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Question for September 22, 2013: Fear
Medivate — 13 years ago — in Question of the Week
Medivate — 13 years ago — in Question of the Week
Have you ever experienced fear while meditating? What was it like? How did you relate to it?
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patrick — 13 years ago — permalinkNo, I never experienced fear during meditation, or if I did , I can't remember it.
Certainly, when I was starting out, I was very anxious ( on top of the anxiety that I already had) about where my meditation was going to take me. Even the act of ''letting go'' disturbed me. I feared some other entity was going to take over my life.
For me, all that kind of thinking, proved groundless, as I feel that I came closer to my ' true self ' during and after meditation.▲
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davidbhayes — 13 years ago — permalinkYah, I generally would say my experience has been the same, Patrick. Fear isn't something I really remember experiencing on the cushion. But there's been a lot of anxiety. The anxiety I've felt is really more around shock about what my mind is actually like. I actually talk about it as frustration in this post, but it's a similar thing.
I think it's reasonable to say that anxiety is just a form of fear, and the more I think about that the more accurate it feels. For me the anxiety or fear that, as I started to peel back the layers, I saw that I wasn't really who I thought I was. A lot of frustration came out of that, but staying with it and listening to dharma talks slowly made it clear that it wasn't really a problem, I was just seeing clearly what I'd previously misunderstood.