Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: We Americans enjoy a wonderful and powerful way of life, but internally and in relationships, we may wish for better.
Join me as we look beneath the surface and gain insights to transform every aspect of your life. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare, and this is the Spiritual American.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Foreign.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare and I'm your host. And today we'll be talking about fear to fearlessness.
As usual, we're going to go a little under the surface. We're going to have some definitions and see if we can come up with some new insights. But before we begin, please consider, like, sharing and subscribing. As you know, this helps us to get this content out to more and more people. And please also consider sharing with your family and friends so that they can benefit as well.
So fear to fearlessness. I think the first thing we need to do is define fear. And this is so weird because as I'm bringing up these topics, we have this, like, ordinary understanding of the topic. So everybody, I know what fear is, right?
I remember hearing a definition of fear, false evidence appearing real.
And you, many of you probably have heard that before. So my question is, since you heard that definition, has knowing that definition made you any less afraid?
I know it didn't make me any less afraid. I thought it was interesting. Ooh, that means that something's false and it's not real and whatever, it made no impact on my experience of fear at all.
So we're going to talk a little bit about how that's probably true. False evidence appearing real is probably true, but maybe we don't have the key to get that to open, the realization that needs to happen in order for the fear to leave.
So I wrote down here, with knowledge, fear cannot exist. So for instance, I, when I was a young person, my. I think my dad once said to me, you're only afraid of things you don't understand.
So let's think about that for just a second.
You're only afraid of things you don't understand.
So let's say I'm afraid of speaking in public.
And the thought of speaking in public really makes me uncomfortable. Or let's say I'm afraid of going to the dentist. Or let's say I'm afraid of whatever, right?
One of the things that people have done for fear like that is to just force themselves to do it. Like, get up there and get over it and whatever.
I heard a story about a famous singer. I'm not going to say who, but really famous and apparently her whole career she would get nervous and throw up before every performance.
Is that really what life has to be like? Do we have to just be afraid, like forever?
Or is it that if I'm afraid of something, I have to force force to get over it or something like that?
Maybe not.
False evidence appearing real, which implies that something true removes the fear from my dad, you're only afraid of things you don't understand. So that's one I wrote down here. Spiritual practice dissolves fear. So the main thing I want to say first of all is that the way we usually think of fear is it's something that's holding me back and I have to like, use courage to get over it or not be afraid or whatever. And it's like this forceful antidote. Have you ever been afraid and, or feel nervous and someone says to you, oh, just stop it. Maybe a parent did that, maybe an impatient friend or a spouse or somebody said, oh, just, just cut it out. Oh, just don't, don't worry, don't worry. Stop, stop being so nervous. When they said stop being nervous or stop it, did it stop?
I'm gonna say no, force does not stop fear.
And I wrote down here too, fighting doesn't stop fear either. So fighting or forcing. So fighting or forcing does not stop fear, but fighting and forcing doesn't stop here.
And I think we think it does. Like, we're so used to fighting in our culture that everything is like a struggle. Or I have to resist or I have to fight, right? But fighting doesn't stop the fear.
Maybe I'm able to get something done, but it doesn't stop the fear. So what stops the fear? So what stops the fear is knowledge and understanding of what.
So I wrote down here, fighting increases the fear. Knowledge and understanding. Self respect dissolves the fear, not courage. So I'm going to give an example. So let's say that I. At work, I'll give a work example. Let's say I used to be very reactive at work. If something were to happen, we have a national group that we talk to and let's say somebody said something and people chime in on the emails, like to respond to what somebody said or start up a discussion on the email. So sometimes somebody will say something in the email and I will get very nervous. Like I'm reacting. I'm going to call that fear because it's discomfort. It's a discomfort inside. And I feel like, oh, I have to, I have to respond, I have to correct, I have to say what the Right. Thing is, and, and then all these justifications come up like, well, yeah, you can say it and you know the answer and maybe they'll listen to you. And then, then I answer and then I'm waiting for people to respond and I'm calling this fear because that whole time that that's going on, I'm in this heightened state of feeling like I need to prove myself. I'm feeling like I want others to respond to me. I feel it's insecure discomfort that's there during that time.
What can stop that from happening? And by the way, I'm going to say that Obsessive compulsive Disorder, OCD is also, that is a, it's a fear based phenomenon that you start getting into a habit of doing something to kind of relieve. In psychology they call that like anxiety relieving behavior, right? You think that it's going to stop your fear, but it doesn't, does it?
