Fear

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Fear. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 19, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Fear

Good evening, everyone. How is this sound? Is it too loud or too soft? Is it okay? It should be a little bit louder. Just a tiny bit louder, that's kind of what I was thinking, too. Let's see. Is it louder? Okay, maybe yeah, here we go. Thank you. Thank you, Sveta.

Nice to see you all. It is hard to believe that autumn is this week. It's the equinox, or the solstice—one of those sun and earth things.

Tonight, I'd like to start with a short poem. It's by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer^[1]. It's called Mus musculus^[2], which is the Latin name for a mouse. If you don't know Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, she's one of my favorite poets. Her poems often have a little bit of whimsy to them, and they're not complicated; they're straightforward. You'll see that's the flavor of this poem, too, but I like what she's pointing to here.

The poem goes like this:

Today, fear is a mouse that scuttles between thoughts and feeds on whatever it finds. Nibbles on my certainties, gnaws the coating of my circuitries, and pulls the stuffing out of each moment. Those are its droppings in the hallways of "if," hallways of my mind.

I thought it was worse when fear was a tiger, a badger, a wolverine. But the mouse of fear finds its way into everything, makes nests inside my minutes, discovers passages in my inner walls, then scratches against them at night.

It never goes near the traps I've set. No, it scampers around them. Its soft feet patter, its small dark eyes noting everywhere I go.

Sometimes fear can feel like this—that it's following us around, getting into little nooks and crannies of our days. [Clears throat] Excuse me here for a moment. I don't know what's happening with my voice. I'm not sick; this is just something that happens with my allergies sometimes. Earlier today, it was fine.

Fear often has a large role in our lives, bigger than we realize. Especially if we broaden this whole idea of fear to include things like apprehension, anxiety, dread, or worry. If we expand the meaning to include these types of things, we discover that actually, maybe this little mouse is all over in our lives. It is showing up in so many different ways, scampering around, scratching at night.

In the way the poet talks about it, fear seemed easier when it was a tiger or a wolverine. Sometimes it seems like it's easier when it's really big, and we can point to it, and it's obvious when it's there and obvious when it isn't. But with this idea of a mouse, often when there are mice, we don't see them; we just feel the effects of them.

Fear turns out to have a big role in our lives. Some people might even expand it to say that fear is the root underlying all conflict, or maybe even some of our sorrow. There's this role that fear has where it's blocking us from intimacy, or getting close to others, and instead creating a sense of disconnection. I don't know if that's true, if all conflict has fear underneath it, or if all hesitation about intimacy has fear underneath it. But I think it's worthwhile examining and questioning for ourselves. What role does fear have in our lives? What are the different ways it shows up? How would our lives be different if there wasn't this fear, dread, apprehension, worry, or anxiety?

I'm talking about some of these things that are in our life, but fear can also show up in a really subtle way in our practice. That is, when we're practicing meditation—whatever practice you do—there might be a way in which you come up to the edge of what's familiar and start to touch into something different, something unfamiliar.

One time I was teaching an introduction to meditation class. Sometimes there would be people that didn't have any experience at all with meditation. This one person, on the first or second day, was quite alarmed after I had done a little guided meditation. As she was sharing, she said, "This feels odd. This is uncomfortable. I feel like it's a complete out-of-body experience." I was talking with her and asking her to share what the experience was, and it turned out it was really calmness. But she was so used to having a certain amount of anxiety inside that this calmness felt like she must not be present. It held some fear for her.

I know for myself that I've had fear, especially on some of these long retreats when the mind gets really settled. After months of retreat practice and silence, the mind gets into places it hasn't been before. For me, the initial response is always, "Whoa, what was that?" And then the mind asks, "Is this familiar or is it not familiar?" If it's not familiar, there's a little bit of hesitation. There isn't this willingness to just trust whatever is new and go right into it.

On one of these really long retreats that I sat, Joseph Goldstein^[3] was one of the teachers. I remember him giving a Dharma talk where he shared that one of his biggest difficulties in practice and in life was fear. I remember sitting there being so surprised. For those who don't know Joseph Goldstein, he is probably one of the most senior people in this tradition. He helped bring it from India and Burma to the West, so he's been around for decades. Not only that, he's a really strong, tall person, and he moves a little authoritatively. To hear that even he had a lot of fear, I thought, "Wow." At the time, I thought, "I don't have any fear. Why does he have fear?" I had no idea how much fear I actually had. I think about Joseph often when I experience fear: "Oh yeah, okay, at least I'm in good company here."

