Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through The Storm

If we have a peaceful moment, a moment of meditation, we can call it up again. “My dear fear, come up here so I can embrace you for a while. It is my nature to die; I cannot escape death.”

We should live every day like people who have just been rescued from dying on the moon.

If you are truly present and know how to take care of the present moment as best you can, you are doing your best for the future already.

The only way to ease our fear and be truly happy is to acknowledge our fear and look deeply at its source. Instead of trying to escape from our fear, we can invite it up to our awareness and look at it clearly and deeply.

Mindfulness is the opposite of this tendency. We must invite these things up into our mind consciousness every day and tell them, “My dear, I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of my fear. It is my nature to grow old; I cannot escape old age.”

If we can model the ability to embody nonfear and nonattachment, it is more precious than any money or material wealth.

In every one of us there is a very safe island we can go to. Every time you go home to that island with mindful breathing, you create a space of relaxation, concentration, and insight. If you dwell on that island in yourself with your mindful breathing, you are safe. That is a place where you can take refuge whenever you feel fearful, uncertain, or

When you are carried away by anxiety and fear, you are like a queen or king deposed. The practice here is to regain your sovereignty.

If you are locked into the idea of a separate self, you have great fear. But if you look deeply and are capable of seeing “you” everywhere, you lose that fear.

When we recognize that we have a habit of replaying old events and reacting to new events as if they were the old ones, we can begin to notice when that habit energy comes up. We can then gently remind ourselves that we have another choice. We can look at the moment as it is, a fresh moment, and leave the past for a time when we can look at it comp