Tara Brach - Part 1 - Relating Wisely with Fear

Episode Date: May 26, 2010

2010-05-26 - While fear is essential to survival, it can also strangle our capacity to live fully and awaken spiritually. These two talks explore how fear takes over our lives, and the ways we can train our attention to free ourselves from its grip.

So you might wonder about the cell phones. Anybody wondering? Yeah. If we watch our minds, we'll notice that in some way we want things a certain way and we're trying to control our experience. And so sometimes it's interest and sometimes it's aversion and sometimes we're wanting to hear something or see something. But meditation practice begins by, we have somewhat of,

of a controlled environment to maximize our chance of settling down. But that's not really the ultimate point to control our environment. Ultimately, we are learning to come into a presence that really can include whatever arises without pushing it away and without reacting. And what I'd like to talk about this week and next week is really how in a very fundamental way we are trying to control our environment because of our fear. We have some basic insecurity that even when we're not aware of it, we're usually trying to control our way of being in the world, how other people are looking at us, what we're

doing. So if you find yourself in a bad mood, if you find yourself angry or depressed, If you find yourself ashamed in some way, if you find yourself feeling obsessive or addictive, and you investigate what you'll find underneath is that there's fear, and in some way you're trying to control the experience of fear. Here's really under there with every bit of suffering that we have. And in a way, just existing,

and particularly taking forms with nervous, systems means what we're going to feel fear. This is from the Vedas. In the beginning was simply the absolute, the mind of the absolute present in the infinite dark. Then within the mind of the absolute there arose the thought, I am. And immediately following that thought came fear. So to me that's a really powerful statement that with incarnation with a sense of me here. There's fear. Now, it might not be the fear of a gripping terror or anxiety, but there's an uneasiness. Even few-celled creatures have their version of fear that if you poke a certain kind of amygia, it's going to contract. There's going to be some sense of

pulling away. It said that the primal mood of the separate self is fear. And we're meant to feel fear. It's intelligent. In fact, if we didn't feel fear, we'd be brain dead, truly. So it's part of our equipment to survive. Adjinn Amaro, who's a friend and a Buddhist monk, says, fear is not the enemy. It is nature's protector. It only becomes troublesome when it oversteps its bounds. Isn't that good? Isn't that about say it? But, you know, problem is it seems for most of us to overstep its bounds. Most everybody I know. So then when we suffer in some way fear to some degree has taken over. It's gone beyond just helping us to navigate and survive and taken over in a way that our sense of who we are is shaped by, oh,

I'm a fearful self right now. There's a sense of endangerment. Our lens in perceiving the world is colored by fear. We can't see others clearly. So it takes over and it prevents us in the moments that it's taken over when we're contracted in fear from living those moments. We're in those moments that it takes over, we're organizing around how to control our life rather than live it. Fear is a message of, yo, there's danger, do something. You know, that's the message. So we're mobilizing. When we're afraid, to the degree we're afraid, we're locked into a sense of me here and world out there. Their separation. So how does it end up overstepping its bounds? For some of us, there's distinctly a genetic component that regardless of our personal history,

regardless of our cultural social surroundings, there's genetics at play, genetics that inclined us to reacting to the world with a sense of being endangered. Who knows if there's a past lifetime component, whatever. But there's something handed over. For all of us, to the degree that we grew up in a culture that is suffused with fear

and a family system where there's a lot of reactivity, where there's a lack of a holding environment to allow us to feel some trust that somebody's going to understand or care.

To the degree that there was then even more intensely said some sort of trauma. Our nervous systems lock into the experience of there's danger and I need to react to it. They lock in.

So that even when, this is the overstep, the bounds piece, even when there's not danger, some associative process in our mind thinks there is and is almost permanently in that posture of something's about to go wrong and I need to handle it. So when we examine for ourselves, and we can see this, by the way,

in other animals. When I read about the research, some research done with chimps, and this is research that may have been abusive to animals.

