: Fear of Change

It is natural. Whenever you feel frightened, just relax. Accept the fact that fear is there, but don’t do anything about it. Neglect it; don’t pay any attention to it. Watch the body. There should not be any tension in it. If tension doesn’t exist in the body, the fear disappears automatically. Fear makes a certain tense state in the body, to get rooted in it. If the body is relaxed, fear is bound to disappear. A relaxed person cannot be scared. You cannot frighten a relaxed person. Even if fear comes, it will come like a wave…it will not get roots.

Fear coming and going like waves and you remaining untouched by it, is beautiful. When it gets rooted in you and starts growing in you, then it becomes a growth, a cancerous growth. Then it cripples your inner organism.

So whenever you feel frightened, the one thing to look at is that the body should not be tense. Lie down on the floor and relax – relaxation is the antidote for fear – and it will come and go. You simply watch.

That watching should not be of interest – indifferent. One just accepts that it’s okay. The day is hot; what can you do? The body is perspiring…one has to pass through it. The evening is coming close, and a cool breeze will be blowing…. So just watch it and be relaxed.

Once you have the knack of it, and you will have it soon – that if you are relaxed, fear cannot get attached to you, that it comes and goes and leaves you unscarred – then you have the key. And it will come. It will come because the more we change, the more fear will be coming.

Every change creates fear, because every change is putting you into the unfamiliar, into a strange world. If nothing changes and everything remains static, you will never have any fear. That means, if everything is dead, you will not be afraid.

For example, you are sitting down and there is a rock Lying down. There is no problem: you will look at the rock, and everything is okay. Suddenly the rock starts walking; you become frightened. Aliveness! Movement creates fear; and if everything is unmoving, there is no fear.

That’s why people, afraid of getting into fearful situations, arrange a life of no change. Everything remains the same and a person follows a dead routine, completely oblivious that life is a flux. He remains in an island of his own making in which nothing changes. The same room, the same photographs, the same furniture, the same house, the same habits, the same slippers – everything the same. The same brand of cigarettes; even a different brand you won’t like. Between this, amidst this sameness, one feels at ease.

People live almost in their graves. What you call a convenient and comfortable life is nothing but a subtle grave. So when you start changing, when you start on the journey of inner space, when you become an astronaut of the inner space, and everything is changing so fast, every moment is trembling with fear. So more and more fear has to be faced.

Let it be there. By and by you will start enjoying the changes so much that you will be ready at any cost. Change will give you vitality…more aliveness, zest, energy. Then you will not be like a pond…closed from everywhere, not moving. You will become like a river flowing towards the unknown, and towards the ocean where the river becomes lost.