Excerpts Chapter 19
THE MEDITATION BOOK:
CONQUERING NEGATIVE EMOTIONS AND THOUGHTS
Conquering fear through meditation
Question: How can I conquer fear in my mind and in my heart?
Sri Chinmoy: Let us start with the mental fear. You have fear in your mind precisely because you do not consciously want to expand your mind. This expansion of the mind does not mean an expansion of the intellectual capacity. No. This expansion of the mind means the removal of tension. Unfortunately, you have tremendous tension in your mind and in your vital life. But if you can expand your mind like the wide sky, then automatically your tension will be removed. Fear exists in a particular place only when there is no expansion. The very function of fear is to live in a tiny hole. It cannot stay where there is movement — outer movement or inner movement. You can remove all your mental fear through mental movement and mental expansion. So when you sit for meditation, please feel the necessity of expanding your mind.
Fear in the heart you can overcome if you can feel that you are God’s child and that you are all the time sitting in His Lap. A child has no fear because consciously or unconsciously he is constantly bringing his soul to the fore. He also feels that he always has someone to protect him — the mother protects him and the father protects him. But when the child grows up, he feels that there is nobody thinking of him, nobody taking care of him or looking after him. During adolescence he thinks that everybody is deserting him. There is no mother, no father, no friend. He has to do everything for himself. But when he was a child, a baby, he inwardly and outwardly felt that there was someone to think of him and protect him. He constantly felt an additional force behind him.
To get rid of fear in the heart, every day when you meditate, try to feel that you are inside the Heart of God, your Inner Pilot. Do not think that you are eighteen or nineteen or twenty years old. No. Think that you are only one month old and that you are inside the very Heart of the Supreme, or in the very Lap of the Supreme. Now, you have not seen the Supreme, so try to imagine the most beautiful human being, who is absolutely golden. Imagine that He is right in front of you and that you are inside His Heart or in His Lap or at His Feet. Today’s imagination is tomorrow’s aspiration, and tomorrow’s aspiration is the realisation of the day after tomorrow.
People who do not have the capacity to imagine cannot go very far. Imagination is not a false way of looking at the truth. Imagination is the proper way to look at the truth. We feel that a poet only lives in the world of imagination; but it is the poet who actually enters into the world of reality with his inner vision. In India the poets were called seers. But today, both in the West and in India, those who are endowed with imagination have become objects of ridicule. But this is a deplorable mistake.
To come back to your question, please try to imagine your Inner Pilot, the Supreme, around you and inside you. Then feel your own security, your own protection, inside Him. If you can do this, then there can be no fear. Fear comes because you feel that you are responsible. But you have to feel that you belong to Somebody else and that this Person is responsible for you. The child feels that the mother is responsible. Since you are a child of the Supreme, you have to feel that He is responsible for you.
The cause of fear
Question: Would you please explain what fear is and what causes it?
Sri Chinmoy: What is fear? Fear is something that does not allow us to enter into infinite Freedom. It is something that constantly binds us. It is something that constantly tells us that we are entirely different than or separate from others, that our existence is only for ourselves. Fear can exist in all parts of our being: our body, vital, mind and heart.
Physical fear cannot be conquered until psychic fear is conquered. When we have fear in the physical body and in the physical mind, it manifests as our need for some kind of immediate relief or release. Fear comes in like a thief and we cry for protection.
But this physical fear is not the only fear: there are other fears as well. If one has fear in the heart or the vital, he then has to overcome this fear or transform this fear into strength with the soul’s light. Otherwise, fear will kill its victim like slow poison.
Why do we fear? We fear because we have separated ourselves from God’s Love and we are apt to think of God the Omnipotent, not God the All-Love. But even the omnipotent God is not a God that threatens or strikes us with an iron rod every time we make a mistake. Our conception of God is so peculiar. We feel that God is like a primary school teacher, who is ready to beat us black and blue if we deviate an inch from the path of truth. But that conception of God is absurd. There is no such being as God the tyrant. There is only one God, and that God is God the Love. This God does not punish us. This God is constantly shaping us in His own Way. It is He who is the Doer, it is He who is the Action and it is He who is the Enjoyer, both in the action and in the result. But we feel that we are the doers, and that if we do something wrong, God will punish us mercilessly. But this is not so. It is God’s Dream that each individual embodies. It is God’s Reality that each individual has to manifest here on earth. It is in each human being that God’s Reality lives.
Excercise to overcome fear and anger
Question: If you feel nervous or upset, how can you bring down peace?
Sri Chinmoy: There are two ways. One way is to breathe in quietly and say “Supreme” three times very slowly. But if you find this difficult, you can invoke the Supreme as fast as possible. Fear or anxiety has a speed of its own. If you are about to be attacked by your enemy, then try to utter the name of the Supreme much faster than the speed of the attack you are getting from anger or fear. If you can do this, the Supreme will immediately conquer your anger, frustration or fear.