Handling Fear

Ramana Maharshi

oi-Staff

By Staff

Monday, February 23, 2009, 12:51

Sometimes the density of fear related thoughts is so choking that one is rendered helpless by their onslaught. A few illustrations from daily life with its problems would help to highlight the tensions which develop if one is unable to handle the same. A friend used to sit for long hours of meditation. He had included self-enquiry as part of it.

Recently a new management took over the company in which he is working. In their zeal for computerisation of all departments in their office they started retrenching the old hands one by one. The friend however thought that he was safe because he had twenty years experience backing him apart from his capacity for hard work and loyalty to the management. However the axe fell on him also. His meditation time has now become filled with various forms of fear. The moment he sits for meditation/self-enquiry the fear complex bogs him down. Questions like 'Can I get re-employment? Will my daughter's tuition be affected? Can I pay my wife's medical bills? Can I make remittances to my old father?' keep shooting up. These fears have become obsessive and he has begun to doubt even the efficacy of self-enquiry.

In another situation, an irrevocable sad event happened. A heart attack, totally out of the blue, snatched the life of a lovable person. The unbearable sorrow at this unexpected calamity left a deep mark on his wife. Now she is filled with thoughts of her husband in everything she sees in the house, the office chair he used to occupy, the mat in the puja room on which he used to sit and chant the Vedic hymns, the drawing hall where he used to meet the visitors and so on.

The impact of the sorrow is so great that there is fear of having to adjust to a totally different life situation when the husband is no more, when his response of love could not be felt physically. The fear whether she can do her job as before, fear of changes in daily life, have come in their train. She wonders whether self-enquiry can help.

One can safely assert that self-enquiry alone can tackle obsessive thoughts be they related to fear, love, or hate. One might say that it is the only effective weapon for dealing with a mind ridden with the momentum of such thoughts, for dealing with the take over bids by dominant thoughts.

What exactly is the correct practice of self-enquiry in a nutshell? It is the merging of the ego, the mind, in its source resulting in the experiencing of the natural state. When inherent happiness brims forth. The steps are to relate thoughts to their centre, the thinker, and the thinker to his centre the spiritual heart. Let's see how it can work in situations like the ones discussed earlier.

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