One Minute Mindfulness: How To Start Befriending Our Fear

In this teaching, Geoff Bell-Devaney talks about the importance of turning towards our fear and making peace with it. He explains how we can do this by being accepting of this painful emotion and gentle with ourselves when we experience it.

Transcript

We have to start befriending our fear,

Because it's not going anywhere.

Fear is an inherently natural part of the human experience,

Yet we so often,

When it arises because it sucks,

It's uncomfortable,

We tend to want to cover it up.

We run to the cookie jar,

Or the bottle of wine,

Or busying ourselves,

Or scrolling on our phones.

Yet when we do that,

We are really saying no to life,

Because these emotions are part of life.

Rather than doing that,

We have to befriend them,

We have to turn to them courageously and compassionately and say,

I see you,

And I welcome you in.

And then we have to stay open and feel the energy of them,

And as we do that,

They'll start to integrate,

And we'll start to reclaim all the power that was lost by resisting them,

By resisting life,

And then we'll live much more in the present moment in a state of peace and true power.