What they found is that when mothers, chimp moms were anxious about receiving food, they got food irregularly. The way that affected the babies is they not only were anxious and depressed, but as adults,

even though they got fed regularly, their serotonin levels, their anxiety levels were just locked in, anxious and anxious. And they also were inclined towards binge eating and antisocial behavior. So you see that our early environments set in motion of biochemistry

and a inclination to react that just locks in place in some way. People that have had failures early in life, several failures, not a whole lot, but tend to learn the experience of, it's learned helplessness. And all sorts of successes can't turn it around. So in a way, I've said this before here, our minds are Velcro for painful experiences and Teflon for the good ones. our brains are biased to remember scary experiences because they might happen again and in case they happen again we have to remember them so it becomes very interesting if we start examining

our fears and what we'll be doing this week and next week is just looking at what I call the body of fear which is the thoughts and feelings and behaviors that come out of this habitual tendency to think something's going to go wrong. Fear is anticipating that something's going to go wrong. And if we start investigating how much of our anxiety or fear

is actually serving our well-being, our survival. No, we know that we need a certain amount. That's not the question. But how many life moments are we having our experience shaped by anxiety or fear when it in no way serves our well-being? The word worry comes from the old English word for strangle. It kind of strangles the life from us.

And I've shared many times because one of my favorite little quips is one that when a, you know, mother sends her son a telegram, And she says, you know, start worrying details to follow. You know, it's like prime to worry. So we hold on to worries and to fear thoughts as if they're going to help us to be safer. We're afraid to let go of our incessant worrying, as if that'll leave us undefended. So on the spiritual path, paying attention to the way fear oversteps, bounds is a central part of our investigation. There's no way to wake up from a kind of limiting

story of a separate self if we're living in a reaction to fear. If we're not seeing the fear that's in our body or in our hearts and seeing how much of our behavior, how many of our moments is being driven by it. There's a there's a saying that that when fear arises in a spiritual context in a way it's like this little light going off that says about to grow you know when we pay attention to it. So what we'll be doing is exploring a wise way of relating to this universal phenomena of feeling fear and how it can wake us up. So the beginning is as I mentioned to recognize how much of our lives are actually being driven by fear. This I found in, I think it was the science times, says this is a story about deception and sex in the wild plains of Kenya. Does that

get your interest? All good newspaper writing. Okay, this is really about antelopes. So during the mating season, a male antelope will try to keep the females that are heat from leaving his territory by pretending that a predator might be in the area, according to the study. When a female appears to be leaving, the male will run in front of her, freeze in place, stare in the direction she's going, and snort loudly. Typically, that snort means that a predatory lion or cheetah was spotted. But in this case, the male's faking it. He's just pretending. Now, here's what so interesting that when the female hears this guy snorting, she basically goes back so often back into his territory where he promptly tries to mate with her and this happens

again and again even though she might know better after 15 20 30 snorting males she she figures well you know better have some sex than risk a you know a hungry lion i guess or something like that anyway so on a on this level of mammal you know behavior is being driven by the chance that fear would be around the corner. Maybe it is. Now, I've made, in this case, I've made the males look like the bad guy. You know, how much of this world, you know, putting out the message of there's some danger manipulates.

I was thinking so much in terms of a societal way. If we really look at the trends in history, if we look at wars, we know there's no way those wars could be fought unless populations were pumped up by the sense of fear around the corner. And it's distorted. We know that there's

fear behind drill, baby drill. We know it. It's a fear of losing a lifestyle. There's some belief that our happiness depends on a certain lifestyle that depends on fossil fuels. And then look at what happens. So we can see it,

societally. We can see that the more fear there is in a culture, the more the decisions, the fear and the grasping are going to make decisions that really destroy the earth, drive us to economic failure,

drive us to wars that can't be won. We know that. I mean, that's intuitive. And so we begin to look, okay, what about my own life? You know, when am I making decisions based on fear? When am I not taking a risk at work? When am I not taking a risk to speak a truth that needs to be spoken? When am I not allowing myself to be intimate with someone?

