By Laura

Fear is a powerful emotion. It often works in our unconscious. It has an affect on many of our actions.

How can we better understand fear?

A useful way to think about fear is to think of two different types of fear. There is delusional fear, such as fear of death, terrorists or spiders and there is a useful fear, like the fear recovering alcoholics have of drinking. Useful fear can be seen in a positive light, the alcoholic's fear may help them stop drinking because they know about the dangerous health affects alcoholism can have.

Many of our delusional fears arise from our inaccurate ways of looking at our world and our selves. We may convince our selves that we can control our loved one, keep ourselves safe from burglars or never fail or be rejected again. These fears can be alleviated, understood and controlled through meditation and mindfulness practice. Eventually, both delusional and useful fear will be eliminated (when we become enlightened Buddhas!).

In our present life, now, our useful fear can help us look at our current situation and do something about it. The alcoholic can see that uncontrolled drinking will cause his liver to burst and his death. The alcoholic's fear of this can be a motivation for him to begin to learn about the addiction and hopefully rid himself of it. However, if the alcoholic doesn't want to face his destructive habit, he'll cause his own suffering, in the present and future. He'll give up control of his life and live in denial.

Dealing with Fear

A good first step in dealing with all kinds of fear is to notice when it arises. This isn't as easy as it seems, mindfulness practice is a big help. When the fear arises, stop and ask, "What am I afraid of?" Moving fear from the unconscious to the conscious immediately takes away some the power fear has. If you notice when it is arising and why, you can choose other ways to deal with fear. It helps to face fear, than to avoid it. Facing fear takes away it's power as well. It gives you the opportunity to change your reaction, and thoughts when fear arises, you don't have to continue in the habitual patterns you have from your earlier life.

We are vulnerable. There is danger in our world, there is pain, aging, and sickness. We all die. The mental pain, such as aversion, anger or jealousy arise because of our misunderstanding of our mind or our unwillingness to probe deeply into our inner psychic. We can chose to ignore this or we can chose to take action.

Understanding our delusional fear and the suffering that it causes can be helpful because it motivates us to action. Once we have begun our quest for spiritual growth and fulfillment we can rid ourselves of fear. We can use our spiritual training, inner refuge and meditation as means to train the mind, control our fear and understand our psyche. After we've completed this spiritual work, we will be fearless. There is no longer anything that can hurt us.

See our exercise Overcoming Fear.