fear 2

Fear is discussed as a path to freedom, beauty, and joy. It's important to manage, overcome, and even play with fears as they lead to growth. The speaker shares their experience with fears when starting abstract painting, highlighting the role of thoughts from past lives. Understanding that current experiences are influenced by past lives helps in dealing with fears and working with what's in front of us. Fear is seen as an opportunity for growth and self-discovery. Continuing on the idea of fear, and the concept of fear, and the working with fear, one thing that I think is true is that just on the other side of fear is freedom, and sublime beauty, and joy. So many things lie right around the corner from fear. I don't think it would be an overestimation to say that one of the most important things we can do in life is to manage, experience, and overcome, and work with, and transmute, and even play with our fears. Fears are a gift in a way because they're such a clear, direct path to the opposite, to its own opposite. So if there's a fear in your life, wherever you find it, psychologically, out in the world, in your job, in your relationships, wherever there's fear, there's opportunity. And I've really tried in my own life to use fear to achieve growth, and expansion, and I'm still on that path. Starting something new isn't easy, it can be scary. There's doubt, there's imposter syndrome. I started painting a few years ago, abstract painting, and of course I had some fears around that. What if I'm not good enough? What if the art isn't very good? Maybe I'm just fooling myself. Who am I to paint these large canvases? I'm no Rothko, I'm no de Kooning, etc., etc. All these thoughts, thoughts, we have to be mindful of thoughts, and we have to recognize that some thoughts are to be listened to, others we just have to let them go by. We are not our thoughts, they come from many, many lifetimes of experiences that we have had. From my worldview, my soul incarnated into this body in this particular lifetime, with this particular set of circumstances, this particular curriculum. However, my soul has experienced all sorts of different lives, and all sorts of different circumstances over the eons, and over the ages. And so, my karmas and my dharma are a result of so many past lives. I don't need to untangle all of that in this particular lifetime. I think having a framework of understanding that what I'm experiencing in this lifetime isn't just from this lifetime, but it's from others, that's pretty helpful. Because it just level sets things. All I can do is deal with what's in front of me, and work with what's in front of me in this particular lifetime, play the cards that I'm dealt, respect this incarnation, and work with it. So the next time you experience a fear, sit with it, bring it to your place of stillness. Allow it to course through you, through your body, through your emotional mind field. Allow it to course through you. Make an attempt to see it, not as part of you, but as a signpost that you can use, as a guide that you can use to enter into a bit of a darker place, and turn on the lights in that darker place. Fear is an opportunity.