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 HE
BASIC OR ROOT CAUSE OF FEAR IS IGNORANCE OR DARKNESS. For any kind of
fear, whether it is pecuniary, family, physical well being, security, prestige,
loss of possessions, inherently the root cause is ignorance or darkness. Because
you do not know the nature of things, this ignorance makes you afraid.
In the immediate sense, leaving aside the root cause, normally fear is due to two conditions of mind: either you fear you might lose
what you have, or you crave for what you do not have. Both of these make you
afraid because behind them is some result that you are calculating. Now these
two things actually are the same. In both conditions, you are afraid because
you do not know the nature of things. Let's go deeper. Whenever the mind
is disturbed, confused, restless and unstable, you create certain negativities,
including fear. The immediate cause of fear is loss of a sense of possession
or belonging.
Let's see how fear can be avoided. Normally we are
afraid of the darkness, right? A child going into darkness is afraid, simply
because he does not know what he is going through. In our adulthood also, when
we face darkness or ignorance, we are afraid because we do not know what we
are facing. If the light were on, if you were an Enlightened Being, you would
not be afraid. Simply thinking about fear or praying to God to get rid of it
will not free you of fear. You have to remove the cause of fear by knowing
the nature of things. But how can you know the nature of things when there are
millions of things? That means you would have to be a fully Enlightened Being
to get rid of fear, but that may be too far, at least we believe it is
too far. So how can we know the nature of things in an easy, practical, tangible
way? Start with the A-B-C of it.
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SIMPLY THINKING
ABOUT FEAR OR PRAYING TO GOD