When am I not letting myself love? Because in some way I'm afraid to be vulnerable. When am I not letting in love? When we start paying attention to this, and it can be this kind of an adventure, because we start pulling the veil and sensing, wow, how many moments when we're with certain people, there is a kind of clutch of fear that's making,

so we're presenting ourselves a certain way, that we're not being spontaneous. We start noticing how we're trying to control how other people perceive us, trying to impress in some way. We just start seeing these things. So fear is nature's protector, and it becomes amortable.

amplified and distorted, and we begin to see with some sadness often, how we've been kind of resigned to living a certain way. We've assumed we're being dutiful when it's kind of a fear of making new decisions in our life to spend our time differently or to explore something that would be very enlivening or to let go of something that we felt that we had to do. just assumed it. Fear stops us from re-chewing in a wise way our life. So I'll be emphasizing the, you know, I've spoken a little bit about as a society, but as individuals, because we have this tendency, this ampage towards fear,

we end up trying to resolve it, trying to subdue our fears by taking what I always call false refuge. We try to find some security that'll help us feel better. And we seek it in the wrong places most of the time. So again, the message of fear is trouble ahead, do something. And we have all these different ways that our minds and our bodies and our emotions

and our behaviors try to do something that's meant to relieve the fear. Those false refuges, this is the body of fear. So let's just take a look at it. And because if you can start recognizing the body of fear, the often unconscious ways that you're just reacting, you have a choice. In the moment of recognizing the body of fear, there's less identification with it.

So one of the main domains of the body of fear is the mental one, which is obsession. And if I ask for a hand raise, how many of you feel like you get caught in the incessant inner dialogue that kind of, well, we can do a hand raise. All right. It makes us feel better a little. We're not alone. So we know it. That we're, that it's got usually it's either what can go wrong, what's ahead, problems, how we might fail. You know, as I've mentioned often when physical pain comes up, we often go to town on what disease has finally risen its ugly head and it's

going to take us, you know. But we were kind of leaning ahead with our minds on things. Again, we're overstepping. One of my favorite descriptions of this was by, it was written up in a story by Ajan Brahm. And he says, he describes a member of their monastic community with very bad teeth. And, but he wasn't willing to have his teeth come out with an anesthetic. So, he found, he describes that it was just no problem taking them out with pliers. He said that this, he found a dentist that was willing to do it, and he said it might seem impressive, but he decided then to do it himself with pliers without an anesthetic. So here's what they said.

They said, we saw him outside the monastery workshop holding a freshly pulled tooth smeared with his blood in the claws of an ordinary pair of pliers. It was no problem. He cleaned the pliers of blood before we returned them to the workshop. And I asked him how he had managed to do this thing. And he said, what he said exemplifies why fear is the major ingredient of pain. When I decided to pull out my own tooth, it was such a hassle going all the way to the dentist. That didn't hurt.

That decision didn't hurt. 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 in the grip of the pliers that didn't hurt either when I wiggle the pliers and pulled it did hurt then but only for a couple of seconds once a tooth was out it didn't hurt much at all

there was only five seconds of pain that's all and the writer says you probably grimace when you read this true story because of fear you probably felt more pain than he did and if you tried the same feed it would probably hurt terribly even before you reach the workshop to get pliers. Anticipation, fear is the major ingredient of pain. So I think this is a really good story because in a way it's a little bit light, but when you think of it, although pulling out your own teeth with pliers might not be so light after all,

when you consider it, we spend so many moments of our life in Dukkah, in the suffering of what's to come. when the actual experiences themselves in the moment are not suffering. The suffering is the expectation. So we figure things out, we plan, we lean ahead, and that is a huge amount. As Mark Twain put it, the worst things in my life never actually happened. Okay. So this is one part of the body of fear is this spinning of the mind that's anticipating and all the suffering that comes how many moments of our life that consumes right that's one level to become mindful of the next level is this

body which tenses or else becomes numb so fear comes up and if you think of a child the child's pretty relaxed and awake in his or her body but over the years of fear the way the body tries to defend in is it tightens. And what happens is it becomes chronic, so the shoulders can become nodded, the head kind of forward, the back hunch, the chest sunken.

