How to Remove Fear From Mind and Heart: Facing the Inner Monsters
Don’t be afraid to sit alone with your thoughts and allow yourself to work through them. What you fear to be unbearable is not so scary. But we must face down the monsters so that we can conquer them. We must shine a light on the dark corners we wish were not there.
Suppression, repression, and distraction are most people’s favorite methods for dealing with stress and worries.
Suppression is when we stuff down our emotions, often with substances.
Repression is when we don’t even consciously know we’re suffering, which lets us look cheery but often leads to physical or mental health problems like chronic pain or bursts of anger.
And distraction is when we will do anything to avoid our unpleasant thoughts and feelings, usually through activities that only end up further harming our mental peace. We can’t undo anxiety if we are anxiously trying to get rid of it, but we can cultivate a more positive mindset. More on how to do that in my latest video.
If we don’t know how to heal, these three methods become natural reactions to the heavy emotions we’re harboring. Subconsciously, we’d rather be angry, in pain, sick or numb instead of feeling sad or facing our fears. Instead of letting a painful past ruin the present, and instead of trying to run away from our inner monsters, let’s unleash the dragon slayer within.
Recommended reading: How to undo societal conditioning
Using Stillness to Remove Fear From Mind and Cultivate Awareness
Use stillness to find, stalk, and conquer your inner demons. Patience and stillness are the mark of any great assassin. Demons lurk in the chaos, they thrive in the darkness, and they feed on our fear. We must shine our light of consciousness on these vampires.
Here’s What I Would You Like to Do:
Do everything you normally do, but give yourself a minute or two of stillness before you do it. Let stillness arise before pulling out your phone, watching a show, going for a drive, starting work, eating food, etc… Check in with the mind and body to make sure there is no stress or tension. If there is any tension, breathe, smile and relax into that area. All fear, stress and tension are created by the mind. Only the mind can heal it.
If you pull out your phone to avoid your emotions, you are not ready to pull out your phone. Everything you do on your phone will be neurotic, dependency-based, and ultimately destructive.
Breaking the Cycle of Emotional Escape and Internal Resistance
Imagine you find out your car is in need of repair. It’s starting to make a weird noise. Instead of having a mechanic fix it, you fill up the gas tank with sand. This is what we are doing when we turn to any escape from ourselves. There is a problem inside us, and instead of seeing what’s wrong, we dump in more junk to clog up the gears.
If we keep dumping sand in our gears to smother our uncomfortable feelings, eventually we are going to break down. We think we are self-soothing, but we are really accumulating and compounding stress, sadness and anger.
The key is to look closer. Stop running away from yourself. Stop fearing discomfort. And stop being controlled by your thoughts and emotions. See exactly what the nature of thought is. See every detail of these fleeting emotions and feelings and how they arise in the body and mind.
When you truly look, you will discover that all experiences are nothing more than little fluxations, pulsations and vibrations within your field of consciousness. With steady awareness, you will notice that they arise atop a sea of calm and stillness. Only by looking will you discover the peace beneath the surface.
Welcoming Discomfort as a Gift
Once you are OK with the discomfort, once you have been able to welcome it completely, without resistance, then go about your day. Enjoy the pleasures of life. For now, they will no longer be a need or a distraction. They will be the play and exploration of this life, free from addictive craving or inner turmoil.
When we can sit with discomfort, everything in life becomes a gift. When we can observe our suffering peacefully, there is no more suffering.
How to Face Your Fears, Trauma and Demons
Building on how we learn to remove fear from the mind and heart, we must ultimately turn around and meet what frightens us head-on.
We always have two choices in life: face or fester. You can either face your fears and overcome them, or you can let them fester underneath the surface.
When fear festers, healing cannot happen. It stays under the surface, subtly affecting our decisions and our mood, until periodically it is triggered and rises to the surface manifesting in a number of different ways. Sometimes it will appear as anger and outbursts. Sometimes it manifests as self-destructive behavior or addiction. Other times it can show itself as anxiety or depression.
If we face our demons, our fears and our trauma, we allow ourselves to heal. It can be scary to look at what scares us. But this is the only way to look fear in the face and tell it to F off.
It’s hard work, but it makes the rest of your life so much easier. I know you can do it.
Recommended reading: How can I find myself through spirituality
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ALONENESS TO ONENESS
A transformative documentary on stepping beyond the ego, shifting from loneliness to aloneness, and recognizing our shared interconnected nature.
“Loneliness is when being alone causes suffering, but aloneness is ultimately recognizing others as yourself—realizing that you are one with everything.”
