silence shared in words
presents
How Best to Deal with Fear?
How best to deal with fear?
It affects me variously...from a vague uneasiness or knotted stomach
to a dizzying panic,
as if the world is ending.
Where does it come from?
Where does it go?
All your fears
are by-products of identification.
You love
a woman
and with the
love,
in the same parcel
comes fear:
she may leave you
she has already left somebody and come with you.
There is a precedent;
perhaps she will do the same to you.
There is fear,
you feel knots in the stomach.
You are too much attached.
You cannot get
a simple fact:
you have come alone in the world;
you have been here yesterday also, without this woman,
perfectly well, without any knots
in the stomach.
And tomorrow if this woman goes...
what is the need of the knots?
You know how to be without her
and you will be able to be without her.
The fear
that things may change tomorrow....
Somebody may die,
you may go bankrupt,
your
job
may be taken away.
There are a thousand and one things
which may change.
You are burdened with fears and fears,
and none of them are valid
because yesterday also you were full of all these fears,
unnecessarily.
Things may have changed,
but you are still alive.
And man has an immense capacity
to adjust himself
to any situation.
They say that only man and cockroaches
have this immense capacity
of adjustment.
That's why wherever
you find man you will find cockroaches,
and wherever you find cockroaches you will find man.
They go together,
they have a similarity.
Even
in faraway places like
the North Pole or the South Pole...
when man traveled to those places
he suddenly found that he had brought cockroaches with him,
and they were perfectly
healthy and living and
reproducing.
If you just look around the earth
you can see man lives
in thousands of different climates,
geographical situations,
political situations,
sociological situations,
religious situations,
but he manages to live.
And he has lived
for centuries...
things go on changing,
he goes on adjusting himself.
There is nothing to fear.
Even if the world ends, so what? You will be ending with it.
Do you think you will be standing
on an island and the whole world will end,
leaving you
alone?
Don't be worried. At least you will have a few cockroaches with you!
What is the problem if the world ends?
It has been asked of me many times.
But what is the problem? -- if it ends, it ends.
It does not create any problem because we will not be here;
we will be ending with it,
and there will be no one to worry about....
It will be really
the greatest freedom
from fear.
The world ending means
every problem ending,
every disturbance ending,
every knot in your stomach ending.
I don't see the problem.
But I know that
everybody is full of fear.
But the question is the same: the fear is part of the mind.
The mind is a coward,
and has to be a coward
because it
doesn't have any substance
it is empty and hollow,
and it is afraid of everything.
And basically it is afraid
that one day you may become aware.
That will really be the end of the world!
Not the end of the world,
but your becoming aware,
your
coming to a state of meditation
where mind has to disappear
that is its basic fear.
Because of that fear, it keeps people away from meditation,
makes them enemies
of people like me
who are trying to spread something of meditation,
some way of awareness and witnessing.
They become antagonistic to me
not without any reason;
their fear is well-founded.
They may not be aware of it,
but their mind
is
really afraid
to come close to anything
that can create more awareness.
That will be the
beginning of the end of the mind.
That will be the death of the mind.
But for you there is no fear.
The death of the mind will be your
rebirth,
your real beginning to live.
You should be happy,
you should rejoice in the death of the mind,
because nothing can be a greater freedom.
Nothing else can give you wings to fly
into the sky;
nothing else can make the whole sky yours.
Mind is a prison.
Awareness
is getting out of the prison
or realizing it has never been in the prison;
it was just thinking
that it was in the prison.
All fears disappear.
I am also living in the same world,
but I have never
for a single moment felt any fear
because nothing can be taken away from me.
I can be killed
but I will be seeing it happening,
so what is being killed is not me,
is not my awareness.
The greatest discovery in life,
the most precious
treasure,
is of awareness.
Without it you are bound to be in darkness,
full of fears.
And you will go on creating new fears
there is no end to it.
You will live in fear, you will die in fear,
and you will never be able to taste
something of freedom.
It was all the time your potential;
any moment you could have claimed it,
but you never claimed it.
It is your responsibility.
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