This posture of fear becomes so habitual that we don't even notice it. In other words, it doesn't feel like, oh, my body's being a body of fear. It's just the familiar way that our postures become in reaction to the sense of danger. So part of the meditation practice is beginning to bring a mindful presence to how our body is in a fear reaction, beginning to see that.

It's as if we're wearing a permanent suit of armor until we notice it. Choggyam Trunpa puts it this way. He says it's like we're a bundle of tense muscles defending our existence. Okay, so there's the mind that's tense and tight and spinning with anticipation of fear, how to sidestep what's going to go wrong, how to figure things out, there's the body that's tightening, and then there's the emotions, that when fear is unexamined and unprocessed, we often get lost in a trance of fear-based emotions.

What do I mean by that? that when there's fear, along with that comes shame. There's some sense of weakness and not okayness. And it's really sad because it's not just like we sense, oh, fear, and then bring some compassionate presence to it. No, what happens is we add the second arrow, which is fear, and then, ew, I don't like this self,

this fearful self. we in some way judge the fact that we're feeling insecure like there's something wrong with that does that make sense how the second arrow comes onto fear so with fear there comes shame and this kind of fear about a deficient self fear also turns into depression one of the ways that we respond to fear

is to try to push it under and it's a numbness that fear's under there but it kind of presents as a hopelessness and a kind of resignation. Then, of course, also, fear presents as anger. Something's threatening to us. We get angry at it. It's a way to try to push it away. Okay, so there's the body of fear with the thinking,

with the body tightening, with all the secondary emotions. And then there's the behaviors. There's the different behaviors each of us has that in some way, way are being driven by fear, that we get really busy, and it's very, very hard to stop being busy. We just have to keep moving, keep doing things, keep fixing things, keep trying to prove something of ourselves to the world. We know that excessive consuming comes out of fear. You know, we're trying to self-soothe that way. We know that in some way we need fear to survive, but no matter how much we do in our busyness to try to control our environment, to prove ourselves, to not fail,

it doesn't satisfy the basic concern of our fear. So then we have to say, well, what are we really afraid of? And in the deepest way, we're afraid of loss. We're afraid of losing our sense of who we are, a good sense of who we are, and we're afraid of losing these bodies, and we're afraid of losing other bodies that we love. We're afraid of losing our minds. And those things, no matter how hard we try, we can't control. So this fear keeps on appearing. And so we keep trying to control things.

The controlling does not control the really deep things. aging, sickness, and death. And what it does do is it keeps us from living our life in the moment. So we lose the life of the moment in our effort to control the future we can't control. We can see it. I sometimes think about this in a kind of silly way

about when we're on the airlines and we're getting the safety announcements. I mean, certainly every now and then the safety cushions and other things could be helpful. but I mean, you know, in most plane crashes, who knows. But anyway, somebody sent these to me, and I thought they were good. These are airline attendants making some of the flight safety lectures a little more interesting.

I thought I'd read you a couple. Your seat cushions can be used for flotation. And in the event of an emergency water landing, please, take them with our compliments. These are real announcements, by the way. weather at our destination is 50 degrees with some broken clouds but they'll try to have them fixed before we arrive thank you and remember nobody loves you or your money more than southwest airlines

part of a flight attendant's announcement arrival she said we'd like to thank you folks for flying with us today and the next time you get the insane urge to go blasting through the skies in a pressurized metal tube we hope you'll think of us here at u.s. airlines after a real crusher of a landing in phoenix the flight attendant came on. Ladies and gentlemen, please remain in your seats until Captain Crash and the crew have brought the airline

to a screeching halt up against the gate. And once the tire smoke is cleared and the warning bills are silenced will open the door and you can pick your way through the wreckage to the terminal. True announcements, I'll just read one more. From Southwest Airlines employee, there may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but they're only four ways out of this airplane.

