How to Handle Fear

Question:

From a Taoist perspective, what is the best way to deal with fear?


To answer this we must first take a few steps back to understand fear.

Fear is: Foreseeing a negative potential as an outcome.

Fear is tricky subject because fear is all about something that isn’t real. More interestingly, by fearing something, we focus our energy and attention towards something that isn’t real. In our attention to details that often gives the fear energy to become real. So fear is a very serious topic, since for many people they drive their fears into reality.

Lets break this down: First understand what potential is before trying to resolve fear.

Potential isn’t reality, rather potential merely represents an outcome a person can experience. It takes energy to manifest potential into reality, it takes measurements and actions to channel the potential into reality.

More confusing some potentials are more likely than others… but no matter how likely a potential is, it is still potential and not reality until it is activated into reality.

How to handle fear

It must be understood there exist multiple ways to handle fear. Depending on your nature it may not be easy to dispel certain fears, especially if you are hardwired to have a fear.

1. When possible: release fear all together.
   Since fear isn’t “real” but rather represents a negative potential. The less energy you put into that fear, the less energy you place into manifesting your fear into reality.
   
   80% of fears can literally just be released outright without worry.
   
   
   
2. Practice Awareness
   Be more aware of all potentials around you. With awareness you can more easily navigate around potentials you don’t want to experience.
   
   
3. Practice mind, body and spiritual exercises to keep one in shape
   The more you build up your own potential in being strong, balanced and clear, the more options you can access to move around issues, problems and outcomes you would fear.
   
   Likewise educate yourself, educating yourself is a mind based exercise, that teaches your mind how to more carefully handle the potentials surrounding your fears. More times than not, education lets you jump back to step one, to allow you to release your fear and thus allowing one to dispel most fears outright with just a little more information.
   
   
4. Understand your own nature.

   If you have a natural fear to something, you can then work towards outside help to help teach you ways to handle or examine those fears in a safer manner. Be patient with yourself in this. We have some fears for a reason, and always first take a look at your fear to see if it is something that is helping you avoid a true problem ahead. Then revise your actions accordingly
   
   

5. Turn off the news and mass media.
   Modern societies are now all fear based. The whole system revolves around fears to keep people in line and to sell merchandise. If you live to a fear base society, you live and eat fear and it’s hard to avoid fear.

   For instance: eat only humanely grown food. If you eat meat (or even plants) produced in fear based, over crowded growing conditions: you are eating the stress hormones and other fear based by products of that growth. You can literally ingest fear.

   This means live locally, be in a strong community and turn off the propaganda and fear marketing.
   
   
   

6. Get help for the times when fear is based on a real pressing issue.
   Sometimes we must face an abusive person or a situation where fear has gone beyond being a negative potential. When this is the case, Get help! You are not alone and we live in society to help each other solve problems. It’s together we make the world a better place.
   
   
   

You cannot accept fear!

Fear must be released! To accept fear is to accept the negative potentials that fear represents.

You can release fear by tackling it head on to remove it or to simple let go of it. However, you cannot hold onto fear without the negative factors that fear represents from eroding your life away and reinforcing the fear itself.

To live to fear is to ensure all your own potentials erode away into nothing.

Learn to live life fully and learn to release what isn’t reality from your life. Fear is never ever a positive situation.

So remove and release fear to grow in your life.