You can over­come fear and anx­i­ety

You can’t over­come any­thing un­til you ac­tu­ally look at what it is. You can’t over­come your fear un­til you know what it is you’re afraid of, or why you’re afraid. What most of us are scared of, at the deep­est level, is death, ex­tinc­tion. This is pure Dar­win­ism. Our core in­stinct is to sur­vive. This is true for a mos­quito, an earth­worm, a hu­man be­ing. With most things we are afraid of, let us pic­ture them tak­ing place and ask our­selves, ‘Then what?’ In­vari­ably, our an­swer is, ‘I will die.’

It may not al­ways be about death of the phys­i­cal body. We’re also afraid of things such as hu­mil­i­a­tion. If we in­tro­spect about why we are so afraid of be­ing em­bar­rassed, we learn that be­ing deeply hu­mil­i­ated ac­tu­ally feels like we have ceased to ex­ist. Not on a phys­i­cal level, of course, but on a deep, emo­tional level.

On a psy­cho­log­i­cal, spir­i­tual level, we are con­stantly judg­ing our­selves based on how peo­ple re­spond. We are con­stantly read­just­ing our sense of self based on how peo­ple look at us. Slowly, you re­alise that the ul­ti­mate even­tu­al­ity we are afraid of, through fear of fail­ure or hu­mil­i­a­tion, is: ‘I will dis­solve.’ On a very deep level we be­lieve that if peo­ple don’t love us and ac­knowl­edge us, we don’t ex­ist.

Think about the new-age ‘self­ie’ ob­ses­sion. Psy­cho­log­i­cally, it is fas­ci­nat­ing. We don’t just take pic­tures and keep them. No. We go ahead and post them on so­cial me­dia. If no­body likes or com­ments on the pic­ture, in our heart of hearts, we feel we don’t ex­ist. We keep post­ing to re­mind peo­ple, ‘Hey, i ex­ist.’ The more re­sponses i get, the more i ex­ist; the fewer i get, the less i ex­ist.

This is the root of a lot that ails us. When we talk about over­com­ing fear, we have to first break this myth. Mak­ing a fool of our­selves does not oblit­er­ate our ex­is­tence. We have to de­velop courage to take risks, be­cause our aware­ness of our ex­is­tence is no longer de­pen­dent on how peo­ple look at us or re­spond to us. I have to ground my aware­ness in my Self. I have to know who i am, so that re­gard­less of whether you think i’m the biggest fool who has ever walked the face of the earth or whether you think i’m the great­est per­son you have ever met, it does­n’t change how i feel about my­self. That’s the only way to over­come the fear.

The other side to it is to recog­nise that the great­est tragedy is not fail­ing, but never step­ping up to grab the op­por­tu­ni­ties in your life. The great­est tragedy is look­ing back on your life and know­ing you were afraid you were go­ing to fail and peo­ple would laugh at you. That’s the tragedy, that’s some­thing to be afraid of. We have this in­cred­i­ble gift, this in­cred­i­ble life, all these mo­ments brim­ming with po­ten­tial, and it is tragic if we don’t use them.

A beau­ti­ful line in the prayers that we chant here every morn­ing at Par­marth Nike­tan says, ‘Tu akele nahin pyare, Ram tere sath mein’ – You’re not alone, dear one, God is with you. If we can live know­ing that we’re re­ally in the Moth­er’s arms, that we’re be­ing car­ried by God, if we can al­low that faith to take over, it will re­place the fear in our life.

Source: TOI: The Speaking Tree 30 Nov 2019