So what we're most afraid of are the inevitable losses that are out of our hands. William James said that every religion begins with the cry help. That we intuit this existential vulnerability and we feel fear. But then what we do is go beyond what the fear can help us with, go beyond the elements of survival it can address, and get locked in in a chronic way to a life that's squeezed by anxiety. Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow.

It only saps today of its strength. That's a quote. So there's a story I've sometimes shared that the kind of punchline is that one, pilot was able to make it through being this is written by Tom Wolf and the right stuff you know there was for a while they were trying to go way way beyond

the atmosphere and the normal laws of aerodynamics didn't exist out there and so this is in the 1950s and so many pilots lost their lives they try to frantically try to stabilize their planes and apply correction after

correction and the more furious that they manipulated the controls, the wilder the ride became. And they'd be screaming helplessly to ground control, what do I do next? And then they'd be plunging to their death. So this tragic drama kind of repeated itself a number of times until Chuck Yeager inadvertently struck upon a solution. And when his plane was tumbling, the way it was tumbling,

he was thrown violently against the cockpit, knocked out, and unconscious he plummeted towards Earth. And seven miles later, when the plane was tumbling, plane re-entered the planet's denser atmosphere where standard navigation strategies could be implemented, he came to steady the craft and he landed safely. So he discovered the only life-saving response that was possible in this desperate situation. Don't do anything. You take your hands off the controls. This solution, as Wolf puts it, is the only choice you had. You take your hands off the control. And he says it counted all the training and even basic survival

instincts, but it worked. So a couple of comments on this story, because I think it's an important one, that in this story, there are controls. There are standard navigation strategies you can use, but only under certain limited circumstances. So you use them when you can. But at certain places in the atmosphere, way beyond the Earth's atmosphere, in other words, with aging, sickness, and death, and certain basics in our life, we can't control it. And the wisdom is let go.

And if we don't know how to let go, we give up the life of the moment in our mad scramble to take false refuge and try to control things. So meditation training, interestingly, is training both in how to skillfully direct the mind.

In other words, control to a certain degree, and then let go. That's really what it is. If you look closely, the training we do teaches us a certain amount of directing the attention. Okay, scan through the body,

let go of certain parts of the body and the tension, let the breath be an anchor, quiet the mind with the breath. Okay, so far we've been using standard navigation technology. But the real instruction in meditation, just let go. Let the sounds of the cell phones and let the pangs of fear or annoyance or whatever is going on, just let it happen. And your freedom comes not in controlling those things, but in finding a place of peace, of spaciousness and presence in the midst. We're not

free in the moments that we're managing things. We're free when we're living our moments. in a place of spaciousness of presence. Some couple of years ago began to kayak on the Potomac. Got these inflatable kayaks and started playing around and sort of having some interesting experiences. Mostly it's just gentle currents near to where I live, but there's a few areas of narrowing and of boulders and little mini ripples that I pretend are really big deals

and have fun with. But it takes some work to kind of get up the river and sometimes the currents are strong enough that it gets a little bit hairy for me. And one of the things that I learned is that if you need a rest, if things are challenging when you're in the river, you go right in front of the biggest rocks,

and they're the ones that look really scary where the current's rushing all around them. But if you start as if you're going past them and then turn quickly into the boats directly in front of the rock, there's a still spot there. and you can rest. And you can look around and figure

how you're going to get to your next spot on the river. It's a very still, safe little spot. And so one of the kind of principles in kayaking is, you know, you play the currents, you let go into them,

you do your adventure. But if you need to take a break or regain some energy or whatever, go find your way right in front of one of those big rocks. I really like that because that's in a way a lot like meditation

that we find a way to let the breath and other practices be a kind of a calming and a centering and give us some strength. But then the real deal is just let go and be with what's happening. Now to take this analogy with kayaking a little further, I read a story told by Steve Flowers, and it's about what's called a Keepers Hole. It's a deadly current that captures anything that comes into it and circulates it from the bottom of the river to the surface around and around. So if you get caught in a keeper's hole, you'll just keep getting dragged down to the bottom.

