...and I don't think anyone knows why some people experience a great deal of fear and others don't. I know peeps who suffered through years of crippling panic attacks prior to enlightenment. Whether they were directly related to their spiritual search or were some sort of psycho-somatic phenomena is unknowable. I know at least one person who had panic attacks after enlightenment, so that's pretty good evidence that enlightenment doesn't offer any escape from being human. At the same time I know other peeps who had virtually no fears of any kind prior to enlightenment. That's just part of the mystery--the luck of the draw.
When I worked long hours in custom construction, I occasionally awakened in the middle of the night worried about some sort of construction issue. One time, for example, I woke up wondering if the steel and concrete footings I had poured under a massive fireplace was sufficient to handle the enormous weight of the stone chimney resting on it. I woke up wondering if the weight could depress the underlying ground enough to crack the concrete, and if so, how such a thing could be fixed. In cases like this if I did not fall back to sleep immediately, I learned to get up, and write down a plan of action for dealing with whatever the imagined problem was. I found that as soon as I shifted attention to a concrete plan of action, the worry dissipated, and I could fall back asleep. In one case where rather strong fear arose about some issue, I got out of bed, sat in a chair, and began watching the breathing process. Here, too, after attention was shifted to the breathing process, the fear disappeared. I suspect that putting attention on fear--watching it dispassionately--will have the same kind of effect. When there is simple watching, or a shifting of attention, identification with the body/mind is severed. It is sort of like following the white line. We focus upon something specific and everything else disappears.
The idea that fear needs to be confronted brings up the idea of a confronter, and there isn't one. This is why I don't recommend that particular approach. The idea that there is someone who is afraid to confront something that needs to be confronted is a story that reinforces the illusion and sense of selfhood.
When I worked long hours in custom construction, I occasionally awakened in the middle of the night worried about some sort of construction issue. One time, for example, I woke up wondering if the steel and concrete footings I had poured under a massive fireplace was sufficient to handle the enormous weight of the stone chimney resting on it. I woke up wondering if the weight could depress the underlying ground enough to crack the concrete, and if so, how such a thing could be fixed. In cases like this if I did not fall back to sleep immediately, I learned to get up, and write down a plan of action for dealing with whatever the imagined problem was. I found that as soon as I shifted attention to a concrete plan of action, the worry dissipated, and I could fall back asleep. In one case where rather strong fear arose about some issue, I got out of bed, sat in a chair, and began watching the breathing process. Here, too, after attention was shifted to the breathing process, the fear disappeared. I suspect that putting attention on fear--watching it dispassionately--will have the same kind of effect. When there is simple watching, or a shifting of attention, identification with the body/mind is severed. It is sort of like following the white line. We focus upon something specific and everything else disappears.
The idea that fear needs to be confronted brings up the idea of a confronter, and there isn't one. This is why I don't recommend that particular approach. The idea that there is someone who is afraid to confront something that needs to be confronted is a story that reinforces the illusion and sense of selfhood.
