Facing Your Fears with Mindfulness

Photo by Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash

“Meditation can be described as learning how to stay with the itch and the urge to scratch without scratching it.” (Pema Chödrön — “Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears”)

For starters, I must say this article does not bring the answer to end our fears. In fact, if there was some sort of magic pill that would keep fears from bashing into my mind, unattended, just know I would have already taken it. Plenty of them, to be honest.

On my self-healing and intuitive journey, I have walked many different paths. Maybe more paths than I wish I’d had, but I’m grateful for the experience all these paths brought me because eventually, they all led me to the beauty of mindfulness.

Mindfulness is not overrated like some may say. It’s not a fad of modern spirituality nor it is a label created to make us look more “enlightened.” Mindfulness doesn’t mean you need to sign up for Yoga and Meditation retreats, much less spend some time hanging out with monks.

Mindfulness is simply being aware of our breath, our emotions, and our surroundings. It’s the essence of who we are. An essence that has been forgotten because of our addiction to the future. Also, our addiction to our ego, which needs constant feeding. With a blend of attachment to the future and to our egos, we have a recipe for disaster. And the proud child of this disastrous marriage is fear.

I’ve had plenty of fears in my life. From small, rational fears to phobias and fear of death. We’ve all been there, let’s simply admit it. For the longest time I’ve tried unsuccessfully hiding and pushing away my fears, and sometimes I even appealed to my spirituality and prayers.

But nothing has ever brought me so much peace as mindfulness meditation. Hey, I shouldn’t even use the word “peace” here because meditating surely hurts like hell at first. Mindfulness teaches you to sit down with all the parts of yourself that you loathe — in my case, my fears — and it forces you to show up when you may just want to escape.

There is no promise of grace and peace after you meditate. On the contrary, it may make you very uncomfortable when you start doing it. So you’ll need to allow it to be uncomfortable.