And many people drowned in the Potomac in those. One of Steve's friend, a great athlete, got stuck in one. So he kicked out of his kayak and he tried to swim, but the current had his body and it sunk into this hole. And he was becoming hypothermic and exhausted, and he was drowning. So he made one last approach, which was he swam to the surface, took a big gulp of air, and then swam down with the current to its deepest and coldest and darkest place. In other words, it was really scary because he actually let the current and he went with it completely down to the bottom.

And then once he was down at the bottom, he was able to pop up to the side. But he wouldn't have been able to do that unless he let himself be dragged down to the very bottom of the river. So the teaching is that he swam right towards that, which he was most afraid of. Rather than resisting the current, rather than struggling, rather than fighting, he went down right into the hole, and then he found his way to some freedom.

Now, in the same way, when we run from fear, when we use our controlling strategies, when we take our false refuges, when we're fighting fear, in a way it reinforces the sense of, I am a fearful self. In other words, whatever you resist persists, the identity with the fear becomes stronger. So the teaching really is, and this is with pretty much all phenomena, that our freedom, we release that identification.

We come into a sense of wholeness and freedom when we're able to fully be with what's there. Now, I'm going to give a caveat very soon. Well, maybe I'll give it right now, which is that there are times when we absolutely don't have the resilience are the balance to allow ourselves to be fully with fear. There are times when we've been traumatized

and that will just re-traumatize us. And I try to say this every time I talk about fear, that it may be that we're at a phase of our life or in a day or a situation where we really need to spend more time behind the big rock. And the big rock could be meaning spend time with a friend or spend time exercising or take some medication. It could be anything that helps bring us to more balance.

So there's not so machismo thing of. You should always go right down into the keeper's hole. Is that clear? Ultimately, if we don't allow ourselves to open to and have that courage to let go into the current, we don't find any real freedom. But there's very much of a wisdom and a compassion in how we pace ourselves. Now, this is a story of being with fear that really moved me. This is a man who had many spiritual experiences in India in the 60s, and he was determined to get rid of his negative emotions. So he struggled against anger and lust,

and he struggled against laziness and pride, but mostly he wanted to get rid of his fear. So his meditation teacher kept telling him to stop struggling, but he just took that as another way of explaining how to overcome his obstacles. So his teacher sent him off to meditate in a tiny hut in the foot, And this is Pema Trojan now describing what happened. He shut the door and settled down to practice. And when it got dark, he lit three small candles.

Around midnight, he heard a noise in the corner of the room. And in the darkness, he saw a very large snake. It looked to him like a king cobra. It was right in front of him, swang. All night, he stayed totally alert, keeping his eyes on the snake. He was so afraid he couldn't move. then there was just the snake and himself and the fear. Just that, just being there.

Finally, before dawn, the last candle went out, and he began to cry. He cried not in despair, but from tenderness. He felt the longing of all the animals and people in the world. He knew their alienation and their struggle. All his meditation had been, nothing but further separation and struggle. That much intimacy with fear caused,

his dramas to collapse and the world around him finally got through. In the moments when we're struggling, we're keeping out the world. When we're struggling against our fear, when we're trying to numb ourselves, when we're trying to prove ourselves, when we're trying to control our future, we're keeping out the world. We're keeping ourselves from the intimacy that's possible with our beings around us and with our inner life. Now here's the challenge, which is

we are so conditioned to struggle, so conditioned to try to change what's going on, to try to fix it, to try to solve it. It's very, very challenging to take these basic meditation instructions of letting be, just letting be, and practice them. It's very challenging. with one woman