What is it that I need to understand in order to stop the fear? So we talk about fearlessness. It's not getting over the fear, it's becoming someone who doesn't have that fear.
There's a difference. Another example is one time someone asked me, how do you quit smoking? Like because I'm a nurse, right? How do you quit smoking? And I said, from my experience, you become someone who doesn't smoke, so you naturally don't smoke. If I'm always fighting smoking or not smoking, I haven't really quit, right? Even until in my mind, if I'm still struggling with smoking or not smoking, I haven't really quit. I haven't really become free of that thing. Same thing with fear.
I may be able to get the behavior right, but internally I could still be very uncomfortable and having all kinds of feelings and fears inside. And I can tell you I'm, I'm the poster child for that.
I could have had everything perfect on the outside, but inside I was nervous, insecure, reacting, everything going on, impatient, worried, everything.
So what is it that we have to learn in order to get over this? So let me go back to that example of the emails. Well, one of the practices in meditation is that you want to be able to feel calm and peaceful and that the impulsiveness is not really peaceful. So if I'm obsessed with who's going to respond to my emails and I'm constantly checking the emails and I'm rereading my emails and maybe a little OCD behavior or whatever, I'm just giving an example from my own life. You can look at your own life. And see, are there things that I do that I have a little bit of fear that it doesn't have to be like a formal fear, like fear of flying or fear of, like I said, speaking in public or something like that. It can just be feeling discomfort. And then I'm trying to do all these things to relieve the fear and it's not relieving it.
So in meditation we say, okay, I'm trying to keep the mind calm. I'm trying to think a little bit less, I'm trying to be like a little less emotional, a little more peaceful inside. Then I'm starting to notice that I'm not peaceful. I'm worried about the emails, I'm back and forth, I'm being impulsive, impulsively doing things and checking things to try to manage this feeling of discomfort inside.
So what is it that I have to learn? Well, I just gave the answer. I'm a peaceful soul.
My nature is peace. As a soul, my mind is calm. So if something's happening when I'm not calm, I begin to understand that that's not right, something's not right. I'm not blaming the circumstances, but if I feel uncomfortable, something's not right. My nature is peace. So what is the knowledge that I need to understand? Well, what I did was I started watching myself and I started asking myself some questions. So rather than forcing myself to try to stop being nervous about it, I started asking myself questions like do you really need to respond?
What are you trying to accomplish?
Are you accomplishing it?
Are you just being impulsive?
And little by little I started to be able to discern now when I really want to respond and when I don't want to respond and the fear went down.
I'm in control now. I'm aware of my feelings, I'm aware of what the kind of thinking was that was making me behave that way.
I hope what I'm saying is making sense.
As I began to meditate and as I began to understand that my nature is peace, my nature is calm, the mind should be calm. Or extra thinking or emotional states are not my original state.
So I understand that then when I'm in an elevated fearful state, there must be something to look at. So I start looking, asking questions what's going on inside As I self reflect and start asking questions and get a sense understanding. Like my dad said, when you understand something, you become less afraid. So I started to understand.
Well, yeah, I was getting nervous and I wanted to control everything and I thought I was right and Then the question is, do you really have to do that? No.
Maybe some of you, it's the opposite. Maybe you do have to say more.
But that's why spiritual effort is so individualized.
Because what is the answer for me is not going to be the answer for you.
Do you become like fearless in all situations in one minute? No. But I'll give another example how meditation cre helps create this.
With meditation. I did share in an earlier episode that when I started meditating after two weeks, anger had gone. So anger is also a fear based state where I'm resisting what's happening because I feel like I'm threatened or I feel like it's wrong or I don't want it shouldn't be this way. So I'm resisting it and I feel threatened. So I'm actually afraid when I'm angry.
So when I started meditating, the anger left and I was like, how is that possible so quickly?
It's because as soon as I started telling myself who I am, I am peaceful soul. I am living consciousness. I cannot die. I am eternal.
I am the living being, eternal.
Never born, never die, always alive, always, forever and ever, never timeless, beyond time.
I'm in this body right now. I'm using this body, but soon I'll leave the body. I'm not always going to be here, but I cannot die. When you start meditating on that, your intellect starts to understand that that's the truth. And when I start considering that truth about myself, those other states start to become not right or unnatural and naturally start to get better.
This doesn't mean that every fearful thing or worry, thing or bad behavior we have is going to stop right away. And sometimes we do need to face things. But I'm going to say that there's no reason to resist the fear.
