How do I get rid of fear?

DX'd - Other
1

Coming from the foundation of rational-emotive and cognitive-behavioral therapy:

Questioner: “How do I get rid of fear?”

Krishnamurti: "Fear comes into being when our comprehension of relationship is incomplete. Relationship not only with people, but between ourselves and nature, between ourselves and property, between ourselves and ideas; and as long as that relationship is not fully understood, there must be fear… Fear is not an abstraction; it exists only in relationship to something.

"No problem can be finally overcome and conquered; it can be understood, but not conquered… To resist, to dominate, to do battle with a problem, or to build a defense against it, is only to create further conflict.

"Now, what are we afraid of? Are we afraid of a fact, or of an idea about the fact? … Are we afraid of the thing as it is, or are we afraid of what we think it is? … Because I am afraid of the word, of the idea, I never understand the fact, I never look at the fact, I am never in direct relation with the fact. It is only when I am in complete communion with the fact that there is no fear… and there is no communion with the fact so long as I have an idea, an opinion, a theory, about the fact. So I have to be very clear whether I am afraid of the word, the idea or the fact.

"What causes fear is my apprehension about the fact, what the fact might be or do, according to my words and ideas. [But] I can look at it, observe it, and go beyond the words about it where there is no fear of the fact.

“So it is my opinion, my idea, my experience, my so-called knowledge about the fact, that creates fear. [I]t is the mind that creates fear, the mind being the process of thinking… [But] if you can look at that process of thinking and feeling without becoming that process, you will see that it withers away… There can be freedom from fear only when there is self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom, which is the ending of fear.”

(New York City, 18 June 1950; from On Love and Loneliness, New York: Harper-Collins, 1993)

2

Unfortunately when I’m in that state of unbeknownst, I experience a telepathy that will show up a week later or two weeks later, and it only can happen when I am not making a conscious effort toward predicting something.

Do you remember that movie as a kid with Gary Coleman who lived I think in the airport and they found out that he had all these powers to predict outcomes of things, and they got him involved in gambling. Or even Rain Man for that matter. Both of these movies prove that it is a leaky bucket, and there will eventually be a flaw in the system that breaks down the whole hysteria.

I understand what you mean though. There has to be something about getting too close to the fire and getting burned. I think you may be on to something.

3

The pshrinques call it “over-identification with one’s beliefs.”

Don’t give me the credit, for sure. I’m just the messenger.