I worked with she was facing fears about her daughter who was really struggling with addiction her daughter sometimes was living on a street she was afraid of disease she was afraid of violence for her daughter and if you're a parent or even if you're not a parent

you know that it's the grip of the kind of biological grip of fear for your loved one is incredibly deep so this woman was very distrable and she had done everything. She had tried to get her daughter into every program, everything. And then she tried meditating with the fear. And she said, I've been trying to lean into it, Tara. And that's an expression we use, leaning into the fear. She said, I'm trying to lean into it,

to feel it fully, to breathe with it. And then she looked at me in kind of this, with this desperation. She said, and it's still here. And so then we explored the fact that she was trying to be with it so it would go away. and that's a realization that's really important to be on the alert for that we very often get to this place where we realize that we're trying to be present so that what we're with will change. Not to get down on yourself for that. As I told her, it is utterly natural to want the fear to go away. All you can do is notice that.

Notice that I'm being present and I want it to go away. and let that be the case. So we started to explore it because there's a kind of understanding that if you're wanting the fear to go away, it knows. So then it resists. So we started practicing together, and I had her get in touch with the fear and ask a question I often ask, which is asking the fear, what is it that you need for me? In other words, how do you want me to be? with you. So she is as if this fear was this part of her that she could communicate with.

She asked that question. And she gave the fear of voice and the response was just accept that I'm here. Just accept that I'm here. Something in her softened by sensing that there was a part of her that wanted to be accepted. Something in her softened. There was just more room to let the fear just be there. So she deepened her attention and noticed the squeeze at the heart, kind of the pressure, the movement of it. And she began to really explore, well, what does it mean to accept? To send some space around the fear. Because that's what happens. In the moments that you begin to say yes, space opens up. The fear doesn't go away, but it's different. It no longer causes suffering if you're not fighting it.

So there's a wonderful verse from Zen Master Ria Khan. He says, to know the Buddhist law, drift east, drift west, entrusting yourself to the waves. And this is what she felt like she was doing. She was in some way entrusting herself to how this emotion wanted to live through her. and for her there was a shift where the more she could the fear wanted her to accept it the more she could in some way accept okay it's here it's here it's like this fear feels like this just letting it be

the more of the waves of fear were still there but she felt her oceanness in other words she was resting in something larger and this is the shift in identity that the Buddha described as the movement towards freedom. That in the moments that we can sense, okay, these waves are here and the what I am is resting in that oceanness. I am that oceanness. I am this awareness that's aware. The fear can still be there, but it doesn't cause us suffering. The phrase I like is that if you trust you're the ocean, you're not afraid of the waves. It's okay.

So if we just go back to that metaphor of letting go of control, taking the hands off the controls, and if we sense it like as with the kayaking, that there are times that you're going to stop behind the big rock, but there are other times that you're really just going to allow the currents to be as they are. It's in those moments that we let be that we start gaining confidence. Every one of us wants to feel some sense of confidence that we can handle what's around the corner. In the Buddhist tradition, there's a phrase called the lion's roar. And it really describes that confidence, that there's something in us that senses, okay, this body is going to age, die, there's going to be loss. and there's room for this, for this living, dying world.

And when there's that confidence, it's better than normal kinds of happiness we grasp after because we're free to live the moments. When there's that confidence, we're not defending against what's next, we're really opening to a mystery that's here. There's thinking of this lion's roar and realizing it's not the best language if you're an antelope that is not a really good metaphor.

But what I really love about it, and it's from the Tibetan tradition, is that it describes what sometimes is the fearless heart. And that's the heart that's as wide as the world that doesn't deny the reality of loss and yet knows that our true home is a timeless love that can't be taken away. So what I'd like to do is end tonight

with a guided meditation that give you an opportunity to pick someplace that you find fears in your life and as you shift around a little, find a way of sitting that's comfortable, know this is going to be a pause and that you don't have to look towards this particular meditation is giving you something. It's a template that you can explore

on your own, at your own pace through your whole life. And I say that because sometimes with guided meditations there's a sense of, well, that just went too fast for me or I couldn't get in touch with anything. You know, I just felt cut off

