I have been thinking a great deal about fear lately and it occurs to me that although we are physically in this world, we are often mentally or emotionally trapped in a world of stories. When we get attached to stories in our mind, we can very easily drift away from reality. For me it’s through this drifting that fear surfaces. This seems to happen when my mind keeps building the stories, adding twists, turns and doubts, pulling me further away from reality…. and it seems the further away from reality I get, the stronger my fear grows.
A friend of mind told me that he feels is splintering, unable to maintain his “facade”, and he is now unsure if he is still in love with his fiancée. He says he is spending less time with her and unable to find time to plan for their wedding. In thinking about his situations and actions, I asked him how things would be if he were alone. He had trouble answering and trouble defining what his his fear really is about. It seemed to me he was caught in a circle of fear, worrying, second-guessing and becoming more and more fearful about getting married. Knowing him pretty well and at a bit of a loss I simply said “what you are doing is not how you are, or how you are meant to be and you should focus on your real fear… that she loves you more than you love her, and because you’re trying to keep it all together mentally, you may not be loving her as well as you should.” At first I felt I was grasping in my attempt to help him understand his true fear. Then it hit me… trying to maintain his image of sanity was taking more energy and ability than he had to give, leaving him none to be present. When I explained it to him this way he understood that he was manufacturing much of his fear and decided he just needed to stop his internal storytelling and simply focus on being more present.
Often we simply need to let go of what we are thinking is happening and what we expected to happen. We need to let go of our attachments and be with whatever is actually happening right now, in that moment. In truth, the actual is often better than our stories anyway… and when we let go of our stories, we allow ourselves to become more present and accepting of the actual.
When we become present, without doing or thinking anything, fear simply dissolves. and we can let go of our attachments, then we have no fear at all. In Zen text, it is said that this is Nirvana. Nirvana’s literal meaning is to extinguish… to put out the stories, and be present.
For me sitting meditation is a great tool for dissolving the stories. When we sit quietly and empty our minds leaving the stories behind, we don’t cling to them, nor do we add to them. We keep sitting, keep breathing, and consciously let the stories go… and soon enough the stories run out of energy and fade. Through meditation we can bridge the physical and mental gap and come back to reality, lighter and more alive.
Here is a related post you find interesting… Present Moment
