The mind is always creating thought worlds that make us suffer. To get beyond this suffering, you have to confront the fears that force the mind to keep creating these worlds.

What supports lovingkindness is the sincere caring we give in each moment as we say a metta phrase. What obstructs metta are its near and far enemies; affection with attachment and aversion such as sadness, fear, anger, or judgement.

Contact brings impressions into the heart, which gets retrained at an involuntary level and affect our immediate response to life in terms of fear, mistrust, desire. There are ways of clearing this—the result is joy.

“Being human is a guest house” wrote Rumi. Every day we greet new arrivals – joys, sorrows, hostilities and more; and moments of awareness too. We bow to the present moment and greet them all, be they thorns or unruly monsters like malice, shame, fear, anger or greed. Can we see them all just as they are, painful or pleasant – impermanent, not ours, not who we are? Can we let them come and go, and be grateful? Treat whatever passes through the heart as empty. After all, these are karmic messengers from beyond bearing unique spiritual gifts. For in their presence, we strengthen our practice. Wisely attentive, reflective, and aware, we are on the magnificent path of waking up.

The larger plane of becoming is potent with tendencies that give rise to the person. This person becomes formed from our worries, fears, compulsions – it’s a restricted self. We practice widening into that larger citta realm and cultivating enlightenment factors to form around instead. This is how we take responsibility for what we put out into the world, and to change our kamma.

Boundaries create a self-definition between what I am and what I fear becoming. Understanding how the fear and the self-definition arise together allows their dissolution.

Understanding the trance of fear and the practices that free our heart.

Although freedom is found in the moment, there is a continual process of purifying the heart and mind. This process is discussed including facing our fears, deepening our commitment, learning to love ourselves while seeing through our sense of self, culminating in practice being our gift to the world.

This talk explores fear as a form of craving and also several particular fears, such as death, judgement, and emptiness. It concludes with practical instructions on working with fear in meditation, which can lead to a fearlessness with all difficult states.