Conquering one's fears

( A longer blogpost than the ones of recent times. I will make a conscious attempt not to ask any questions in this blogpost. I will answer them myself. In fact, that's what the blog should help me do - find answers for the questions in my mind.)

"Fear is the greatest human disease" said Gandhiji and aptly so. Everything that is sad is in fact associated with fear. Everything that's evil and ill in this world can be traced back to two things - fear and desire. While desires can possibly take you towards the good, fear is often destructive in a great way.

If we try to link the two, one can say that the fear to be unable to fulfil one's desires - takes us towards making mistakes, feeling depressed, growing sad and slowly becoming lonely. That's the point - fear is the mother of all evils.

A fear is like a biological or a computer virus. It needs a substrate to grow on. Fears of the mind often utilize thoughts as this substrate. And continue to grow until they become large enough to consume the thoughts themselves.

Great thinkers of the world give us the key to conquering fears - to face them. Which is very ironical in itself. If I am scared of something and want to stay away from it, how would I confront it?

The first step is to know what you are scared of. A very practical way of doing this is to write it down. Take a piece of paper and write ten things you are scared of (to start with, only ten please.) Rank them in the decreasing order of magnitude. Start with the lowest fear. Why are you scared of it? Is there an incident or a person that makes you feel so? Write about it opposite the fear that you have mentioned. Proceed to step two.

To conquer one's fears, one needs to hate them. Know that you hate to fear the fears. When you hate them, you would feel revengeful and this would be your second step to uprooting them from your mind.

Hate is a rather powerful catalyst to help one resolve and take a stand. As the hate becomes stronger, your mind will show you the path.

You would have to do things that you don't like. But remember, that all this is also for something you don't like and you don't want in your life - the fear. We often undermine the energy and the potential of the mind. It often answers most of our questions and the subconscious mind is well-aware of our strengths and weaknesses. Fear is the greatest weakness - and the best solution is to ask yourself how to battle it. Close your eyes and follow that path.

That path shown by your very own mind will help you face your fears. With closed eyes.