All of us have our own share of fears. Fear of falling ill, fear of failure, fear of losing relationships, fear of being insulted, fear of losing property, fear of accident, fear of death, fear of being called a bad man or woman, and so on. Basically, all the fears are about the apprehension of losing something. Losing good health, relationships, property, or social image. The more tightly we hold on to the thing we like and the greater will be the fear.
We can see with experience that it does not matter how many of these things we have. What matters is how tightly we hold on to the same. For example, a relatively healthy person may be far more afraid of falling ill as compared to a relatively unhealthy person. A person having great respect in society may be more afraid to lose the same as compared to a person who does not have that much respect. Somebody may argue that if somebody does not have something in the first instance, how will they have the fear of losing that? That's correct. But it is also equally correct that a person may not hold on to something even if he has an abundance thereof. For example, a completely healthy person may not be afraid of falling ill. A well-reputed person may not be afraid of being criticised. We see examples of many people in this world who never cared for the response by society while speaking the truth.
It is all about what we hold on to. How do we identify ourselves? We can do a short test. We can close our eyes and ask ourselves, "How would I like to be introduced, if I go to attend a social function as a chief guest?" I may like to be introduced as Vipul Agarwal, where Vipul is my first name, and Agarwal represents the community to which I belong. I may like to be introduced as a CA. That means my qualification gives me an identity. I may like to be introduced as IRS, which means that the service gives me an identity. I may like an introduction to my family because it gives me a sense of identity. I may also like a mention of my past assignments, or my contribution to society. What are all these introductions doing to us? They make us unique. But every unique thing has to stand on its own and also maintain its uniqueness. That brings fear. Whether I will be able to keep that uniqueness. The youngsters may have numerous dreams around their education, job, relationships, and social image, and they feel afraid of these dreams getting shattered.
Can we see the reasons for our fears clearly? It is because of strong identification with either what we have or our dreams about some achievement or outcome. Some of these things are tangible, while others are intangible. One of the most prominent intangible identifications is identification with the self-image. Self-image of being good, being responsible, being helpful, and so on. Maintaining this image makes us unique. We are made to sit on a higher pedestal in society. Our voice has weight. People listen carefully. We feel important. We develop a great taste for that "special treatment". That's why we develop an inherent fear of losing that image.
The fear of losing something we have is easy to work on. We have a fear of losing a job, and we can develop more competence, or work harder, or gather more qualifications or change that. We have a fear of losing health, so we may go to a naturopath and start practising yoga and pranayama. It will recover. We have a fear of losing a relationship, which is easy to work with. We have to just make the relationship the focus of our lives and drop conflicting identifications, and it will work. However, when we identify with intangibles, it is more difficult to address that. Fear of not being able to fulfil a dream of becoming an IAS. Fear of being insulted. Fear of being called irresponsible. We are trying to protect an image that is our own creation. There is nothing real. No effort can make us responsible in the eyes of the whole world. Even Buddha may be irresponsible in the eyes of his wife and son.
There are two crucial elements of fear. First, what do we identify with? Second, how strongly do we identify with? What we identify with may be real or may be just a mental story. Mental story may be quite far from reality. Somebody may dream of travelling in time with a time machine. Somebody may have dreamed of meeting dead parents. We just need to take stock of our mental stories and align them with reality to the extent possible. That will take a lot of fear away. For example, the moment I realised that I can't be responsible in the eyes of everybody, I was able to say "No" to many things that created so much stress in my life. Regarding the second thing, as to how strongly we identify, it all depends upon our wider understanding of life. We have very strong identification with our toys in our childhood because we had not seen the world. What if we see our journey across lives, taking birth and dying? How will we introduce ourselves then? Will it remain the same? No, it will change significantly, and so will our fears. Once we zoom out and see the Earth from a distance, we can no longer identify that strongly with the flat we live in. The understanding and awareness of the larger frame of life breaks us free of the identification with the narrow frame we are living in.
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