Guided Meditation: Quieting and Feeling; Dharmette: Fear (2 of 5) Helping Fear Feel Safe

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Quieting and Feeling; Fear (2 of 5) Helping Fear Feel Safe. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on July 21, 2022. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Quieting and Feeling

Hello everyone. As we begin the meditation, I want to suggest that, especially when we're considering fear this week, meditation is meant to be done in a location and time when it is safe. It's not always possible, of course, but ideally, the here and now is a safe place. It is safe enough that you don't have to solve anything that you're afraid of. You don't have to fix it; you don't have to figure out how to deal with it.

That's true for almost anything. Meditation is a time when it's appropriate not to need to think about the rest of your life, even big issues or small issues, or what you're going to have for supper, or anything at all. It doesn't mean you won't do those things. It doesn't mean you won't have fear or concerns that are not here. But because you're clear when you sit down and look around the place you're at, here and now, nothing is needed. It's the opportunity to look upon what's happening in a new way.

And that new way, for some of us, would be not to fix anything, not to analyze it per se, not to judge it, but also not to participate in it. It is to be able to meet our inner life in a new way. The new way that I'd like to suggest today—maybe not so new for some of you—is to meet yourself, to meet whatever is happening, with a silent mind, with a quiet mind, a calm mind. Even if you can only manage it for half a second, the idea is to meet and encounter your experience in a very different way. This quiet mind is not meant to be disrespectful, but rather respecting what's happening so you can hold it and be with it in a new way, in a different way.

I like to refer to it sometimes as there are times in life when it's appropriate for us to be quiet because the situation has called upon us to support, to meet, to attend, or to receive what's happening in that silence. Sometimes, these are big turning points in life: putting a young child or a toddler to bed, and when they're napping, getting really quiet; going into a library; going to a funeral; going into a sacred space somewhere, and we allow ourselves to get quiet. Going into a majestic place in nature, and we allow ourselves to get quiet to feel it and sense what's going on. Maybe sitting and having tea and looking at the full moon.

There are many things that allow us to become quiet. To meet whatever is happening with a quiet mind—maybe a silent mind, or maybe if the mind could not become quiet and silent, to become aware with that form of awareness, that attentiveness that is quiet.

If this makes sense, we'll start, and we'll see that this ability to attend, to meet, to hold, to be present for things with a quiet mind or a quiet attention opens a door to a vast, wise, deep way of living our lives. It's not superficial. It's not truncating experience. It actually allows something really profound to begin happening.

So in this sitting, perhaps experiment: how can you sit with whatever is happening with a quiet mind? Maybe it's just for a moment, and then do it again. I'll guide you a little bit here at the beginning.

Take an upright posture, literally or metaphorically, and gently close the eyes. Right off the bat, take a caring, respectful scan through your body to feel and sense what's happening for you. See if you can do that with a quiet mind, a silent mind. It's the kind of silence that maybe allows you to be more sensitive to what's here, to notice more of the details. Scanning through your body, feeling what's here for you.

And within this body, taking two or three deep breaths and relaxing as you exhale.

Then letting the breathing return to normal.

As you exhale, let the mind become quiet. Let go of your thoughts, especially near the end of the exhale. Let all the thinking mind become still and quiet, or feel the stillness and the quiet at the end. Then, with whatever stillness, calm, or quiet you have, feel what's happening for you. On the inhale, feel the sensations of your body, your emotions. Just feel it respectfully with as much of a quiet mind as you can.

Thoughts might return. On the next exhale, let go of your thoughts, and that's the rhythm. Here and now, nothing you need to think about on the exhale. On the inhale, feel more fully, as if you can listen deeply in that silence to your breathing, to your body, your emotions, to your mind. Let go on the next exhale.

So there's a rhythm of letting go and feeling, letting go and knowing, gently, repeatedly.

Letting the thinking mind become quiet on the exhale. And whatever you happen to feel on the inhale, operate as if that's the only time it needs—is that moment, those moments of inhaling. It doesn't need any more, just this. And then let go on the exhale.

