Meditate to Release Fear

Meditation is a practice of consciously focusing your attention for a period of time. While there are many keys to effective meditation, the essence of the practice is learning to focus your attention as you choose.

 How does this relate to fear? You may have heard it said that every moment in life offers you a choice: you can come from ―love‖ or ―fear.‖ There are many ways of stating the contrasting choice that each moment offers, but the basic idea is the same: you can live from a positive lifeaffirming place or in a mode of negativity and protection.

Choice is a skill. It means that you can see alternatives and focus on one versus the other. In other words, you can consciously focus your attention according to how you choose to be. This is where meditation comes in. Meditation trains your awareness and your skills of attention. For example, one way to meditate is to focus on your breathing. You keep your attention centered in your breathe. You find a comfortable, upright, seated position in a quiet, private space, relax your body, and focus on following the natural rhythm of inhaling and exhaling.

 The skill comes in when something enters your mind that is other than paying attention to your breathing, say a thought about other things you have to do, a memory, or some feeling or sensation in your body. In meditation, you deal with your wandering thought, feeling, or sensation in three steps:

1. You recognize the thought, feeling, or sensation that is other than your point of focus (in this case your breathing). You become aware that your attention has wandered. You accept whatever has grabbed your attention. You welcome it into your awareness.

2. You gently release the thought, feeling, or sensation that has grabbed your attention. You are aware of it, but you let it go, without giving it any more time, energy, or attention.

3. You return to your meditative focus (again, in this case, your breathing). As many times as your mind wanders to other thoughts, feelings, or sensations, you repeat these three steps. I call these steps the 3Rs: recognize, release, and return.

The more you meditate, the better you become at maintaining your focus and the easier it becomes to let go of anything that pulls you away from your focus. This is a skill that you can apply to anything that you do in life.

For example, you might desire to build a better relationship with someone. That is a conscious focus for you. As you become close, fears might arise as a result of painful relationship experiences in your past. You can treat these fears as you would treat any thought, feeling, or sensation that arises in meditation.

First, recognize your fear, honor it, and welcome it into your awareness. Fear has its greatest power when it lurks in your subconscious. Become aware of your fear and accept it. Don‘t be afraid of it. Observe it without reacting to it. This begins to take the emotional edge off of it.

Second, consciously release your fear. Make a decision that you will not give it any more time, energy, or attention.

 Third, return to focusing on your conscious intent to build an intimate relationship. Focus on the feeling of open, honest communication that you desire and bring that into the moment. Be that. Act in that way.

As many times as fear resurfaces, go through the 3Rs.

 Most people find that progress in meditation, as well as progress in keeping focus in life, follows stages over time. As you practice consistently, you may find that, at first, you become more aware of your thoughts and feelings than ever before. You may not have been so aware of your fears until you started to pay attention to your inner life. It‘s O.K. That‘s natural.

Second, you will begin to relate to your thoughts, feelings, and fears differently. You‘ll see that they come and go. You‘ll learn that as you become aware of them and accept them, they begin to lose their grip on your attention. You‘ll be able to release them more and more easily over time.

Finally, you‘ll be able to center yourself in your chosen point of focus, whether it‘s in deepening a meditative experience or any other experience that you desire in life. Whatever you focus on increases. Therefore, your ability to consciously focus your attention is the most essential skill you can master. Meditation is the best way that I know to gain this skill.