During one of his talk session, my adopted Spiritual Guru, Ajahn Brahm explain how fear can manifest fear. If we are fearful, this iwll be one of the limitation to unleash the real you from within. He cited a simple example to illustrate this weakness which have stuck in my mind very vividly.
There was this monk who was meditating alone in the forest under a bodi tree and as he meditate, he hear a sound from a distant and the sound gets louder and louder as it approach him. He dared not open his eyes and he wonder could it be a tiger or lion or some man eating animal coming towards him. His mind play up the thought and fear starts to set in. He was not at peace anymore and his attention was focus on his fear. He starts to shiver and sweat while he kept his eyes closed. Now , his heart is beating very load as the noise gets louder and louder towards him,. Finally, he decide to open his eyes and he saw a tiny mouse playing infront of him.
As we play more attention to a particualr emotion, it gets bolder and plays it up lke making a mountain out of a mole hill. It is very natural for most of us that we exaggerate the consequence of certain problem and event and create an unneccessary pressure on ourself. If it starts to rain, we expects a typhoon or when we do a mistake in our job, we fear that our boss will terminate us or scold us. In certain part of our education process, we have been train to plan and plan for the worst. Of course, there is no such thing as plan to fail but indirectly this concept have re-enforce our fear.
Why did I choose this issue to write ? In my mind , when I talk about fear, I remember an incident. The same nite ,after my MiL, Maggie's funeral, I was resting and was watching a DVD and certain the player malfunction and I try to re-start and repair it but it just refused to work. So, I called the repairman and he told me that he will be over in one hour. So, I went up to my room and try to take a rest with my wife. I fell asleep . After two hours, some press my door bell and I went down to open the door for the repairman. When I try to show him how I play the DVD , the system was operating very smoothly and there was no problem. The repair man just smile and left without doing anything. I was very sure that I have done the correct steps before calling the repair man. My mind starts imagine whether it is my MiL who have came back that night to visit us and could have stop the vedio from playing just to show us her presence. All my hairs were standing on their ends and my emotions and wild thoughts messing up in my head.
Why do I need to fear? My MiL have been very good to me and it would nice to met up with her and hear her out. Nothing is going to happen. Again, I blame it on the daily education we received from our education system or our parents , family or friends. IWe have been told and it is a local belief that a person's spirit will return to visit their family on the night after they are buried. This belief have help to play up my emotions. There are alot of make-beliefs in our mind and we need to understand this weakness and overcome them instead of letting these emotions overcome us.
If we do not fear death, what else is that to fear. Nature have a way to provide for us and what we need to do is to contain our emotions and manage our contentment. Many a times, the things are not what it seems to be.
So, lets go out and enjoy our life and look at fear in its face and tell it to go away.
Namaste.
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