Why fear is sometimes desirable and good while fearfulness is not? – Chaitanya Charan

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
At one level Fear is like a constant Background noise In our lives But sometimes It starts coming to the foreground Like a shrill or even a scream And that is the time When we start taking greater notice of it And then we have to deal with it But let’s look at I will talk about this in three broad parts First we will differentiate between fear and fearfulness And then I will talk about what causes fear And then I will talk about How we can deal with our fears So first of all Fear itself Is not a bad thing It is not something that we Necessarily have to get rid of Fear is a natural And desirable response to danger Biologically and psychologically We have evolved And designed in such a way That we basically We protect Ourselves from danger And the sensation of the emotion That points us to danger Is fear So fear is not only natural It is even essential For our safety So if there is danger And we feel fear Then we are protected We are here, the danger is here And in our mind there is an emotion of fear We take the necessary precautions However Different from fear Is fearfulness So as the word Fearfulness means They are full of fear So that means That the response The reaction of fear Is present Even when the danger Is not present Or even when the danger is present In a relatively less pronounced way So basically One reason Why we as a society Are Much more fearful Than maybe A few decades or a few centuries ago And this is seen From the sheer number of people who have Mental health issues One of them is anxiety One reason is that As I said there is the stimulus Which is the danger Then there is a reaction A response to fear And we are the experiencer So we perceive the stimulus And we experience the response And that way we create Or maintain A safe distance Between us and the danger However As our society has become more and more Complicated, our economy Our political arrangement Our social interactions So the The dangers to us Have become less and less tangible So An animal, a deer in a jungle Has a very tangible object of terror It’s a tiger A lion But for us Not many of us really live in fear That some person will Pounce on us and rob us That’s a fear But our fears are much more Diffused So Now because of globalization So Something that happened in the Markets of Wuhan in China That’s affecting the whole world And a virus is so small How do you fight with it? Or the global economy goes down Then there is no tangible enemy There is no tangible Source of the danger And because of that What happens is The danger is there And it is left to Our mind to decide Whether the danger is Something to the constant background noise Or it should become a shrill In one sense Insecurity is always there in the world But sometimes It is very pronounced So in the case In the world which we live in today Whether the danger is Pronounced or not Because the source of the danger itself Is not tangible So it is very difficult for us To process it And that’s why our Brains in our minds Tend to stay in a constant Mode of Being Hyper alert And that’s how we become more and more Fearful So fear is healthy But fearfulness is unhealthy Unhealthy because First of all we exhaust ourselves faster And Another reason is because It distorts Our perceptions In some ways If we are on high alert It’s good But if we are to constantly stay on high alert It is not that easy It’s like saying If the soldiers have to be Constantly 24 hours a day at attention They’ll get exhausted Very quickly So for us when we have to constantly Be high alert And when should we be high alert That is left for our mind to decide That’s how we end up Becoming fearful So now basically how does Fear arise So as I said there is a danger outside And there is a response inside Now when the response comes It comes primarily by By the Imagination of our mind The yoga texts of Ancient India Posit a three level Conception of the human being That we human beings are not just physical Creatures, there is the body There is the mind and there is the consciousness So this is something similar to A computer program where there is hardware Software and user So there is A physical danger And then there is a At the hardware level Some signal comes in At the software level Some notification comes up Oh there is a danger And we have to respond to it So when there is fearfulness When we have to face our fears We need to understand the difference Between fear and fearfulness And the difference is Ideally speaking The body, the consciousness The mind and the body They need to be aligned In one line And when they align in this way Then proper perception takes place But when there is misalignment That’s when Our mind starts Imagining some things That’s when we become absent minded A classic example Of absent mindedness Let’s say somebody has a ranch And they are riding on a horse Searching all over the ranch For the horse On which they are riding Where is my horse? Where is my horse? They are worried So what has happened is The consciousness is here The mind is here And the body is here So you could say consciousness Is like the source of light Like the bulb That is the source of the consciousness Is what is sometimes called as soul From the soul consciousness Comes out as a beam of light And consciousness comes To the mind and through the mind To the outer world The physical level So when there is misalignment So the We the perceivers are here And then there is a misalignment Between the body and the mind That’s when Fear starts going out of control That means What is the reality And what is the imagination We are unable to differentiate And then we get caught Once there was a woman She went to a doctor and she said that Doctor, doctor There is a frog in my stomach And the frog is Running around and creating havoc Doctor said no, there is no frog there A frog can’t survive here No, it’s there So The doctor said it’s not there She went to a second doctor, third doctor Finally when she went to a tenth doctor What happened The tenth doctor heard her story So she said Let me check Oh really, actually there is a frog here Oh thank god What do you need to do I said we have to do surgery to operate it And remove it When do you want to do it He said right away And then he gave her Anesthesia and did some small incisions Near her belly And he told one of his nurses To go to a nearby pond And get a small frog from there And when he came back with the frog He came back to consciousness He said this is the frog we found in your belly Thank god We are so much Nobody was ready to believe me But you believe me I am free from this fear now She went away And the doctor and the medical staff Saw that it was a clever solution And A week later she came back In great exhaustion Doctor, doctor The frog had babies So what happens When the mind has its imagination There is a misalignment Between the body And the mind And when that happens The mind starts imagining And the imagination Cannot be dealt with Except at the level of the mind The physical things can be dealt with at the physical level We have to Identify the mind And distance ourselves from it