Dealing with the Fear of Becoming Old | Eckhart Tolle Teachings

This person writes in I'm often fearful about being ill, being poor, growing old, death and other worries. How do I overcome these fears? In other words, how do I live my life without these kinds of fears? Or is that possible even?

Yes, that's the question that many people have. I still remember. Well, it's now becoming distant past for me. I still remember having those fears. Waking up in the middle of the night, sometimes almost in a state of panic, although I was in a warm bed. There was nothing wrong at that moment, and yet there was a sense of panic. Oh my God, what's going to happen? So the fear, if you look at. Pay attention to how the fear, the anxiety arises. Angst is sometimes the word that they use in English too. It's a German word. But angst is used for kind of existential anguish, the anguish of just being alive, which is so problematic. So if you see how it arises, then you will notice that it's created not by any true problem in your life, but by thought. It's created by the unobserved mind. So there is a lack of presence, which means that certain thoughts, repetitive thoughts, take you over. Many of those thoughts refer to possible future events. Nothing that's happening here now, but something in the future. And as I've often. You might have heard me say that ultimately the future, although we need it and it makes sense for practical purposes, but in your direct experience of life, well, that's an important criterion for what is real. It's your direct experience of life. In your direct experience of life, the future does not exist. Because when future arrives, it's the present moment. You cannot experience the future. You can only experience the present moment. For some people, that's news. And then you see that ultimately the future exists as thought. The future is essentially a thought in your mind. So the fear of future and the fear of things going wrong in the future, I might become poor, I might become ill, I might become old and died. I might become destitute, whatever it may be. Those are all thoughts that have such hypnotic power over you that you cannot tell the difference between a thought and actual reality, actual life. And then you missed, and the body does not know the difference. So when you think of fearful thought, imagining a certain scenario, the body reacts with emotion that is exactly the same as if you were in a real situation. The body cannot tell the difference whether your mind is imagining something or whether it's actually happening. The body doesn't know the difference. So fear arises when a thought comes up, repetitive thought, persistent thought, and you don't recognize it as a thought because it occupies your entire mind there's no room for presence or awareness in other words there is no observing consciousness and then the emotion is there and the emotion gives even more power to the originating thought so then you get thought forms that are fueled by emotion emotional thinking vicious circle Thought creates emotion the emotion gives more energy to the thought thought gives more energy to the emotion and so it grows so the problem is not the future the problem is in the present moment is are you able to be aware of your thoughts especially thoughts that create suffering thoughts that make you unhappy thought that have nothing to do what's happening around you here and now and can you recognize first of all that those thoughts are not referring to anything that's happening here now in other words that is real and can you also recognize that they create unhappiness in you they create suffering in this case fear or anxiety which is not pleasant it.