Opening to Fear, Opening to Yourself: Together we are facing a global pandemic. It is something none of us has ever faced, something that is truly unknown. Naturally fear arises in uncertainty, fear that can lead to panic. How can we meet this moment with our natural intelligence? With the willingness to investigate, to open to the fear we may be experiencing, we can discover what is at the core of fear, what is at the core of what isn’t wanted or desired. In opening to fear, you open to yourself, you open to “what is in the heart of the heart.” Selected from a live online meeting Gangaji held on March 22, 2020, Gangaji responds to questions about the pandemic and guides us in an inquiry.
“When fear is experienced as energy, as feelings, without a story attached to it, without thoughts defining it, when it is not fought or made war with, what is it? What is it in your experience?”
This month on Being Yourself, we return to the summer of 1993 in Boulder, Colorado. Gangaji speaks about the opportunity to break the trance of fear by directly experiencing fear itself.
“This is a kind of contraction against life. Direct experience is the medicine, the remedy. When you really experience fear, fear is not fear.”
“If your attention is on the story of how you do not deserve what is being offered, this is the continuation of self-denial. There is an open door in this jail, in this prison.”
When we seek freedom on the spiritual path, it is often freedom from our mind or mental activity. In this podcast, we focus how we can lock ourselves up inside a mental prison, not recognizing the door that is always open.
“To play the role of yourself, which is the transcendent role, the role of freedom, you have to trust something unknowable.”
The themes of belonging, freedom from identification, and trusting our direct experience come together in this month’s podcast. This powerful interplay of themes opens the mind to the heart and invites an inquiry: What does it mean to be free? Where do you belong?
