What is the absence of fear?
If I act without fear, there is personal responsibility, no self-interest and lack of internal considering.
What is the link between self-interest and fear?
If there is no self-interest and internal considering, I don’t see how I can be afraid.
What came to me is: relaxing and lack of focus on something. Equal attention.
And faith, confidence in life too, isn’t it?
Yes.
If we removed all the others, if one remains one with oneself, is there not another aspect?
There could be fear of death, perhaps. But if I talk about a fear of dying to myself, for example, I bring that to the ego and self-interest.
(To A.) Did you have fears in the recent past?
A : Not often, but occasionally. My financial situation scares me a little.
Is this fear instinctive or emotional?
A : There is an instinctive part, but also scenarios that are emotional and which are not necessary.
There are necessary fears, that are instinctive, and added fears which are psychological. What happens if you take away the second?
A : Nothing would change.
So stop it.
A : Yes.
I don’t agree with nothing changes. For in fact if you stop having unnecessary fears, you will be more open to welcome what’s happening on and to useful information.
A : But there is more uncertainty when runs one’s own business.
Security for employees is an illusion.
It’s the same with health. As a patient, I may fear tomorrow while healthy people may believe they will still live many years, and this is an illusion. In my case, when I don’t let my fears pollute me, I’m clearer and I have more resources.
Can fear and body awareness coexist?
No.
When I’m afraid if I get into body awareness, fear disappears.
I think I don’t know fear anymore. I can have a questioning, but not fear. There are 3 elements that I see in relation to this: 1) complete trust; 2) shared responsibility; 3) mainly be always ready … and I ask myself that question every day: am I ready?
And it seems to me that the fear which was the root of all fears is the fear of void.
Ready for what? To die?
To die or anything. That’s welcoming.
I sometimes feel like I’m already half dead. It is as if I am still tied with a thread, but that I cannot define.
I had an experience like that, during a workshop, where we had to breathe steadily. But I felt the space between the exhalation and inhalation with the impression that I could die conscious.
About the question “always be ready”, I also asked myself whether there was still a remorse and regret.
It joins to the idea of unfinished business. There is a phase where we clean things from the past.
Doing this work on ourselves for years, there is no residue to clean anymore.
Returning back, I realize the undisolvable link between faith in life and uncertainty.
And it refers to “I don’t know” which we have already spoken about. In humility, I don’t know and cannot know. At the same time, there is the ability to reject false certainties and securities that the mind tries to have.
Moreover, producing a negative scenario, thinking the worst, is an illusion and a trap, because it also creates a false certainty.
Yes, it is also imagination. Going back to what we said at the beginning: a balanced man is a man without fear. And I liked the remark that points that the origin of all fear is fear of the void. We welcome the void and therefore, there is no more fear.
I saw how fear made me flee the necessary suffering.
That is the key. Because when you welcome the necessary suffering, it burns fear. Otherwise, fear quickly becomes a pretext not to welcome the necessary suffering.