Jai Satchitanand Friends!
When someone suddenly shouts loudly "Bhoo!!" behind us, we feel scared, isn’t it? All of us must have experienced some kind of fear. Some of the fears we have are fear of teachers, exams ,darkness, being alone and yet others may be afraid of ghosts. Is there truly anything in this world worth fearing? Let’s find out!
Why do we have fear?
• Hatred results in fear: You’ll be afraid of whoever you hate. Perceiving a person or the thing to be bad is the root cause of fear. Fear of the snake and tiger arises from one's hatred towards them. If you dislike a lizard you will be afraid of it.
• Where there is dislike, there is fear: One might have heard from others that these policemen are very bad. On the basis of this knowledge, one will state, 'Policemen are the worst kind of people.' That is hatred. Someday when a policeman comes home, one feels uneasy, even though the policeman may have just come to enquire about an address.
How can we free ourselves from fear?
• If you keep saying positive things about things you dislike e.g. if you don't like eating vegetables, saying words like, "it's good", "it's tasty" every time we eat them, will make the dislike for that item disappear.
• Changing the bad opinion to a good opinion will make the hatred towards any person vanish. For example, if we change our opinion for the policeman from being bad to being helpful than automatically we will feel safe in his presence rather than getting scared of him!
• By seeing shuddhatma (pure soul) and doing Pratikraman(asking forgiveness) in the other living beings will wipe away all the fear. For example, if we are afraid of spiders then seeing the shuddhatma within and doing Pratikraman will definitely help us get rid of its fear.
So friends, the only fear that one should have is of committing bad deeds as we will bind demerit karmas.
Related Links:
Moral Story- Imaginative Fear
Magazine- Akram Express on Fear
Moral Story- Say 'Goodbye' to fear
