We are living in a world where anything is possible. A very close relative can kill their relative for wealth, an earthquake can eradicate an entire city, or a deadly disease can kill thousands of people. Day in and out we hear these kind of horrific real stories, and it makes us very anxious about our families future. The future is indeed unknown and unpredictable. By creating fear we make the unknown and unpredictable future a little known by predicting something bad will happen. It is important to check how many of our predictions actually come true, and do they help in preventing the mishaps from happening ?

I thought I was overall a fearless person, very bold and courageous. I was shocked to find out through meditation that I possessed countless fears within. I also understood that timidness was taking away a lot of my energy and confidence. My aim is to fearlessly and enthusiastically breeze through every storm of life. It has been a very interesting and accomplishing journey so far. The goal is huge, journey is tough at times, but my motivation to achieve the goal is unshakable due to the knowledge received at Brahma Kumaris. It has developed an unwavering faith in me that I (with all humility) can be completely fearless.

What is fear?

The emotion of fear gets created through fearful thoughts. A bunch of negative thoughts that something bad will happen in the future makes us fearful.

Does being fearful help or cause damage?

Many habits become part of our life due to lack of deeper investigation on the harm they are causing. We easily adopt habits that are being practiced by many people as we think they are normal and needed. Below are a few of the detrimental effects of fear:

• It causes the mind to accelerate in creating gazillion thoughts which results in loss of focus. It causes complete exhaustion and hopelessness in us.
• Our intellect is analyzing hundreds of options and cannot make any decisions. If a situation is bad, we need to make the right decision to move forward and figure out a solution. Fear prevents us from making a decision, or if it does the decision is short sighted and delayed.
• It prevents us from thinking creatively, innovatively, or taking risks. We tend to compromise and take an easy route that causes bigger problems in the future.
• Fear negatively impacts every cell of our body, heart does not receive enough blood, and many cells are deprived of oxygen due to tampered breathing.
• Efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of work drops significantly. 
• Our spirit, the soul, loses power every time it creates fear. This emotion is an indication that self cannot handle life and this realization causes the self to lose its courage, will power, confidence, and enthusiasm. 
• A person that is fearful tends to instill the habit of fear in others knowingly or unknowingly. Kids at a very young age are fearful without even experiencing anything in life.

Isn’t living in fear like inviting trouble to our lives?

Fear is a bunch of negative thoughts that we create about our and our close ones future. Every thought is an energy that we send to the universe. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In essence, unknowingly we are invoking/inviting negative energy to our lives by creating fear. If we truly love ourselves and our close ones, why would we predict or invoke bad to happen. It is our ignorance that unknowingly we invite trouble to our family’s life. By creating fear are we cursing or blessing ourselves and our family?

What is the root cause of fear?

The reality of the world is that everything around us, including our body is perishable, constantly changing, and out of our control. Our relationships, finances, job, and everything around us is constantly fluctuating and beyond our control. Fear develops automatically when we make transient, perishable, and out of our control things as the basis of our happiness. We all know the reality of this world, yet that reality is not in our awareness, and hence we get attached to these things. We create thoughts that we can be happy only when everything around me stays the same forever. Is it really possible?

What are the resources needed to overcome fear?

Root cause of fear is living in falsehood, and basing our happiness on things that are transient in nature. As we accept the reality by detaching ourselves from day-to-day lives, tolerance power develops. Patience is another virtue that comes in extremely handy to deal with a fluctuating world. We have to keep reminding ourselves, nothing stays the same forever. The bad days will also go, we just need to maintain our patience. 

Following thoughts focussed on reality of this world, help in developing tolerance power:

• Every person in this world, rich or poor, infant or old, has problems in their life.
• Acknowledge all the good that has happened in life and see how many people in this world don’t even have basic necessities of life
• Crisis is the best time for us to grow and make improvements in our skillset. Let us wait and watch the lesson life is going to teach us this time.
• Everything in this world is for us to enjoy, but nothing is ours forever.

What is the antidote to fear?

We need courage and hope to deal with tough situations that comes in every person’s life. Fear takes that away, so then is it harder or easier to come out of crisis? Fear is making the unknown future known by predicting bad will happen. The other option is to create faith in the self, destiny, goodness, and God. Faith that we can take care of ourselves creates positive energy within us. This automatically invokes positive energy from the universe, and we start receiving the courage and enthusiasm that is needed to deal with challenges. Faith is a way of blessing ourselves and our dear ones. We take lots of effort and money to visit places just to get someone’s blessings. How long can the effect of such a blessing last or be felt? We have the ability to bless ourselves, our life, and our dear ones every moment by creating faith. How powerful is that? I have experimented with this method multiple times and only seen success. Sometimes I am in awe with this technique because I have seen impossible become possible.

Ego causes us to not maintain faith in the self. We either have an inferiority complex that we aren’t good enough, or a superiority complex that nobody can be better than us. Both the images of the self are false (ego), and it causes us to be fearful. The reality is that we are all originally pure, peaceful, and perfect beings. It is over the journey of life that we have lost our beauty and become little weak. When we maintain faith in our higher perfect self, slowly fear vanishes and our present image moves closer to the original perfect one. A person who wants to learn, grow, and improve will not be fearful of anything. It is ego that says we are already the best and shouldn’t have to learn anything. Is there any point of living if we are not growing? If we are already fully perfect, then shouldn’t we be helping others in this world in becoming perfect images like us?

© 2019, BK Meghana (Milpitas)