Working with fear and fear-based aggression (Part 1)
One of the reasons why habit has such a strong hold on me is a deep, underlying fear. There is a strong, internalized fear that has been part of my experience for years on end. It need not be that fear is always a companion. However, what if it were? Moreover, being very unmindful of habitual fear leads to a bubbling up of panic. This is even more unpleasant than a habitual fear. In this essay and its successor, I am going to discuss different tools that I’ve used to work with my own fear.
Tool #1: Make friends with it
For starters, I find Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s teaching on overcoming panic to be a very effective remedy for fear as well. (If you’re interested in more of his teachings, I highly recommend his book ‘The Joy of Living’). The way Mingyur Rinpoche dealt with his panic was as follows: Allow it to be. Simple. Simply allow it space, and don’t have an idea that it needs to go away. The key here is understanding that neither obeying his panic, nor wanting it to go away, was particularly helpful in his own practice. What was helpful, instead, was actually figuring out a way to simply be mindful in the presence of this panic. Making friends with his panic, this was the way through the panic. Ironically, as he became fully present to this panic, and fully aware of its dimensions and depth, it became clearer that mindfulness was deeper still, and that he had no issues working with it. This was very useful learning for me.
Simply allowing my fear to be, instead of wanting it to go away, or, for that matter, believing that the fear-governed part of my mind was speaking the truth, were both things that I have tried, ad nauseam. Neither worked. What has worked, is actively not believing the fear and challenging thoughts that are based on it, and actively resisting the impulse to get rid of the fear, and being aware of it instead. In other words, the approach advocated by Mingyur Rinpoche appears to be the way to work out this part of the mind.
Tool #2: Re-frame what fear means to you
In the context of working with my own fear, I am also quite fascinated by the ideas expressed in the quotes below:
None of us are immune to fear. Indeed, the Buddha taught that, at the base, all beings experience a state of anxiety, fed by our habit of resisting the impermanence of our existence.
Rev. Zusho Susan O’Connell
Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard says that “worry is a misuse of the imagination.” In his essay on fearlessness he proposes the several ways to constructively use this very same imagination in insightful and adaptive ways: accept the facts with realism; know that we can always do better, that we can limit the damage, find an alternative, and rebuild what has been destroyed; take the current situation as the starting point; know how to rapidly identify the positive in adversity; be free of regret. All of this can be easily discerned against the background of a serene mind.
Rev. Zusho Susan O’Connell
The thing that fascinates me here is when I can find a tool that helps me look beyond a drab, grey, dull world, where all my imagination amounts to naught because of fear. This is not always the way it has been. There is the possibility of enthusiastically and proactively acting, and this is something that I have lost sight of, and would like to master again. A very big part of this is the same sensation of panic/fear that shows up whenever I commute. Matthieu Ricard appears to have the solution in the quoted lines above.
If worry is a misuse of the imagination, then taking this same imagination and using it instead of misusing it, that appears to be the way to make change. However, my question in this regard is simple enough - what is the specific pathway to such change? What is the most effective way to actually make this happen?
Again, I suspect that Matthieu Ricard has the answer. Take the current situation as the starting point, and rapidly find the positive in it, and be free of all regret. This is where energy and action would be much more useful.
Why am I spending so much time accumulating tools to deal with fear? Well, I have an understanding, based on prior experience, that a much more mature reclaiming of internal energy is required. One reason this is important is that a much better quality of life is possible only when one has a much better quality of mind. I have already tasted a much better quality of mind - a mind that is more facile, more clear, more equanimous, more grounded, and more happy. In such a state of mind, fear was seen as being inherently mistaken and untrue. This clear, grounded and positive state of mind has been stated as the default state of mind by some wise people, and there is no reason why through following their injunctions, I cannot do the same. This is perhaps the direction in which I should invest all of my energies, and the reason why I find myself accumulating all these tools.
This brings me to something very useful, from the same article by the Rev. Zusho Susan O’Connell that I’ve quoted earlier in this piece of writing. It is the idea that fear is the starting point of fearlessness. This is such a treasure as ideas go. The idea that fear can be viewed as a doorway into fearlessness is such a powerful one, because the next time fear shows up, if this idea is applied, then the fear loses its sting, so to speak.
