How to Manage Fear in Meditation | Eckhart Tolle

When I meditate, extreme fear often arises in my mind. I feel like I would be destroyed or completely disappear. So I stop meditation because of the fear. I'm so afraid to keep going on, although I intuitively know that bearing the fear would get me closer to enlightenment. How can I conquer this fear? This is, yes, of course, the fear of the person, the personalized sense of self, or the ego, which can feel threatened by the arising awareness. And once you know that, you can still meditate and allow the fear to be there. It's only when you try to run away from the fear that really it becomes a great obstacle. But if you can be with the fear, allow the fear to be there, as on a pure energy level, feel the fear, then you will find it begins to dissolve. So rather than not wanting to feel it, allow yourself to feel it. Then this is the beginning of change. If you always run away from it, then it will linger. There's no change. There's a book called, I think, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, or something like that. But that is quite good advice, although I mean, not applied necessarily to everything. I'm going to jump off now. But to allow yourself to feel whatever feeling comes is part of the present what the isness of the present moment. So if the fear arises, but then you also realize, what is the fear created by a thought? You will know that. Or is the fear arising just by itself in a particular situation? When you become still, do you have a fear of silence? Do you feel uncomfortable when you go into a room and there's no noise in it? Some people do feel. Some people are uncomfortable in nature. It's not noisy enough. So, see, it may be that the fear arises when you. When you become still, you meditate. Then it's not necessarily associated with the thought, but with that arising of awareness. And instead of stopping your meditation, just what happens if I just carry on and make the fear into a meditation? Meditate on the fear. So if you do meditate, nothing really can disturb you. The good meditator incorporates whatever arises in the present moment into the meditation, including the most irritating noise that suddenly starts up outside. And the mind says, I can't meditate now. I need stillness. And then you realize, no, perhaps this is part of the meditation. And how does it become part of the meditation? By allowing the isness of this moment, which is that, to be. And if it comes from within, fear, anxiety, you allow that to be. But you have to be careful that it doesn't become a thought. Because the moment you are drawn back into thinking.