If it's there again on the next inhale, that's okay. It's like a new time.

With repeatedly doing this, maybe you'll get into the rhythm: letting go, quieting, and then respectfully feeling and sensing what's happening without thinking much about it. Maybe staying close to the quiet and the calm.

If anything troubles you, or is difficult, or activated, in this gentle way of practicing, let the thinking mind become quiet on the exhale. Feeling what's here with the body. Let what troubles you—the feelings, the sensations, the direct experience—help it feel safe. Let yourself be a safe place for what is actually happening in you.

The emotions, the sensations. Just quiet the mind so you can feel what's happening, letting it feel safe. It's okay for it to be there during this inhale.

[Meditation continues silently...]

And then as we come to the end of the sitting... now, on the exhale, let go into the world. As you inhale, take this world in, its joys and its sufferings, challenges and its wonderfulness. Take it all in. And then, on the exhale, let the breath be your kindness, your care, your gentleness. Take in the world and breathe out kindness, care, love, compassion.

May it be that as our awareness, our attention, spreads out into the world, that we're able to meet it with our goodwill.^[1] May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free.

Dharmette: Fear (2 of 5) Helping Fear Feel Safe

What I said at the beginning of the meditation is quite important, or quite useful. Meditation is a time to experience our life, ourselves, in a new way, in a different way than usual in everyday life. In everyday life, kind of the generic version of it is we're doing things, thinking about things, taking care of things, fixing things, avoiding things, concerned about things. Much of that stuff is purposeful. It is sometimes thinking about the future, thinking about the past, trying to change something. In meditation, the idea is to have a very different way of respecting our life as it's being lived. It's not to deny anything, but in a sense to be present for it in a new way, and maybe a radically new way.

As we learn this new way of being present for experience, we have available to us all kinds of new possibilities. New possibilities of understanding, of wisdom, of investigation, of questioning our life in new ways, and new ways of allowing a deep, much deeper process within us to heal us, to unfold us, to grow us in new ways.

This new way, which is an ancient way, I think can be represented by this idea of meeting our experience with a quiet mind, maybe a silent mind. Meeting our experience to be present for it in a full way, with a quietness of a clean window. Through a dirty window, you maybe can't even see out, but when the window has been cleaned, the window itself is silent, but the window enables us to really see clearly what's outside. As awareness becomes quieter, it also becomes clearer, and we can see more fully what's here. In relationship to fear, to really be able to find a wise and creative way to be with fear and find our way through fear, this kind of new way of seeing is really useful and important.

When we sit to meditate, ideally we're sitting in a place where the here and now is safe. The building is not burning down, people are not attacking us, nothing's going to happen, within reason. Sitting here, it's relatively safe. The reason to have that clarity about the safety of the here and now—it might not be safe if you leave the place where you're sitting, it might not be safe in an hour with what you're going to do—but where you're sitting, you become clear: "Oh, this is safe right now. Here and now."

The advantage of that is then you can notice that if there is fear, it's not about the here and now, and so in a sense, it doesn't have to be figured out. Rather, we want to meet it. Fear is something that we want to respect with our mindfulness.^[2] It is something we want to be present for, not avoid, not fix, not try to attack. It's a very worthy focus of mindfulness for living a deeper life, a fuller life.

We want to be able to turn our attention, and when fear is salient—if fear is the main or strong experience, or important enough—to learn to bring attention, mindfulness, to feel the fear. It might be that you're sitting in a safe place, but for 30 minutes you're doing mindfulness of fear. And it might be time very well spent. Many people don't really stop and look at fear. The bumper sticker now would be, "I brake for fear. I stop for fear." Really stop and take a good look at it. What is this here?

The principle that I think is very powerful, or the practice we're trying to do with fear, is when we're able to stop and really feel our fear, feel it in an embodied way, we're trying to help our fear feel safe.

