How to Reduce Anxiety and Fear | Eckhart Tolle 20 Minute Compilation

Are there any thought processes connected with the fear? In other words, what are the thoughts that your mind is producing while you're feeling the fear? Well, fear, anxiety, which is a form of fear, very common. Some people have it, many have it in the background continuously. And I would say there's some degree of fear, even if you're not conscious of it. If you're totally identified with the egoic mind, you will have fear, if only in the background. And it may come out in other forms. It can come express itself as anger. If you look at anger closely, you usually find hidden underneath the anger is a state of fear.

So.

If there's fear, one important thing is to, of course, you need to direct your attention to it. You acknowledge that there's fear. The important question that arises is.

Are.

There any thought processes connected with the fear? In other words, what are the thoughts that your mind is producing while you're feeling the fear? Is it possible that certain thoughts that you think frequently or habitually produce the fear? Is it possible you project yourself into the next moment, into the future moment, excessively trying to control something that you have no control over? What's going to happen to me? Or project, or creating an imaginary scenario of loss that you might suffer? It's not happening now, but it might happen. And many things that the thought activity, excessive thought activity often creates scenarios of things going wrong that are not happening now, may never happen, often probably will never happen. And even if they did happen, the actual situation would actually be easier to face than the imaginary situation in your mind, because there's nothing you can do. There's no action you can take to remedy an imaginary situation, except to stop thinking it. But if an actual situation arises, you face it and you give it your attention, and then you take the action that you need to take. But an imaginary situation, you're totally at the mercy of it. So it only exists in your mind. So you need to see whether your mind is creating the fear by thinking fearful thoughts, by projecting itself into the future. And if that is the case, then you can see, oh, so I'm creating those because my body cannot tell the difference between an actual event that's happening outside and what my mind is producing. So when I'm thinking, my life situation is critical. If this is basically what your thoughts are telling you, then your body believes that this is the actual truth, that you are being threatened at this very moment. The body doesn't know the difference, that the tiger isn't in the room. The threatening presence is your thoughts. The body reacts in the same way, whether there's a threat, an actual threat in the room. All your thoughts can create the same. Even palpitations. You can. Shortness of breath. Because you're thinking fearful thoughts at night. I had that for years. Awful state. It's insane. It's a disease. But nothing is happening. Absolutely nothing. There's a quiet room, nothing.

It's all happening in the mind.

So if that's the case, see, okay, then you need to tackle the thoughts because they will cause the fear. And how do you tackle thoughts is by using. By realizing the futility and the destructive nature of these thoughts and choosing to step out. And what do you do to step out? First, you don't believe your mind. That tells you no, you can't step out. You have to continue thinking. No, you step out and take a conscious breath or put your attention into the inner energy field of the body. A conscious choice to remove attention from thinking. And you may have to be really alert to do it. If you are immersed in this mind stream, it could even be that it's so powerful that you just cannot get out. It has such gravitational pull, it pulls you. But at least you know that this is what's happening. So there's a state where you cannot help yourself yet. But at least there is the beginning of a beginning of a disidentification from it. When you know that this is what is happening.

Your health, your relationships, your work, or lack of it, finances, living situation. Usually those things make up your life. More my life. But I call that your life situation as opposed to life, which is only ever now. Your life situation exists in the mind. You have to keep it alive there. It's important, of course, you have to deal with situations as they arise in your life, but they only arise in the present moment. And when you think about your life situation, you can only think about it in the present moment. It's important to have these two. Your life and your life situation. And not allow your life situation to completely obscure your life. Your presence, your sense of aliveness, your spaciousness. And that's helpful to bring attention, to learn to bring attention to your senses. The expression we could use is come to your senses, the five senses. So you become more aware of what surrounds you. Inhabit the body, another one that brings you, connects you with life, takes you out of the conceptualizing mind. Be here now, Come to your senses, Inhabit the body. Be here now. They're all one. And then you don't carry continuously with you like a heavy burden, your life situation. Of course, you address whatever Challenges arrive. You deal with them as they arise in the present moment. Occasionally, you might have to do some planning or some strategy occasionally. But also that happens in the present moment. For the rest of the time. Don't allow your life situation to completely obscure, completely stifle your sense of aliveness, your presence in the moment. Because then you walk around with the burden of a very heavy personality that you don't see what's around you anymore. You can't truly relate to other humans because you have the heaviness of your problematic life situation. And whose life situation is not problematic? It's in the nature of life situations to be problematic. Of course, you arrange your life as best you can, your life situation as best you can. Yes, you, you may acquire new skills so you can get a better job, or in whatever way you improve or attempt to improve your life situation, find a nicer place to live, why not? That's all fine, but the expectation that at some point life should leave you alone and not challenge you anymore, and that there's something wrong when life challenges you, that's a delusion that itself the unconscious assumption that there's something wrong when life presents so called problems to you. Better word is challenges. There's an unconscious assumption and an unconscious resentment and negative reaction the moment you're faced with a new challenge because of the underlying assumption that these things should not be happening. But no matter how carefully you arrange your life situation and no matter how much positive thinking you do, which is a nice thing, you will still be challenged by life. You will still experience the polarities of life. You will experience, for example, that every situation, every new situation has its new set of challenges.