Maybe it's the fear of the unknown. But maybe it's also the fear—when we look at this fear in our meditation practice—that this uncomfortable sensation in my knee or my back is never going to end. We project into the future. Or maybe we have this fear that the mind will never settle down, and I will never be able to feel a certain amount of ease or calm. The mind likes to do this; it likes to come up with these different scenarios.

So maybe the first stage of practicing with fear is even to acknowledge its presence. This intellectual understanding won't be sufficient to make fear go away, but it's where we start. It's tempting to think, "Okay, if I just understand it better, if I figure it out, it'll go away. If I get underneath it—what was it from my childhood, or the way I was raised, or something that happened earlier in my life that's causing this fear?" Certainly, that can have a role and can be supportive. But often, when the fear is being experienced right there in the moment, we don't have the time or wherewithal to do that type of investigation or inquiry. Instead, we can just notice that there's fear.

Fear shows up in all kinds of ways. Some of it is subtle. For example, it might be driving our ambition or our motivation. What's propelling us? Maybe there's some fear underneath that. Or maybe there's some fear underneath our anger, whether we're angry with ourselves, other people, or just however it shows up. Maybe there's some fear underneath our sadness. There's this way that fear can support all kinds of uncomfortable emotions and aspects of our lives.

Ezra Bayda^[4], a Zen teacher, says we could actually boil it all down to just three fears. Again, I don't know if this is true, but it's been interesting for me to think about. He says these three fears underlie all of our uncomfortable experiences.

Number one is the fear of losing safety and control. We don't like to lose control. How much of our life is trying to control ourselves, control other people, control anything we can? I noticed that with my meditation practice. When I first started being mindful, I had no idea how much planning I was doing. I didn't realize that I spent all my time just planning, planning, planning. It wasn't until I actually noticed, "Oh, there's fear underneath this planning." I was trying to be prepared so that no matter what happened, it was going to be okay. So you have all these contingency plans: "Well, if this happens, then I gotta have this and that." I would have a big backpack that I had to carry with me everywhere, just in case. There's this fear of losing safety and control. I have a nice first aid kit in my car, which is probably a good thing. I like to think it's so I can help somebody if they need it, but maybe there's a little fear of being unsafe. I don't want to feel helpless.

A second fear that Ezra Bayda mentions is the fear of aloneness and disconnection. We could say this impacts our relationships with people, our relationship with ourselves, or our relationship with death. We don't want other people to die, and we don't want to die.

And then the third fear is the fear of unworthiness. Not being good enough, somehow being inadequate or insufficient. The things that we'll do to maybe bolster the view that others have of us, wanting to look good in a certain way. Maybe there's this fear of feeling unworthy, or seeming unworthy to others.

Sometimes people like to lump things together, and sometimes people like to split them apart. I'm one of those people who likes to lump things into categories, so I kind of like this idea that there are just these three fears. I find it interesting to think, "Are there some fears that don't fall into those three buckets?" Of course, we can get into how you define safety and control, but part of why it's helpful is because it gives us something to point to, instead of fear just being this big black box. Fear is something mightily uncomfortable, and we would do almost anything to not have that experience. Having a few little labels or flavors of it makes it a little bit less of a black box.

We often don't like fear, and we naturally try to flee from it or avoid it. I should also tease apart the difference between fear and anxiety. For the most part, I'm lumping them together, but we might understand that fear is more about something known. It has a specific object or experience; it's either imminent or maybe something far in advance. Whereas anxiety has more of an unfocused fear. Maybe it's an excessive fear that is higher than what would be appropriate for the object.

As an aside, I've noticed—and some other teachers have noticed this too—how many people are talking about their anxiety. I see this in my role as a teacher on retreats or in practice discussions. People are sharing how their practice is going, and this word "anxiety" comes up a lot. I think in this post-pandemic season, and with everything else that's happening in the world, it's not so uncommon.

Fear involves an unpleasant sensation. We might be able to tease apart what is happening in the body from the reactions to those sensations. The physical sensations might be a heart pounding or butterflies in the stomach. The reaction to those sensations might be clenching, tightening, or bracing. That's what's happening in the body. But what's happening in the mind is usually a constriction of awareness. We're focused on one thing, and not in a pleasant way. Sometimes, a sense of concentration can bring calm and ease, but this is a constriction where the awareness shrinks down in a way that feels stuck. There isn't a sense of ease, relaxation, or malleability.

