How Can I Overcome My Fear?

Fear is the scourge of humanity. Fear of everything and everybody, Fear of me, fear of you, fear of losing, fear of failing, fear of making mistakes, fear of dying. And what does this mean? You can always only be afraid of what you have split off from yourself, what you have given away. Everything which you no longer recognize as yourself, instigates fear. The resistance to really touch fear owes to the thousands of years old conditioning of having to survive. For, to go into fear always means to go into death. And as long as you run away from fear, you also run away from death. And so long you do so, the secret of life will remain hidden for you.

You cannot overcome what you don't really know. You don't know what fear is. You only know your ideas of fear, the fear of fear. And this fear of fear has you firmly under control. It inhibits you, stops you, limits you, narrows you and persuades you to live a life that is a succession of distractions. These seem to be the effects of fear. In reality, however, these are not the effects of fear, but the effects of your attitude towards fear.

Fear - seemingly - is a disagreeable guy. I really have never heard about somebody having a conscious preference for fear. But it is not fear, as little as any other force in you, which is the true problem. It is your relationship with fear, your attitude towards fear. When you find out that you keep fear at a distance through your attitude towards it, then this is the first step. The second step is to give up this distance. Realization always happens the moment you give up the distance created solely by thought. And then what you have artificially kept at a distance, through likes or dislikes, comes very, very close to you. So close that one can't even speak of having a relationship with it at all. As long as you have a relationship with fear, you can't recognize it. And so long you can't recognize it, freedom is not your experience.

You have to give up your attitude of distance towards fear. Then, when fear comes very, very close to you, let yourself fall into naked fear. This naked fear is liberated from all the dust whirled up and clouding the fear with frightening imaginations, survival concepts and other ideas. And you meet the core of this fear. And then, fear is exactly where you are. And when you are exactly where fear is - then you will feel hot. Naked fear heats what has become cold in you, so that it can burn away in this heat.

Feel the fear. This is the path. Instead of distancing yourself from it, be with the fear itself. Then you are not afraid any more. Then you are fear. And when you are fear, there is no fear any more. Just energy. Pure life energy.
onceptions of what it means to be loving. This is acquired love of which you have been taught by your parents, by priests, by teachers, from the past, from history.