Look into the eyes of fear

Welcome, my friends, to Mohanji Speaks. I hope you have enjoyed the previous episodes.
Today, let’s talk about an overwhelming subject, fear. There are various dimensions of fear that we see in our lives and around us.

Have you ever thought about fears objectively? There are numerous types of fears. Some are very paralyzing fears; fear of height, fear of insects, fear of wild animals, and so on; the intensity of each varies. Let’s look at some of the worst fears of our life.

One of the most intense fears of everyone’s existence is death. The fear of death is very common. We will look into how we can counter the fear of death a little later. There are other fears, such as fear of people, fear of talking in public, fear of doing a task, fear of not receiving approval from people, fear of criticism and fear of judgment. We have various types of social fears: How will people look at us. What will they think about us?

I have seen some people who are afraid to say they’re following Mohanji or that they’re connected to me. I have no problem in connecting to anybody, and I have no problem in saying I’m with them because when you decide to do something in life, it is your prerogative. You have full freedom. You have free will. Then there is no way anyone can object. Nobody has the right to point a finger at you, because you chose an experience. Choose an experience. It’s our choice.

We also have the fear of failure and it is so crippling that we don’t even attempt certain things in life. This means we lose the chance for that experience.

We have the fear of losing friendships. So we bend backwards and forwards to accommodate people in our life. (It) means we become unnatural. Still, we accommodate; we try to accommodate people in our life. Sometimes it’s better than some friendships are lost because they are too heavy for us to handle. When I say lost, I do not mean that we convert them to enemies, but to understand that it’s alright to be away from these friendships. It is good to not have toxic friendships, crippling friendships, draining friendships!

We have fear of examinations. The real examination of life is life in itself, every moment; the decisions that we make every moment without knowing what the result will be. These are real examinations in life. We should not be afraid of life. We should embrace life. We should embrace life with Love. This will give us stability.

We are afraid of losing our comfort zones. This is another fear that we entertain. We have certain things which we have obtained in this life and we hate to lose it. We have fear and wonder what will happen if it goes away. But life is about changes. Everything changes. Life changes, situations change. Can we help it? I doubt it. We have to go with the flow. We have to be like water; flow.

Coming back to the first question about death, how do we overcome the fear of death? One word answer is awareness. Whatever is born, will die. Everything that’s born has to die. And at each point in time, we are made aware that everything is temporary. All situations, all emotions, all things around us are temporary. When we close our eyes at night, we don’t have a world around us. It’s gone. When we open our eyes in the morning, there exits the world around us in which we can move and experience things. But they are all temporary. This is a reminder that the world and life are temporary. Everything is temporary. It is a good way to know that we will die someday, and there’s nothing to be afraid of. Everything that is born will die.

If we increase our longevity, increase the lifespan… even if we extend our lifespan, if there is no contentment factor, is it worth it? A real-life, good life is when you are healthy; when you are experiencing life as a healthy person. When you’re unhealthy, when you need help from people, that’s not the right way to live. That’s not a healthy life.
We are afraid of losses; economic losses, monetary losses, loss of friendship, loss of near and dear ones, loss of relationships, various types of losses. Many of us are afraid of them. We are afraid of diseases. We fear them; we fear losing wealth. And we fear society in a certain context. How will society treat us if we don’t have this wealth?

Thus there’re so many dimensions of fear which we entertain each day. People give you fear, such as when relatives say, ‘’Hey, if you lose this job, you’ll have a problem, you won’t be respected in the society.’’ You then cling on to the job. We fear not getting tasks done, so we end up bribing, rather we enter into corruption. There are many things which are controlled by fear.

An important fear is the fear of God. God is Love. Why do we fear God? What’s there to be afraid of God? God means the substratum. Everything sits on Him. The whole universe has come out of this intelligent energy called God. We can give it a form; we can keep it formless. All the forms have come out of God, and all the forms will dissolve into God. And we call it God.

If you’d like to call it energy if you call it Consciousness, there is no problem. It’s all the same. But why do we fear? A particle of God is sitting inside us. We call it a soul. And this is a very important aspect of our existence. If it leaves the body, we call the body a dead body, useless piece of flesh and bones. God is to be loved, respected and appreciated.