There might be a real cause for the fear. It might be a real fear out in the world; in half an hour there might be something happening that's dangerous. But here and now, in this safe place that we're in, how can we help the fear feel safe? How can we allow it to be there and now, so it doesn't have this sense that it's wrong or it's bad, or we're trying to run away from it, or trying to attack it and fix it, like we're doing the practice in order to get rid of it? If you're doing the practice to get rid of it, if you anthropomorphize your fear a little bit, the fear is not going to be happy. It's not going to be comfortable. It's not going to feel like it has a place. It's going to feel unwanted. It's going to feel unrespected.

The idea to help the fear feel safe means to allow it to be there, as if it now has time in the sun of awareness. As if it's someone who has never lived in the sun, it's always been in the dark, and they are finally able to come out in the sun. It's like, "Oh, now let me take it in, let me receive it." The sun of awareness. As if the fear has never been seen, really not gotten to know. The task is to get to know the fear, to recognize it, to see it. Help the fear feel seen. Help the fear feel like it's being known.

Just like, maybe for you, if you're really anxious one day or really afraid, a friend might come sit next to you and say, "I see that you're really afraid. I'll sit here with you. Would you like a companion?" Clearly, the friend is not fixing you or judging you for being afraid, but they recognize it, and they're going to sit and be a safe person for you. They will just be there with you and accompany you. Having that company makes a world of difference.

This new way is to accompany the fear. To be with it for a while. What this does is it allows the fear room to do what it needs to do, to unfold, to relax. Something begins to shift and change when we give that kind of permission for the fear to be there.

To give that kind of permission for the fear to be there and be known, to be accompanied, it does help if we have a quieter mind. It doesn't have to be completely silent, but a quieter mind that's not ruminating, repeating stories, judging, and criticizing—all the extra things the thinking mind does. It is almost like saying, "There, there, I'm here with you. I see you. I'll be your companion here and now. Let me feel you."

The thinking mind is very gently saying, "Where do I feel this in my body? Where does the fear live?" Because one of the ways to help the fear feel safe and really be seen is to recognize where it's being most activated in the body. Is it in the belly? Is it in the chest, in the hands, in the jaw? Where might it be? And then bring a careful, loving attention to that area.

The image that I like to use for that is cupping the hands together and holding something from underneath. Just holding. Holding the fear. Sometimes I'll imagine my mindfulness, my awareness, is like these two hands that are coming together underneath wherever the fear is located in the body, and holding it. Being with it as if it is allowed to be there forever.

This is a radically different way of being with fear than most people know. If, in doing that, we start to panic, and the fear gets very uncomfortable, then it's not a useful thing to do. Then maybe we need to do something to settle the fear, quiet the fear. Maybe stop meditating and do something else. But if you're able to come and sit and be with the fear, this allows the fear to process itself, which is often wiser than us processing it. More often than not, the thinking mind is reactivating the fear and perpetuating the fear. So for the mind to be quiet allows the fear to process itself.

It also begins helping us to do deeper mindfulness into the ecology of fear, the different elements of it that are important to pay attention to besides just the direct experience of the fear. That will be the topic for the next couple of days. I'm hoping that this will give you a new angle, a new perspective from which to look at fear, because the old perspectives often keep us trapped, keep us caught in fear. Fear and anxiety can follow someone along for decades, so learning a new way can be phenomenally useful.

You might try over this next day: if you have some anxiety or fear, pay attention, look for it. If it's easy to find, great, then you're on track. If it's not easy to recognize, then maybe you have to be extra sensitive so you recognize where it might appear. See if the situation allows for it to just stop and pause for a while, and maybe sit down and close your eyes and see if you can spend some time helping the fear feel safe. You have to find where it is in the body to bring attention to it carefully, and then maybe it's almost like you're breathing through the fear, with the fear, as a way of accompanying it and helping it feel safe. The breathing with it is kind of like, "It's okay, now you're safe. Now you're safe here with me." And then see what happens to it with this kind of helping the fear feel safe practice.

So thank you. With that as a foundation, I look forward to what we'll be doing the next couple of days. Thank you.