In our life, we are afraid of several things. We fear from catastrophic changes or collateral damage like fear of death, losing loved ones, economic status shifting and other major changes. We overcome few of them by knowing the reality but few become chronic and grow with us. 

Fear is an unpleasant emotion that arises against the changes in your comfort zone in which you are living at present. The Wikipedia defines the comfort zone as “A comfort zone is a psychological state in which things feel familiar to a person and they are at ease and (perceive they are) in control of their environment, experiencing low levels of anxiety and stress. In this zone, a steady level of performance is possible.”

We all love to live in our comfort zone as we experience low level of anxiety and stress in this state. We are all born with our comfort zone and we constantly build it throughout our life. So, the feeling of fear is natural and we all experience fear. We all are afraid of either the present, past or future. Every human being contains five aggregates – body, thoughts, perception, emotions, violation instinct and conscious and all these five aggregates that build our comfort zone collectively. As we coincide with these five aggregates, we experience Fear.  

Fear is a natural survival mechanism inbuilt with the living creature. In fact, it is an inbuilt triggering awareness system that generates an alert against the threat and enforces us to take necessary measures against the threat to protect ourselves. Since fear is alerting us to impending danger, it becomes a threat. Our deepest fear is a threat to our life. When fear rules us, we are at the worst state of our emotions. But, we are capable to deal with fear. We all have experienced fear at sometimes in our life. 

Fear resides in deep layer of our mind
The structure of our mind is like an Onion – layers by layers. It has layers of impulses, desire of living, sex, thrust, hunger, breathing, and Fear at the core of the onion. The logical thinking pattern and its happenings are being functioned at the outer layer of the mind but our deep driving emotions like anger, sex and fear resides at the core layer of the mind. The core layer of the mind was derived from our ancestor’s brain long. That’s why we don’t express our deep driving emotions during our normal state. But, when we experience pain and discomfort or unfavorable conditions, our deep driving emotions gets activated, especially our greatest fear. 

What is our Greatest Fear?

In our regular life, we fear to get separated from our family. The feeling of separation from loved one is expressed in the form of sorrow. It may not be actual but even thinking about it, about their future or past based on our previous experience. It may be imagery but it creates the same effect in our personality. But, we know the fact that all animate or inanimate things are changing and we have fear against that “Change”. The feeling of losing our most precious is the root cause of our greatest fear. It may be money, loved one, or our life. The separation from our loved ones is our greatest fear.

But, as the Buddha said, “All beings die, but death is not the end of all things. Death is only the end of one’s life.”

Spiritual Definition of Fear
In the spiritual world, the fear is defined as an imagery entity. Fear is actually the result of not living in the present moment but, living in the virtual world created by our mind. Fear denotes that we are worried about what is going to happen next. It means that it doesn’t exist, its imagery. In fearful state, we suffer with non-existential entity. We are afraid of or suffering anything which does not exist because we are not rooted in reality at that moment. If we are rooted in reality, there would be no fear. We constantly dwell in the past or future due to the feeling of insecurity. But, if we stick to the present moment, you will realize what is going on right now. 

Can Meditation overcome our Greatest Fear

Buddha said, “Those who see something to fear where there is nothing to fear, and see nothing to fear where there is something to fear upholding false views, they go to states of woe.”

Now, it is clear that fear arises because of the impure state of our mind. The impurities in our mind are covetousness, lust, hate, lethargy etc. If we have attachment by any means, we have fear. Buddha said, “Attachment arises because of the desire to contain something and the fear arises with the feeling of losing it.”

The victory over fear is never easy as it is an invisible enemy situated inside the deep layers of our mind. In order to overcome fear, we need to remove the root cause of it. The meditation practices help us to open the inner layers of our mind and display the real face of our greatest fear. Meditation gives us the mental peace and inner strength to face any situation. Meditation helps us to drop the unnecessary imagination about the unknown future and bring our mind to the present moment as it is the only time where the action is possible. Meditation brings us to our core nature. As we regain our natural state, our mind comes in a peaceful state.  With a peaceful and reluctant mind, we will be able to overcome our greatest fear. 

We would recommend to practice mindful meditation as it is one of the best techniques to keep the mind in the present moment. It stops us to be overly reactive or anxious about the future happenings. The practice of mindful meditation helps us to focus our mind and keeps it unaffected from Non-existent Fear. 

You can start its initial practice of Mindful Meditation by learning about it from online tutorial but if you feel uncomfortable, you can take the help of a mentor. At yoga studios or yoga schools like Gyan Yog Breath, you can find an expert of meditation practice who can help you to learn the right practices of Mindful Meditation. You can enroll for a meditation retreat program where you can attend the detailed session of mindful meditation.