Also, we should be grateful to God for creating the universe, the variety of all these experiences, the possibility of experiencing them, and to have a life. This life is given so that we could experience all this. Not that God chose to give life. God is not like a school teacher or a king, sitting high up somewhere, invisible, pointing a finger at things. It’s a substratum where we can create our life; we can create our existence.

That is why when Lord Dattatreya was asked by people who he was, He said, “I am just a worshipper of nature. I’m a connoisseur. I love nature, and my love for nature and wonder for all these creations is my inspiration.” How beautiful!

We also have fear for tomorrow. What will happen tomorrow? Tomorrow happens just like the previous times. Our tomorrow is made based on how we created our life, our patterns, our likes and dislikes, our orientation, and disposition. If you change your disposition, if you change your attitude, if you change your likes and dislikes, tomorrow will be different. So, who’s creating it? We are creating it. Who’s maintaining it? We are maintaining it when we maintain our likes and dislikes when we maintain our orientation, when we maintain our disposition, then the world is the same. But if we decide to change, then the world is different. The world is just a reflection, a projection, of what we are.

Where is the room for fear? In the path of liberation, there is no room for fear. The one thing we need, to overcome all the fears, is our ability to look into the eyes of fears and tell them, “I’m not afraid. Come on. Bring it on. No problem!” Secondly, we need awareness; awareness is key. When you have awareness, you have no fear. Faith is the third aspect. These are not in hierarchical order, not one above the other; all of them are important to control or to contain fear. To explain faith, the primary faith is faith in yourself, then faith in the Universe and also acceptance is another aspect. Acceptance is when you say, ‘’Okay, I have fear, but I’m not bound by fear.’’ Fear is sometimes acquired. People gave it to you. Understand and let it be, no problem. All these aspects can help you counter your fears.

Look at us now; take a look at society. Society sometimes sells fears. We have feature films, horror films. This is selling fear, and why do they do that? There is an element of entertainment and satisfaction in these fears. That aspect is sold. We can very well be away from it. It is our choice; to be afraid and be happy, or stay away from all this nonsense and be peaceful. This is our choice. I’m not against horror films, but I don’t watch them. I’m not interested.

Here is another aspect I would like to bring up; a young boy told Caesar (I think it was Octavius Caesar or maybe it was Augustus Caesar), ‘’My Lord, the people love you.’’ The king replied, ‘’No, they fear me. This is better.’’ Fear is used by political leaders, religious, spiritual leaders to control people. Fear is the weapon there. Fear is a very powerful weapon because it cripples you and that’s used to control people. It is a very negative way of handling situations. I always believe love is much more powerful and is much better in handling issues.

There is a disadvantage though in that if people cannot handle love, they can go against you. Some people prefer fear to love based on their orientation and disposition. This is utilized by political leaders, spiritual leaders and rulers to control people, which is a negative way of handling things. That’s not correct. But society uses fears; so does the government, to control people. Fear of retribution and fear of punishments are very crippling. People obey because of these fears. Fears have varied dimensions. Let us cultivate love. We don’t need fear. We should not fear, we should love. This life is a beautiful garden. We should swap all of our fears with Love. We can love God, we can love Gurus, we can love Masters, we can love friends, family, society, nature, and we can love everything. You can then get it back.

What you sow, you reap. So, you give love and you take love. Whenever somebody tries to control you with fear, go away from them, because you don’t need it. If somebody or something or a situation or infrastructure or machinery (such as the government), tries to control you with fear, try to step out of that and go away or through your love, transform them. Through love, you can transform others. Everything can be transformed with Love.

Today, we have extended the speech for some time. I spoke a little bit more because the subject is deep and very important. I would like to leave you with these thoughts. We can talk more about fears, later. But these thoughts should be pondered upon. I would like you to do something to get out of all your fears. You don’t need fears. You should be fearless. Then you are liberated. Freedom from fears is also liberation. And that leads to complete liberation. Love, that’s all you need.

Lots of love.

This is Mohanji.

Transcribed by Maja Otovich

Proofread by Vidya Rajagopalan

Subscribe to Mohanji Speaks daily podcast