Part of teasing this apart is so we can work with it. We can notice, "Okay, there's what's happening in the body, and there's what's happening in the mind." Those are two different ways in which we can practice with fear. If we don't notice that we have fear, there's just the aversion to fear. Aversion is a natural response—fear wouldn't be effective to protect us evolutionarily if it weren't inherently uncomfortable. But trying to flee from it often perpetuates the fear. When we run away from fear, we run into our minds. Because the mind is constricted, there might be a whirlwind of stories: "I gotta get out of here. What is happening?" There can be a disorganization or franticness to our thoughts. Fleeing just feeds the rumination and keeps us stuck in a certain way of thinking.

So, what are some ways to practice with fear? We have to recognize that there are different intensities of fear, so different practices might be appropriate. For me, I have a thing about spider webs. I don't like them—let alone spiders! But I'm getting much better. The other day I was cleaning up some spider webs and felt rather proud of myself. Those are less intense fears, and I can work with them in a certain way. But some of these existential fears—fears of being alone, being out of control, fear of death—might need a little bit more care.

Here is one way to practice, both with less intense fears and perhaps more intense ones too: bring attention to the body, but in a generalized way. I would say mindfulness of the whole bodily experience, not just focusing in on one part. One way to do this is simply to pay attention to posture. Notice: Is there an alertness? Is there slouching? Is your hip out with your hand on it? Are you tapping your foot? Are your shoulders tense? Or, if you're walking, feel the pressure underneath the feet. This more generalized mindfulness of the body helps get away from the constriction happening with awareness. It's opening up to be with the entire bodily experience.

There's a simile the Buddha gives regarding mindfulness of the body that we could apply to fear. He describes a person who has a bowl of boiling oil on their head. They are walking towards a stage for a dancing performance. In my mind, that means there's music, other people dancing, and an audience. And just to make it even more stressful, there's somebody walking behind them with a sword, saying they are going to chop off the person's head if they drop any of the oil. Walking that way, you really have to pay attention to your posture, but you also have to pay attention to what's going around you—like whether any of these dancing people are going to run into you. Maybe this isn't a great simile, because if I imagine that, I think I would be really tense! But the point is to be aware of your surroundings as well as your posture, and to still be able to move. This simile points to mindfulness of the body as a way to work with fear.

There's also a way in which mindfulness of the body can have a sense of openness. Some teachers talk about this, and I've practiced it; it's a lovely way to practice. It involves expanding the idea of the body to maybe six to twelve inches outside the physical body. It can be really pleasant. It's not the usual mindfulness practice, but you're still aware of what's happening, just with the body a little bit expanded. It turns out that the mind likes to be big and open. Doing this with the body encourages the mind to be a little bit more open. It naturally wants to collapse down and focus on one thing because that's easier, but being mindful of the whole body—including just a few inches off of the body—is worth exploring.

Being mindful of one's posture, or the whole bodily experience, allows us to relax into a sense of being embodied. So often with fear, we're lost in our minds about what might happen in the future. Feeling embodied means feeling, "I'm here now." To feel the experience of breathing, and the sense of aliveness or presence inhabiting the body, can be comforting, grounding, and settling.

A second thing we can do with fear is loving-kindness practice. Warm-heartedness and fear definitely have a relationship. There is a book written decades ago titled Love Is Letting Go of Fear^[5]. If we can cultivate some open-heartedness, some warm-heartedness, then the fear greatly lessens or dissipates.

One way to do this is to just have loving-kindness be a regular practice, not waiting until fear arises. For those interested, I taught this for a number of years, and now Liz Powell^[6] and Nikki Mirghafori^[7] teach it. Five days a week there is a loving-kindness practice on Zoom. If you go to the IMC calendar, you'll see hundreds of recordings.

With loving-kindness practice, we can bring to mind the absolute easiest way to bring openness or care to the heart. For some, this might be internet videos of kittens, puppies, or babies. It's perfectly fine to use something like this for practice—to feel into the open-heartedness, the warmth, the delight, and connect with that sensation. Then, allow that experience of care, warmth, or respect to grow as big as it would like. One simple way is to repeat phrases, like: "May you be safe," "May you be happy," "May you be healthy." Sending good wishes to a lovable being. It can be that simple. When the mind and heart are experiencing some openness and warmth, fear naturally dissipates.

Even if we are having fear about an individual, I wouldn't recommend doing loving-kindness for that specific individual. That's a tall order, and we might set ourselves up for feeling like we can't do it, making them seem even scarier. Instead, do loving-kindness where it's easy.

