Transforming Fear

 From Insight Hour Podcast with Joseph Goldstein #143: Transforming Fear

Aversion can manifest in striking out, in grieving loss, and in fear.

The goal of this talk is to "transform feelings from fear to freedom."

He says there's benefit for practitioners to be at the edges, boundaries, limits of fear to investigate.  That's where fear reveals itself.  

Fear can be of pain, of change, of not changing, of discomfort, and emotional pain.

He wonders to what extent is comfort the condition for any of our actions?  He asks us to investigate "what initiates movement" throughout the day?  (from avoiding minor pain to going to get food to eat to avoiding conversations) To "avoid unpleasantness."  He advises us to try not to move at all for a time.  To investigate "what are the causes of movement"

Fear often is "contracting" physically (or emotionally); self-pity

There's a Pali word that's often translated as "selflessness" which is also translated as "understanding that things are ungovernable.. things have their own laws".... it's not as I wish... things react to conditions (ungovernableness of things)

He talks about fear of emotions... "touching the shadow side of ourselves"... this is when emotions we have are not acceptable to ourselves and we don't even recognize that.  These are emotions that makes us feel unworthy, jealous, abandoned, failures

We create a personae to show the world in order to get validation of a thing that we are not

Imagine that big emotions are like kids in Halloween costumes.  You're not really scared of them.

as we open, we see the insubstantial nature of phenomenon.

There is no security -- all is arising and dissolving; in flow; 

We all have strategies for "fixing" or "holding" or "keeping" a moment

We don't have to push the river.

"Let it go" is almost too active.  Better is "let it flow" let it follow its own nature

Story from Carlos Castenada book.  when we are stressed, we might respond with wrath or self-pity.  We train ourselves unconsciously to do this.  After struggle, we have learned to feel sorry for ourselves.  And one feature of this thing is that it's ready to advise us in our times of stress.  Death, though, is a better advisor.  We can learn to feel our impending death.  Let each act be your last battle on earthy.  You'll find a strange consuming happiness with this attitude.

Goldstein says that we should pay attention throughout the day for moments that we are free of desires, when we are not clinging.  Our mind is cooled from the fire of wanting.  We have direct experience of teh absence of fear.  the more we recognize it, the more we have access to it.

The steps: be mindful of the fear, accept it (it's OK, the fear is here, it's OK), then let it pass.  Courage is not the absence of fear.