r/streamentry • u/mirrorvoid • Jan 26 '18
practice Working With Fear
Many participants and newcomers here report experiencing feelings of fear in relation to practice, or in relation to other life experiences that entail seeing beneath the surfaces of things. It's natural, and very common, for fear to arise at times: the path entails a deconstruction of views and perceptions of the nature of self and reality that we've held on to unconsciously and taken for granted for most of our lives. This deconstructive process can temporarily leave the mind feeling adrift and vulnerable, as if foundations are slipping away, leaving no safe place to stand.
The arising of fear doesn't have to be a problem. But because it's common to run into it at certain stages of practice and insight, and because it can sometimes be intense, it's important to be prepared. Being prepared is easy: we just need to know that we can expect fear to come calling at times and that this is natural, and to have a few techniques in our toolbox for working with it skillfully.
- Working With Fear [00:00:00 - 00:15:00] (MP3)
The first 15 minutes of this talk beautifully and succinctly cover how to understand and work with fear in practice. (The full talk is called Impermanence, Love, Emptiness and is a Q&A session that's part of the Metta and Emptiness retreat series.)
Most meditation communities do a surprisingly poor and inconsistent job at preparing practitioners for encountering fear. Given how common an occurrence it is and how easy it is to prepare for it, there's no excuse for this failure of instruction. We can do better.
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u/Fluffy_ribbit Everything is the breath Jan 26 '18
Haven't listened to the mp3 yet, but what's helped me when I was have feelings of fear during meditation is to shift into metta, but to direct the feelings of loving-kindness to the fear itself.
Thanks for this resource. I'll go listen to it now.
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u/MindLikeFireUnbound Jan 27 '18
Just generating metta alone seems to make it so that you can't experience any fear at all in my case. They are opposite emotions after all. Same as metta and ill will. Fear and ill will arise from the same cause if you think about it. As a matter of fact all unskillful emotions are born out of ignorance in the end. Wrong understanding. With metta you're purifying the heart to perceive more the Unity which is already there. Emptiness is pure love and pure potential.
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u/Fluffy_ribbit Everything is the breath Jan 27 '18
Isn't fear a natural emotion like any other? Isn't fear situationally useful, just like any other emotion? I remember a post here that was talking about how all emotions have compassion in them. It seems like personal, existential fear is partly compassion for yourself and your own safety. I think pushing too hard against fear has the potential to be humanity denying if we think eliminating fear is a goal of our practice.
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u/MindLikeFireUnbound Jan 27 '18
Fear arises when we see things from a wrong perspective of separateness. It is born out of delusion. Once we're firmly established in Nibbana and we see things as they really are, there is no more fear. In other words an Arahant is naturally incapable of experiencing fear. It knows however not to throw himself off a cliff or to wrestle with a wild animal because fear just isn't needed for protecting the body/mind complex, only common sense. Eliminating fear is not something you intentionally try to do, in the sense of forcing things, non-acceptance of present condition, denial of your current state, etc. Fear disappears automatically by itself when you attain Arahantship (Sainthood, Self-Realization, etc.) because there is no more identification with the body-mind complex, and thus no feeling of separateness from existence itself. You can be very careful, watch out for danger and protect this body (or others) without feeling any sense of fear whatsoever, just using your natural wisdom and intuition both of which will be infinitely sharper once you're truly Awake.
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u/shargrol Jan 28 '18
That's some good guidance. Some key points:
- Acknowledging the fear.
- Acknowledging that aversion of fear (fear of fear) can make it worse.
- Maintaining a sense of controlling the pace of exploration of fear. Opening eyes, walking, putting it aside when it feels like too much.
- Holding the fear in a bigger mental space.
- Noticing that other sensations exist besides the fear sensations, seeing the complexity of the experience not just the fear.
- Understanding the "free-fall" or "ungrounded" sense of fear doesn't need to be interpreted as fear also feels like freedom.
- But mostly take time and explore it with manageable doses.
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u/5adja5b Jan 26 '18
A couple of people here, myself included, have suggested these sorts of guides be included as part of /r/streamentry officially - for instance in the sidebar alongside the other resources. As you say, tough times are a part of the path for most of us and at the same time it is often the area that gets overlooked when talking about meditation.
Meditating in Safety is a good initiative (albeit extremely barebones right now) that is connecting mental health and meditation and I think more can be done in this direction. I appreciate fear is not necessarily a specific mental health issue but it is part of the theme that has come up recently.