So to cut, to sever the link between the emotion that you feel and your thought processes, what you do is, and this is not pleasant, but it's possible. You place your attention on the emotion. You feel it, it's unpleasant, but it's not going to kill you. A child will probably not be able to do that. If it's intense. It might have to escape into some.

Dissociation or whatever, possibly.

But an adult fear is not going to kill you. It might kill you if you allow it to rise into your mind. Because you might even commit suicide if you can't stand this anymore. But it will not kill you in itself. So feel it. And then you shine the light of awareness on it. And you may have to do that a lot. And at first it's not pleasant, but it's a burning up of the old emotion. And the only way to get Rid of it is to accept it as it is right now. If you want to get rid of it, you can't. But that complete acceptance of what is, is actually the doorway through it. It's a transformation. It. And if it's extreme, that can become your main meditation in life. And that will become your main teacher, and that will bring about your transformation. In some people's lives, there is one huge disability, one huge source of suffering or pain that it could be a physical disability. It could be a situation. Situation like being in prison. It could be an emotion like that that you carry inside that doesn't need to go, doesn't want to go away. So in certain people's lives, there is one major thing that seems to color your entire life and make your affect your entire life. And seemingly makes it impossible for you to ever be free or happy or joyful. But if that one thing, if you surrender to it, allow it to be. And make it as a continuous spiritual practice, you need nothing else. That one thing will transform you if you surrender to it. And there will come a point when you are grateful that you had to go through that because it will have taken you. It will be the greatest spiritual teacher. So there was, I believe, if I remember correctly, even Epictetus, that philosopher who said, it's not the situation that makes you unhappy, it's the thought that makes you unhappy. If I remember correctly, he was also crippled. He couldn't walk properly, and he was a slave until he became freed. So it's often humans who have one major disability or some huge, huge difficulty in life, and that becomes their catalyst for spiritual transformation. If they can surrender to it, allow it to be acceptance, I call it acceptance of the seemingly unacceptable. Stephen Hawking's case, for example. I don't know to what extent he awakened spiritually, but he accepted the unacceptable. And so certain miracles happened. He survived. Nobody would have thought it possible. And his life became fruitful. On one level at least. Acceptance of the unacceptable is a great source of grace in this world. It's just a miracle, but it's an arduous. It can be an arduous process, especially for this questioner here, who is here. It may take a while. You have to endure it and be with it and surrender to it a lot of the time. And that's your meditation. You don't need transcendental meditation. Your pain, your fear is enough. Be with it. The strange thing is, only by encountering these challenges do we grow in consciousness and generate energy. It awakens us eventually. Now, if you Overdo physical exercise, you put too much strain on the body. You could kill the body, you could kill yourself. And this has happened. People who were so obsessed with physical exercise that they overdid it. I've read, for example, whenever it was one or two years ago, a man who wrote about the incredible benefits of jogging died of a heart attack while he was jogging. And he wasn't that old. So you can overdo it. And then instead of the body getting stronger, it dies. And you could also say when you look at life and humans, life on this planet, probably many other planets, you would say, well, it's all very well. Sometimes it seems to work that through facing challenges and problems, we grow. We grow out of identification with mind, we grow out of the ego. We transcend our conditioned state of consciousness and a new consciousness arises. And if I know, not actually speaking for myself, without facing difficulties and challenges, there would not have been any growth in consciousness and no awakening. If I had had a. What's the word? For example, a trust fund, where you know from a very early age, your parents have already looked after your security. And you know from an early age, if you don't want to work or anything, you don't have to. You can have a comfortable life without ever doing anything. There are people like that. There may even be one or two here. But if you are here and you are a trust fund baby, then other things must have happened to you that created difficulties. It wasn't financial, but there were other things.