I am afraid of darkness – what can I do?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
what do I do with fear of darkness and clowns are not something which people are afraid of maybe it is ghosts or something that we are afraid of but with respect to darkness generally when our fears are there we have to deal with them there is a body, there is a mind and a soul so correspondingly there is a physical solution if you are afraid of dark simple thing is avoid dark try to have light as much as possible if there is no light, try to have some flashlight or something you have to work at a practical level but not only at a practical level it is at the level of the mind what do I do, what is it when we are in dark we become fearful but then when we are in light when we are safe, we can look back and think maybe have our parents or somebody else think with us what is it that I am exactly fearful of is that somebody will come and attack me or is it that I will slip and fall fear is basically when the mind goes on an imagination track and then we have to find out what exactly is that track and what triggered that track maybe saw a movie where a child was kidnapped in the dark and I said I am fearful, whenever I am in dark I will get kidnapped or I heard some story from someone about what happens in dark that is what caused fear so at an emotional level we try to analyze what caused that fear or what is the imagination that the mind is going along and then try to deal with that that is not happening in real life in my life there are doors, there is safety there is no need to be afraid so that is at an emotional level and even if you are not able to deal with it fear is not the problem usually, it is what comes after fear for most people it is not that we all have our fears and we don’t, we never completely overcome our fear it is that say if a cricketer is there and the cricketer goes out to bat there is some fear what if I get out of zero, what if I get injured sometimes you may say sometimes players get injured and they get badly injured they never want to play again their fear is always there so we press on not by the removal of fear but by cultivating a purpose that is higher than fear this is when a cricketer goes out to bat I want to perform, I am a batsman, I want to develop my talent so we don’t have to be fearful of our fear fear is there and yes some amount of fear is good because that can inspire us to be alert say if a batsman has a little tension, a little anxiety there is more alertness there is more sharpness so this energy of fear we don’t have to necessarily let it make us fearful it can increase our alertness and lastly at a spiritual level we have to develop more faith connect with Krishna it is said that when fear if we are driving in a car and while driving in a car if suddenly the car starts moving fast say if there is a slope because of that the car is moving too fast then what do we do? we press the brake but sometimes some people instead of pressing the brake, they press the accelerator boom the car starts moving even faster say the car is moving fast we have to press, not the accelerator we have to press the brake so similarly when fear starts coming in our mind we don’t have to press the accelerator of our imagination our mind will imagine this will go wrong, that will go wrong we have to press the brake of faith we chant the name of Krishna we pray to Krishna and that is redirecting our thoughts towards Krishna whatever it is that if you like a particular pastime of Krishna then keep that picture of Krishna with you that pastime and then you pray to Krishna and then you press that brake then we will find that thoughts will come under control so by avoiding light, by having light as much as possible to avoid darkness by trying to find out what is it that triggers my imagination and recognizing that even if that doesn’t go away fear is fine, it can increase my alertness it’s only when I let that fear choke me if I cultivate a fear bigger than fear if I cultivate a purpose bigger than fear and lastly when fear starts accelerating in the imagination we press the brake of faith by that we will be able to deal with our fears