The Ultimate way to be rid of fear

[shivraj]

Take an oath that you will not die before your death

One of the main causes of fear is ignorance. Call it ‘lack of wisdom’ or ‘incomplete knowledge’. In the absence of adequate knowledge, people fear a lot of things and die many times - some of them a thousand deaths every day before the actual death of their body.

If you have to visit the doctor in the evening for taking an injection, then do you dread that from the morning itself? The pain of injection will occur only in the evening. But you feel the pain many times from morning onwards, even before the incident has actually happened. This is due to ignorance.

Ignorance or half knowledge is dangerous. Half knowledge is usually inculcated in the early days of childhood. Parents think that they should inform their children of all the untoward events that come with life. To educate their children about reality, parents tell children about planes being hijacked, trains falling off rails, epidemics spreading, and so on. It is true that children need to be educated about reality. But avoid giving half knowledge. Give them the whole picture.

Half Knowledge
Parents tell the truths of life to their children. But what truths? Usually those truths that they have experienced, those problems that they have suffered. They tell their children with the fear that their children should not undergo the same bitter or fearful experiences that they went through. But parents don’t know that they are only painting a part of the picture. They are breeding ignorance by imparting half knowledge.

Complete Knowledge
Tell your children that planes may be hijacked, trains may fall off rails, epidemics may spread, but … "Die only once in life. The courageous die only once”. Once they know this fact, they do not die again and again. If you do not impart this very important understanding to your children, then you are giving them partial knowledge.

So let us make a promise today …
I will not die again and again.
I will not die before my death.
I will die only once whenever it happens on its own.

[Akashic_Librarian]

wow. Touching and deep, I am grateful for this and shall meditate on its real meaning in my life at this time. Thank you once again Shivraj.

[PhoenixBlossom]

Your ideas remind me of something I read recently... can't recall the source, and I paraphrase here...

A lot of people can't commit to complete faith in the goodness of God, Source, the Universe (insert your Higher Power here) because they believe they are unable to make the shift to that trust. What they don't realize is that they are already trusting - trusting in fear.

We trust in fear when we believe that there is something "out there" that will harm us, when we believe that events are outside of our influence, out of control.

I would rather trust in the divine in all of us, and in the miracles around us every day.

Love & Joy

[MarkusL]

You dont have the time to pay fear any attention

[skinnyninja]

My greatest fear is of non-existence; of oblivion. I cannot shake it.

To sit and contemplate oblivion--the possibility of my consciousness no longer existing--that is truly crushing. This idea first occurred to me when I was quite young. And now, many years later, after all of my spiritual pursuits, I still have the same fear. Still dying every day.

I want to believe--in order to alleviate my fear--but so far, nothing has produced that leap of faith.

[The Probabilist]

Originally Posted by skinnyninja

My greatest fear is of non-existence; of oblivion. I cannot shake it.

To sit and contemplate oblivion--the possibility of my consciousness no longer existing--that is truly crushing. This idea first occurred to me when I was quite young. And now, many years later, after all of my spiritual pursuits, I still have the same fear. Still dying every day.

I want to believe--in order to alleviate my fear--but so far, nothing has produced that leap of faith.

To you I wholeheartedly recommend Steve's podcast #008: Overcoming Fear. His advice on the subject of fear is golden. Fear is faulty wiring in your squishware and your emotion is telling you to repair it.

[stephencp]

I'm not sure how existential depression can be easily fixed. At the end of the day, oblivion and the black emptiness of your consciousness simply being gone forever can indeed be hard to shake. I felt this way too for a long time as a very young child when a couple of my relatives died.
Unfortunately, I"m not sure what got me out of it. Perhas the fact that I could do nothing about it (at the time) anyway so why beat myself up about it. This is the saddest part, ruining the existance that you DO have right now, worrying about not existing later.
Do what you can now to find the religious and spiritual beliefs that you can believe in (if not your current set) and take comfort. If you're lucky, it will also show you a path to EXPERIENCE things now that will alter your "beliefs" about what's next.

Check out
MeditationExpert.com

Stephen
Power-Book Library: Free personal development, success, inspiration and motivational classics

[Reyv]

Great comments guys.

To add my two cents, here's the way I look at death:

Objective universe: Body stops working, game over. I don't really see what there's to be afraid of. Once your brain stops working, that's that. You won't really care about it anymore.

What's the fear about? The dying process itself? If you put it in the perspective of your entire life, it's going to be a mere blip. Is the fear about the actual non-existence part? Well, you didn't exist before you were conceived. Was that state of non-existence a particularly distressing ordeal? I mean, how hard can it be to not exist? I, for one have no recollection of it. When you don't exist, you don't exist, to state the obvious. Just make the most out of your time here, and worry about the future when you get there (which is to say never).

Subjective universe: Body stops working, and your soul/spirit detaches from the body and heads on to the "afterlife" (which I suspect we may also call the "beforelife" and "betweenlife"). Monsignor Benson channeled a beautiful view of the afterlife through Anthony Borgia, in his book Life in the World Unseen. Not sure I choose to believe it just yet, but it seems to be a rather plausible description of existence in one of the middle realms.

[Leandro Leme]

Originally Posted by skinnyninja

My greatest fear is of non-existence; of oblivion. I cannot shake it.

To sit and contemplate oblivion--the possibility of my consciousness no longer existing--that is truly crushing. This idea first occurred to me when I was quite young. And now, many years later, after all of my spiritual pursuits, I still have the same fear. Still dying every day.

I want to believe--in order to alleviate my fear--but so far, nothing has produced that leap of faith.

Sometimes beautiful images and touchy music can tell a lot more than words. So, I`ll just recommend you to see "The Fountain".
I think many people contemplate this void, this emptiness, and feel depressed and sometimes nihilistic because they feel separate from this infiniteness. What if you try to connect with this and become as boundless as this void?
If you think this could be empowering, maybe some zen and taoist reading could help.

Carlos Castañeda´s books talk a lot about death, too. The toltec shamanic teaching is that death is the wisest adviser and ally of the seeker of thuths. Whenever you feel sad and hopelessness, or too important and arrogant, or even drowned in the self pity sea, death has a very good advice to move you forward: there´s no time to waste with this things.