

other because the essence of reducing fear. is increasing your sense of belonging, of connection. Fear is about disconnection. It's about separation, ultimately separation from our lives. And it said that the Buddha taught that our fear is great, but greater yet is the truth of your connectedness. If you can remember your connectedness to something larger, the fear will go down.

So, our practices that we're exploring here are a weave. We begin, as I said, when it fears very strong, that ascribe the way that we, you know, the kayaking going behind the rock and doing coherence breathing or one of the ways that we resource. And then once we have enough sense of safety, then we begin to really look at the trance, it, allow the experience, investigate, actually feel what's here, and nurture. And one of the key things to know is that we each have to customize working with fear for ourselves. At any moment, you might be doing the rain process and realize, wait a minute, I just need

to spend more time nurturing, resourcing. Drop the R-A-I-N and just stick with resourcing, which is nurturing is a kind of resourcing until you feel settled enough and then go back to it again. Again, it's really a weave that we each have to explore for ourselves and eventually as we really do get more settled, we need to learn how to go right into the fear, you know, feed our body to the demons. I heard this is again kayaking and this is not my experience. experience, but there are what's called Keepers' holes. And Keepers' holes are these deadly circling currents. They go like this in the river.

And we've got a number of them in the Potomac River. And if you get trapped into a Keepers Hole, you can get swirled down and you can, there's, you know, people can die. And one friend describes a kayaker who flipped out of his boat, a caught in one of them, and he was fighting it and getting more and more exhausted, because if he was a guy, he you fight it, it's like rib-tide, you can't win. So he took a big gulp of air and he swam right down with the current to its deepest, coldest, scariest depth and then he was drawn to the surface about 20 feet away, but he had to go right down into the hole versus fight it.

So, I think you understand what that has to do with fear, right? that eventually it's fear times resistance equals freedom. But we have to resource enough until we're stable and have the capacity to be able to be and surrender and open to the fear. This is Annie Dillard. In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world's rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate our name, the substrate, the unified field,

are complex and inexplicable caring for each other and for our life together. from demons to diamonds, what happens is when you really go right into the fear. You discover beyond it, what sometimes called the love that will not die. You discover something that's timeless, that's bigger than the fear. There's a Tibetan inquiry that I think really points to this. and you might just close your eyes and listen for a moment. If everything changes, then what is really true? Is there something behind the appearances, something boundless and infinitely spacious

in which the dance of change and impermanence takes place? Is there something in fact we can depend on that does survive what we call death? Is there something in fact we can depend on that does survive what we call death? And you might just with your eyes closed sense that as long as we identify with our body and mind, that's who we are, there'll be fear. We'll be afraid of losing this body and mind. As long as we identify as a separate self, fear is the primal mood of the separate self. And yet we intuit that we're something more.

We intuit that we belong to something larger. And realizing that larger belonging is the pathway to a fearless heart. It's only when we really trust that larger belonging. when we trust we're the ocean, we're not afraid of the waves. So the pathway to that trust is actually by stopping, resisting the fear, by learning to call on love, to offer love, to remember love. So I'd like to invite you as you're sitting here now to explore a meditation as part of closing and to scan your life and sense

we began the talk with the story about the dentist, where are you on your way to the dentist? Where are you in some way feeling like you're facing something scary? Where is there fear? And how's the body of fear living in you? What are you aware of about it? Perhaps you're feeling fear about something to do with your health?

Or maybe it's a relationship and some potential loss in a relationship. Maybe it's fear for someone else. Maybe there's something particular you're afraid you're going to fail at in the near future. Being aware of some place where fear arises in you, and taking some moments for what we might call a light rain where you just recognize it, just name that, okay, fear, fear's here. The shaman say, when you can name a fear, it doesn't have as much control. So that, just to name it. Immediately you can sense that there's part of you that's witnessing that's bigger than the fear.

And to allow it to be here. It's kind of agreeing to pause and let it be here. The eye of rain investigate, you might sense what you're believing. Just ask what am I believing when I'm scared. Are you believing that you're going to fall short? that somebody's going to reject you, that maybe you're really unlovable, that something bad's about to happen, that you'll be shamed in somewhere, that you'll lose something you love. Whatever you might be believing with the eye of rain, feel in your body where you're

feeling the fear and you might put your hand wherever you notice it, your throat or your chest or your belly. And that begins the nurturing right here even though you're still investigating. So that's a really powerful thing to do. Put your hand, chest, throat, belly, let the touch be gentle and keep paying attention to where the fear lives in your body. You might ask, oh, what does this fear most need? How does it want me to be with it? Maybe there's an image that comes with the fear, and maybe there's words.

But into it, what does it want from you? What does it need from you? Perhaps it's acceptance to let it be okay that it's here. Maybe it's forgiveness. Maybe it's a feeling of being embraced that you're going to take care of it in some way. It might be love. Kindness. Experiment and begin offering whatever the fear most needs.

With your deepest sincerity, because that's what it means really to feed the deep demons, with your deepest sincerity, offer some words to the fear place of comfort and offer your heart. And if it helps imagine someone that you trust, that you love with you, helping you to feed and comfort and care for the fear place, just imagine that and let the love come in and let the love come in and notice the quality of presence that's here that's helping to be with the fear, your own presence, sense that belonging to something larger to this presence, to this tenderness, that makes room for the fear, that changes your relationship to the fear so that you're not

a fearful self, you're this awareness and tenderness that has room. And you might, from the heart space that's here, bring to mind others you know who might be fearful. Just think of one person. One person you know who might be fearful because we all are. And imagine that person finding some sense of larger belonging, feeling held and comforted in a way that could be healing, that could bring that fearless heart to you. them. And imagine all who are here right now, locally and around the globe, meditating

on fear, imagine this heart space could include all of us that we could all feel that larger belonging, that timeless presence that's beyond this living, dying world. When we started these classes on fear, the shared Rumi, Rumi speaks of night travelers who turn towards the darkness and are willing to know their own fear. You might sense that here you are a night traveler with countless other night travelers. Rumi writes, life's water flows from darkness, search the darkness, don't run from it. Night travelers are full of light and you are too. Don't leave this companionship. Night travelers bring the light of presence and care to the hurts and fears and discover within them our very being the shared essence of timeless,

boundless love, the love that will not die. Taking a few full breaths and as you're ready, opening your eyes. I want to thank you for your attention and presence and for being willing to explore and be night travelers together. Namaste. Thank you.