or a sense of not doing it right. So this is permission to not do it right. And trust that you can use this in your own way. So if you imagine the river and that kind of big rock, you might just sense that you're resting in the still water that's protected by the rock. And you can really take some moments to relax and let yourself arrive right here. The world can be moving around you, but you can find a still place right now, gently feeling the inflow and outflow of the breath. The breath can be

like this current that flows in and out of the empty space of heart, kind of that empty, tender space, so that you're coming home to your own presence, giving yourself that gift of some moments to settle, and just to feel yourself here, relaxing as the breath comes in, relaxing as the breath goes out. So behind the rock, sensing the still place, but knowing that there's some currents in your life that can really bring up fear, some situations, some circumstances. So let yourself be available to whatever wants your attention tonight. It might be a situation going on in a relationship,

some worry you have for somebody else, some fear about your own body or health, about your mental state or emotional state, something that might be coming up that you're really nervous about, where you'll have to show up or perform or get something done in time. In some way, some anticipation of something going wrong. You can begin to notice just the storyline. Always with fear there's some belief that you're going to lose something,

that something's going to fail, that you're going to fail, your body's going to fail, a relationship's going to fail, another person will be hurt. So noticing the story. And then we begin to leave our still place behind the rock and enter the currents by bringing attention to what it brings up in the body. See if you can feel your body, your throat, your chest, your belly, and sense where the fear is living in your body. And for some, you might have to exaggerate the story a little. sense what am I really afraid of. Imagine what's going to go wrong.

But then come to your body. Sense where you feel fear. Is it in the solar plexus, like a tighten knot in the belly? Or squeeze in the heart? Just feel it. Just get to know it a little without adding anything. If it's helpful to breathe with it, keep the attention there. That can be fine.

if you've chosen something that's really scary or feels traumatizing in some way go back to being behind the rock because that's not what you need to be doing but if you feel like you can see how fully you can open to it see how fully you can feel in the body and give it permission to be as much as it is

you don't have to pretend to like it but just allow it so that something in you can say fear feels like this This is just what fears like. Sometimes it's skillful to dip back into the storyline, just to stay connected with that, but then come right back and feel how it is in your body.

Get to know the fear in its physicality. Notice what happens to it when there's no resistance. Can you sense it as waves that have their own life? Sense who you are when you're just allowed, the currents, just feeling them and letting them be. Again, feeling the breath, letting the breath again become a focal point. Gently using the exhale to support the fading

of the fear waves, just breathing out a little. This is a way of coming home right here again to a enlarge and still kind of presence. letting the fear cycle go in a natural way. So you can feel the breath moving as we fore in the empty space of heart. Can you sense that the fear arises out of emptiness and returns to emptiness? That it's an intense appearance yet impermanent? Can you sense that it's not my fear but the fear?

Can you sense the oceanness, the space of awareness? that includes the waves. This is Rumi. Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought. Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear thinking.

Live in silence. Flow down and down and always widening rings of being. In this simple way, we train the heart to open to fear first by resting in a kind of balanced calm place

but then by inviting in the fear so that we can sense it as waves that come and then go and sense the who we are the space of awareness that has room and that way when the next round arises there's some intuitive wisdom that recognizes I know this scenario

don't panic it's intense but it's just fear it's only a feeling so opening your eyes coming back so as I mentioned this is just a template most of the time you're not going to have to go digging for fear it's just to practice that when it comes up on its own pause feel your breath feel yourself here and just open to it as well as possible if it feels like too much go behind the rock take a rest, or in front of the rock actually, take a rest in some way that brings you some peace and then when you feel more resilience, explore this practice of mindfulness with fear. It's a path of freedom. Next week, the talk will be on fear and the three refuges,

looking at the three different ways to presence that can free us with fear. So thank you for your presence tonight, and I hope to see you next week. The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you would like to contact the Insight Meditation Community of Washington to make a donation or to learn more about our programs, please visit our website at www.imcw.org.