What the Fear Is Made Of

If you are afraid, nothing is wrong with you. The fear of death is the oldest fear there is, underneath the fear of the dark, of losing people, of being alone, of pain.

The fear is a feeling. The stories it brings, about pain, about the people you will leave, about the dark, about nothing or something coming next, are stories. Neither is information about what death is. Notice how completely we treat them as the same thing. The fear rises, tight in the chest, cold in the hands, and we take the fear itself as evidence: if I am this afraid, it must be that bad. Then the mind, which cannot stand an open question, paints a picture of death in the darkest colors it has, and we are frightened of the picture. We have never once seen the thing itself. We are afraid of our own painting.

Death is a dream, an illusion.
In the truest sense, there is nothing that can die.

— Longchenpa

You do not have to believe that. The next time the fear comes, look at the fear instead of at the pictures it paints.

Looking at it

This is best done alone, when the fear is actually present, usually at night. A minute or two is enough.

1. Stop trying to solve whatever the fear is pointing at, just for a minute. The problem will still be there afterward.
2. Let the body be however it is. Then turn your attention away from the story about the future and toward the actual sensation of being afraid. Where is it tonight? Chest, throat, belly, hands, the air just in front of you? Find where it actually is, not where it usually lives.
3. Look at it the way you would look for a dropped key on the floor, patiently. Does it have edges? A shape? Is it hot or cold, heavy or light? Does it hold still, or flicker?
4. Then turn the attention around once more and look for the one who is afraid. Not the name, not the biography. The actual frightened one, right now. Where is it? What is it made of? Does it have edges?
5. Keep looking, gently, for a short while. Do not answer with a thought. Let the looking be the answer.
6. Then let the whole thing go, and rest for a moment in whatever is left.

What usually happens

The fear, looked at directly, turns out to be a movement of energy, vivid and unpleasant and not solid. The stories, without attention feeding them, thin out. And the frightened one is very hard to find. What you find instead, when you look for the one who is afraid, is the looking itself: awake, open, and not frightened.

That awake, open looking is what the masters call awareness. It was there before the fear came, it is there while the fear is here, and it will be there when the fear goes. It has never been afraid, because it has never been threatened. The fear is happening inside it, the way weather happens inside the sky.

You will not do this perfectly. Sometimes the wave will be too big and you will just have to lie there and let it pass. A wave that is allowed to pass, passes. The fear may come back ten minutes later. Look again. Each time, you are a little more familiar with the one who is not afraid.