Hello,
It's Mario here.
Today I'm going to be talking about fear,
Something we all experience,
Whether it's a fear of failure,
The fear of rejection,
Or losing what we love,
Or the most common,
The fear of death.
Yet how often do we actually stop and ask,
What is fear?
We usually try to escape it,
Suppress it,
Or control it,
But do we ever look at it directly?
By the end of this talk,
I hope you'll have a renewed sense of what fear actually is,
And how to meet it differently.
Fear isn't something outside of us,
It's within us.
It arises from thought,
The mind projecting uncertainty,
Remembering pain,
Imagining what might happen.
The mind is caught in this movement of time,
In a web of anticipation and memory,
And so fear takes root.
What happens when we try to overcome fear?
We resist it,
We push it away,
Or try to replace it with courage.
But resistance only strengthens the thing we try to resist.
Fear doesn't disappear,
It lingers in the shadows,
Shaping our actions.
Our choices,
And our relationships.
I want to quickly talk about my own experience with fear,
And how I overcame it.
If you've seen my profile,
You may know that I have hearing loss,
And I'm losing my eyesight due to a condition called Usher syndrome.
I was diagnosed at 16,
And for over a decade,
Fear tormented me.
I was tormented by my own thoughts almost all of the time.
Thoughts such as,
When will I lose my sight completely?
How will I cope?
How am I going to provide for those who depend on me?
And these thoughts were crippling,
And they made me become a passive person,
Unable to truly live because I was so caught up in what might happen in the future.
But there was a turning point,
And one day,
I sat and faced my fear completely.
Completely.
I brought it into my awareness,
Instead of pushing it away.
I allowed myself to go through all of the what-ifs,
And I saw them for what they were,
Thoughts.
I had a profound realization that it's not fear itself that causes suffering,
It's our resistance to it.
Fear operates in the imagination.
It feeds on uncertainty.
But when we face it directly,
It loses its power.
Because when you truly see something as it is,
There are no more what-ifs.
Because you have all the facts,
All the answers.
And when there's clarity,
The right action can take place.
To illustrate my point,
I'm going to share with you a really powerful analogy.
Imagine yourself in a completely dark room,
And suddenly you hear a low,
Menacing growl.
Your mind and your body go into overdrive.
In other words,
Fear arises.
But in this room,
There's a light switch.
And now you have a choice.
Do you leave the light off,
Terrified of what you might see?
Or do you turn it on and meet the source of your fear?
If you turn on the light,
You might see that the growling isn't coming from a monster.
It's just a tiny cat.
But you might also ask,
But what if it's a lion?
What if it's something really dangerous?
Well,
Then at least you know.
By turning on the light,
You have clarity.
And with clarity,
You can take right action.
Which in this case,
Hopefully,
Is running away.
When we face fear fully,
We stop being controlled by imagined threats.
We deal with what is,
Rather than being paralyzed by what if.
So can we look at fear without the urge to escape it?
Not as something to be conquered,
But as something to be understood.
And to do this,
We must be completely present with fear.
Without judgment.
Without labeling it as good or bad.
But by simply watching it,
Feeling it.
Letting it unfold in the mind without trying to run away.
If we can do this,
Something extraordinary happens.
Fear reveals itself for what it truly is.
A movement of thought.
A reaction of the self.
And in that direct seeing,
Fear begins to lose its grip.
Understanding fear is not a technique to master.
It's an inquiry to be lit.
And it starts now.
In this moment.
As we watch our thoughts and our reactions.
Not tomorrow.
Not in theory.
But right now.
So I leave you with a question.
The next time fear arises,
Can you pause?
Can you turn on the light?
Can you meet fear as a friend?
Rather than an enemy?
Thank you for listening.
And if you have any topics you would like me to delve into,
Please don't hesitate to ask.
Have a lovely day.