A third way to practice when we're experiencing fear involves gentle inquiry into the mind. As I said, fear often causes the awareness to shrink. If we can remember, we can gently ask: "Is there any wisdom here?" Maybe the fear is really wise, and we can appreciate that wisdom. "Is there any self-respect here?" Can we appreciate that this fear is a way of taking care of ourselves or setting boundaries? Is there care for ourselves, for somebody else, or for something important to us? Tuning into that care, self-respect, or wisdom broadens the mind. It gets us out of the collapsed feeling that often happens with fear. We don't want to surrender to it, nor do we want to repress it. We want to acknowledge it without being overwhelmed.

So, we have mindfulness of the body in a generalized way, loving-kindness practice, and gentle inquiry. Recently, I was on a walk where there are dogs behind a fence. They love to run and bark. Having been bitten a number of times, I have a fear of dogs. I was trying to look at them and say, "May you be happy, may you be healthy." That didn't work very well. [Laughter] Later, I was walking with somebody else in the same place, and they said, "What if you just don't look at the dogs? Ignore them and look the other way." It turned out that was very helpful.

Is there a way we can open our hearts and minds, and maybe have a little more ease in the body when there is fear? A tremendous way to work with fear is to trust that you can do it. Trust that, okay, this is fearful, it's mightily uncomfortable, but that's okay too. We build that trust by having experiences with minor fears in our lives. What is the grocery store clerk going to think when they see all the things in my shopping cart? These minor fears.

Fear has a big role in our lives. It might be subtle, or it might be obvious. It is worthwhile acknowledging its role, and acknowledging that we don't have to be completely free of fear. It's just part of the human experience. As our minds get small with fear, our lives get small too, because we try to avoid all these things that cause it. Making our minds and hearts bigger makes our lives bigger. Taking some risks, doing something new, enriches our lives and brings beauty and depth to this human experience. I think I'll end there and open it up for questions or comments.

Q&A

Questioner: Thank you. It was a good topic, just what I needed to hear. My question is, what if you're dealing with crippling fears? I have tried to pay attention to the body, but it just doesn't work. My mind runs away, the fear takes over. What do you do then? I like what you said about trusting oneself, but if the mind has already gone, how do you bring the trust back? And what do you do about the stimulus that caused the fear? Because somewhere you have to do a little bit of problem-solving. It all becomes this complex mess. I'd love to hear what you have to say about that.

Diana Clark: Can you say a little bit more about what happens when you bring awareness to the body?

Questioner: I can't. It doesn't work. The heart is pounding and every attendant feeling is there. That idea of stepping back and observing what's happening doesn't happen. It happens when I am not that afraid, but when I really need it, the tools fail me.

Diana Clark: Is this something that's debilitating for your life, or does it happen just occasionally?

Questioner: It's incidental.

Diana Clark: Thank you for asking this. It's a really good question. For fears like this, sometimes mindfulness is not the right way, because, exactly as you said, it's not going to work. There are certain types of fear where our wisdom just leaves us. For something like that, it might be appropriate to work with different modalities other than meditation or mindfulness—something like exposure therapy or other therapeutic modalities.

I want to normalize your experience. It can be frustrating when you hear a teacher say, "Just be mindful of it," and you're thinking, "No, that doesn't work." I would say it turns out to be really helpful to make a real effort to intentionally work with minor fears. This does have an impact. I mentioned spiders, spider webs, or dogs. Maybe there's something that isn't crippling that you can practice with intentionally.

Another thing is to have a loving-kindness practice be a regular part of your life. Not so that it absolutely makes the fear go away, but there's something about loving-kindness practice that makes everything easier. It brings a little bit more confidence, or decreases the intensity of the fear. Is that helpful?

Questioner: Thank you. I tried loving-kindness for a long time. Maybe it worked, I can't tell, but after a while, it doesn't work anymore. I remember talking to somebody from the IMS^[8] community, and she said that if all you can do is send loving-kindness to yourself for months on end every time you sit, then that's enough. It changes after a while. It's like, "Oh, I don't actually need it. Maybe I'll send it to somebody else." And then maybe that doesn't work. I don't know if I just need to stick to things and keep trying.

Diana Clark: Loving-kindness practice isn't always easy. Sometimes it's fun, and sometimes it feels like a drag: "Really? I'm supposed to be doing this?" But if you can find a way where it feels really easy, it can be uplifting. It creates the conditions in which things can get metabolized or processed in a different way. We don't necessarily understand or know what's happening, but it can be really supportive. So, just an encouragement.

Okay, so we are at the top of the hour. Thank you all for your kind attention. I wish you a wonderful rest of the evening.