There's no reason to fight the fear.
There's no reason to force yourself if you feel afraid. This is important because I feel that if someone feels afraid and they're met with a forceful energy, it makes them feel more afraid. So if I feel afraid or if I'm uncomfortable and my attitude towards myself is forceful and negative, that's not going to make me feel safe or feel better.
Now maybe you might be thinking, well that sounds like that isn't going to work, or something like that. I would say that one of the principles is that if I start paying attention to my feelings, that I'm going to be able to trust that my feelings are authentic, that they're actually going to lead me in the direction of authenticity. And that's what we want. It's not like I'm trying to be someone else. And I'm going to say a fearless state. Fearlessness or peaceful. You can say peaceful state. You can say self respect.
That state is our natural state.
So how am I going to get rid of all this unnatural stuff? Well, self observation with the understanding of who I really am, what my original nature is, and a daily practice and study to help me realize the truth of who I am.
I can think of another example, very practical. I grew up in a situation where nobody in my home was handy. Like, if anything was wrong, I mean, my dad could fix things here and there, but generally we would, like, get somebody else to fix something or whatever it was. I grew up not feeling very confident that if something broke or if something needed to be done physically, that I would be able to do it. I would think, oh, I don't know what I'm doing, I better call a professional.
And so recently I've been getting a little bit more open to the idea that maybe I can do things myself. And of course, YouTube is there giving do it yourself videos of all kinds of things. And I fixed a toilet once and whatever. But what is the deal? Is it that? What is the fear? It's like I'm afraid that I'm going to do it wrong. So what I did was I started to work through my fear. So one time there was a. The toilet was messed up, the drainage or something, and nobody was here. And I said, well, let me try. Maybe I can do it myself. Maybe I can figure out what's wrong.
And I started to talk to myself, like, very step by step, like, can I open up the thing and look? Can I unscrew something? Can I get a screwdriver? Can. And as I was talking to myself and breaking it down, breaking down the situation to what it actually was, the fear was gone. I didn't force myself and say, you can do it, why can't you do it? Like the way people talk to each other or maybe the way others talk to us or the way we talk to ourselves. Right, that kind of annoyed, negative way of talking to ourselves. But I actually broke it down. What are you afraid of? You afraid you can't do it? Okay, well, can you look it up on YouTube? Yes. Can you? If we break it down, it also removes that feeling of fear. I think some of the fear that we experience is because we expand the situation into an emotional state when it's actually something very simple.
This is a very good principle. Also And I'm watching people in my life right now do more of this. Do it yourself. And it's very encouraging because I've seen people do things that recently that are a little scary, like putting in a sump pump or putting on a roof or doing flooring or something that usually I would think, oh, only a, only a contractor could do that. I can't do that.
I think that fear is really just.
We don't believe in ourselves in that situation.
And what's the false evidence appearing real Well, I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't. I don't know, I don't know, I don't understand. I can't do it. I'm afraid to do it. Obviously there should be some discernment. Maybe I don't really want to do it. We don't have to force ourselves. But again, it goes back to that merciful self observation. What am I actually feeling? And let me break it down, let me help myself.
No more force, no more judgment. So how do I go from fear to fearlessness? Look at myself, take care of myself, break it down, get some more information. Knowledge helps reduce fear, right? If I understand something, I'm not going to be afraid of it. I'm not afraid to fix that thing on the toilet now because I know what I'm doing.
Sometimes we let fear stop us from taking a first step. So two things there, there's the fear of doing things and then there's the fear of get when we get stuck and we don't have confidence. So I think that the fear of doing something, if we break it down, that can help us make it really logical and break it down and can I do this? Yes, can I do this? You break it down. The fear of your own insecurity like you can't do it. That I think can be helped also by meditation because I'm overthinking, I'm worried. And then with the meditation practice, I'm beginning to understand that, wait a minute, I'm actually peaceful.
And I give myself that knowledge and understanding to help myself. In my experience, fears can be dissolved in this way.
No force, no fighting, no judgment, just education, understanding and guiding myself into self respect, whether it's an action or whether it's self confidence.
So I'll leave it there. I hope that you all got something to think about. And the main thing is that it doesn't have to be forceful. If you find yourself being forceful with yourself, try to understand that that's not going to solve anything. I'm going to say you're not going to get better doing that force and fighting doesn't heal. Right?
So that's it for today. So remember that our slogan is heal, empower and serve. And until next time, take care.
