FREEDOM FROM FEAR

The invitation is to become sensitive, to become highly attuned to where the subtle grip of fear takes over, to notice when there is a subtle tightening — either holding on for dear life or pushing life away. In that moment of noticing, you have a choice. It doesn’t matter when you notice, as long as there is a moment of noticing. In this moment, you have choice. It’s a choice that doesn’t come from the mind. It’s a choice that comes from the tenderness of the heart. It’s a turning away from the circumstances of life, and a turning toward your innermost.

Your innermost is the tenderness of the heart, and here the doorway of surrender opens. It’s the surrender of ego-mind’s grip on reality ... and you don’t have to do anything. You cannot do the surrender. The tenderness of the heart doesn’t attempt to do anything with its experience ... it simply is with the experience. It is intimate with the experience, it is close to the experience. And in that intimacy and that closeness, you come closer to yourself. You come closer to your true self, your true self as openness. Your essential nature, in the innermost, is openness.

Everything else — every maneuver that doesn’t bring you closer to your experience, that doesn’t bring you closer to tenderness — is a cover-up. That cover-up is what makes life burden-some, that cover-up is what makes life a struggle, that cover-up is what makes you fearful.

So, how to deal with fear? By noticing the places and the moments in your life when you do not turn toward tenderness.

Don’t look for freedom from fear in transcendence, don’t look for freedom from fear in some myth of spirituality. Don’t run away from fear. Turn toward fear and meet it with tenderness.