The moment you decide to encounter your fears is the moment suffering evaporates and real life unfolds. Fear prevents us from experiencing reality. It offers us alternatives. When we fear experiencing love, we invent a parallel and delusional life. We write movie scripts about love and we write novels about love but sometimes you get the hunch that something is missing. What is missing is the actual experience of love: that is the real thing. The fear stands between you and reality. Fear is the enemy that got to be kept close in order to be understood.
Fear lurks behind our colorful behavior. Being tense in a relationship keeps you away from expressing your sincere feelings. Tension and anxiety take you away from the present moment and keeps you prisoned in your head. But the root cause is fear. By looking closely at this hidden enemy you will find that it is a parasite that has fed upon our deep-rooted beliefs. Those beliefs have been formed in the early years of our childhood where we were totally innocent and receptive.
Keeping that enemy of fear as close as possible is the only way to control it. First, accept your fears. Denying your fears will make you running away from it and in consequence you will be continually defeated by it. Secondly, go deep into your fears and try to understand them. This silent monster needs to be encountered and penetrated with absolute discernment. You need to fast backward and reflect on your past experiences that fed this monster with doubts, insecurities and vulnerabilities.
Our courageous guest who mastered his fears is the renowned movie director Martin Scorsese. The traumatic experience he ran through in his childhood has held him back from being a great artist. At the age of ten, he watched the classic zombie Isle Of The Dead which sent fear down to his spine. Martin recounts that the scene that scared him was about a woman who has been buried alive, arises from the grave and goes to take revenge. Young Martin was scared to death and ran out of the theater screaming. That fear haunted him until he finally faced it.
Realizing that fear is an intrinsic emotion that needs to be understood, Martin used fear as a springboard for his works. He conquered his fears through his thriller Shutter Island. It’s a horror film where fears and unspeakable terrors seem to appear around every corner. He decides to look at his childhood limiting fears in the face and eliminate them once and for all.
Related: You are a True Masterpiece in the Making
To live a blissful life, your fears must be faced. Denying or running away from them will not set you free. Understanding these fears and working on resolving them will lead you towards a real life of fulfillment.
