Make Friends with fear

MAKE FRIENDS WITH FEAR

In order to understand the notion of fearlessness, one has to understand fear itself. Fear is a trembling, shaky feeling of being afraid of nonexistence....Such fear is not necessarily regarded as problematic. It is like an attack of sneezing. But you have to study your fear, definitely: how it arises, how it manifests, and how it is actualized. When you begin to understand such fear, then you begin to find that it is almost a big joke. But you shouldn't try to cast fear out. Fear should be regarded as the kindling you use to build a big fire of fearlessness. So you have to understand fear as the starting point of fearlessness. Fear is not regarded as black, and fearlessness is not regarded as white. You have to make friends with fear.

All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo