Here is another article by the creator of the Russian website “Self-Knowledge – the path of enlightenment“.*
Fear is a basic emotion that everyone experiences to one degree or another. However, when it takes center stage in a person’s emotional life and begins to dominate it, it means the time has come for a spiritual approach to dealing with it. This is where I see the value of this article, in which the author examines fear in the context of spiritual processes, pointing to the two most important causes of its occurrence – (1) identification and (2) attachment. Both connect us to things belonging to the transient world, so the fear of losing what we identify with – or have become attached to – naturally arises. And so, we are invited to turn inward and ask the question of the soul – the part of us that does not die.
“The feeling of fear is familiar to every person without exception, though the specific fears may differ. Some are haunted by a fear of darkness, heights, or water; others fear pain, illness, or death. For some, it is the fear of loneliness, while for others it may be the fear of companionship. A person may experience an entire set of fears that arise periodically, and some fears may manifest regularly—or even persist constantly.
In its mild form, fear appears as anxiety or worry; when intense and overwhelming, it becomes terror – the most acute expression of fear. To overcome fear, we must first understand its nature and the reasons behind its emergence.
Where do fears come from, what is the reason for their appearance?
Naturally, many reasons can be named for the occurrence of this or that fear, for example, a severe psychological experience in childhood or even in previous lives (which often explains childhood fears), when a person has received a psychological trauma of one kind or another, but such causes are secondary, so their elimination does not always help to get rid of fear.
We need to understand what is the root cause of fears, their source, what lies at their foundation.
By its very nature, fear means the threat of loss, and we can only lose what we identify with or are attached to. Therefore, the root cause of all fears, anxieties and worries is identification (identification with someone or something) and attachment.
Identification – this is self-identification, i.e. the feeling of being something or someone specific. A person (as consciousness) identifies with a particular body, mind, profession, position in family and society, and with all the roles they play in society.
Attachment – this is a feeling of closeness and sympathy for someone or something, creating a sense of mental or physical comfort.
Attachment by its very nature means dependence and depriving a person of the object of attachment (loss or threat of loss) causes unpleasant emotions, including anxiety, worries and fears.
Often these two reasons – identification and attachment – go hand in hand, complementing and reinforcing each other, thereby creating reinforcement of the various fears. By getting rid of identifications and attachments, one gradually gets rid of all fears.
Identification as a cause of fear
When one identifies with the body, he considers himself to be this material object which, as we all know, will die sooner or later. This identification gives rise to the fear of death. From it also stem fears of illness, hospitals, dentists, surgeries, aging, and more. The more deeply one identifies with the body, the stronger these fears become, because the body – unlike the soul, or individual consciousness – is vulnerable to countless external influences from the material world that can bring pain, harm, sickness, disability, and ultimately death.
Identification with the position in the service causes fear of losing that position. Identification with one’s position in society causes the fear of losing that position. Identification with the mind forces us to worry about our mental abilities and accumulated knowledge of the material world (the modern system of education), most of which we will never need.
Attachment as a cause of fears
A person naturally becomes attached to their family, friends, activities, work, money, material comforts, and the various objects they own. With attachment comes a certain degree of dependence on the object of attachment because, inevitably, the fear arises – the fear of losing, damaging, or diminishing what one has become attached to.
How to get rid of fears
Attachment is the root of all fears, and true freedom from fear comes only with the absence of both attachment and identification. This represents a high spiritual state – one that can be reached through consistent spiritual practice leading to self-realization. As one works inwardly, they gradually free themselves from identification with the body and mind, with social status, and with the roles they play in life. As a result, attachment to the world naturally begins to loosen. This is the most effective path to overcoming fear. When one comes to know oneself as a soul, as pure consciousness, he begins to perceive reality as it truly is – and in that clarity, fear vanishes, like a dream dissolving in the morning light.
By discovering the real cause of his fears, man can analyse it, examine it from different sides and see it as an illusion (identification and attachment are illusory phenomena) – only then does he gain freedom from fear, which, based on the illusory phenomena of identification and attachment, appears itself illusory.
Knowing oneself as pure consciousness, eternal and impervious to any material manifestations of this world, one removes all causes of fear. Disidentification leads to non-attachment and freedom.
Fighting fear
The idea of fighting fear is fundamentally flawed, as the word “fight” means suppressing fears by force (no matter in what way), and what is suppressed sooner or later surfaces. Therefore, fighting fears does not solve the problem, it only allows it to be blunted for a while, and not always. We have to give up the idea of fighting because fighting only reinforces the duality, makes it more real and more influential, leading to new troubles; it is not the way to get rid of fears.
To get rid of fear, we need not to suppress it, but to understand it, analyze it and see it in a different light – then it loses its power.”
* This article is a translation from the Bulgarian version of the source (Fears, their causes, and working with fears), originally translated by Petya Stoyanova
