Make Your Fear Bigger and Set Yourself Free – Jack Elias

Make Your Fear Bigger and Set Yourself Free
by  Jack Elias

When you experience unpleasant and painful emotions, the typical reaction is to
try to restrict them, stop them, or run away from those feelings.  Let’s be honest,
though — this doesn’t really work, does it? Surprisingly, one of the most effective
ways to control a negative emotion (such as anger or fear) is to give up controlling it.
 
My first Buddhist teacher, Shunryo Suzuki Roshi, had a wonderful, down-home way
of instructing us. One of his most memorable and oft-quoted teachings appears in
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind:
 
“To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him.”
 
Thousands of meditators have used this aphorism of Suzuki Roshi to remind themselves
to relax rather than contract when the mind gets wild with emotion.
 
During my hypnotherapy training many years ago, I discovered that Milton Erickson
understood this same principle. In fact, Erickson’s perspectives on how to work with
the mind were so closely in accord with Suzuki Roshi’s teachings, that I quickly began
to think of Milton Erickson as a “natural Buddhist.” If Erickson had met Roshi, he might
have thought Roshi was a “natural hypnotist”!
 
 Let’s experiment with applying this principle of control  to fear. There are a couple of
different ways to give the sheep or cow (or tiger or dragon) of your fear a large pasture.
 
You can become mischievious in the midst of a fearful state — catch yourself shrinking,
and then expand yourself in a big belly laugh, “Ah, ha, ha! I love this fearful state!” Repeat
it louder. Repeat it again, this time even louder! Become the tiger and roar!
 
Or . . . if this is too theatrical for your taste, it’s fine to take a more imaginary and quieter approach:
 
Look at, or sense, your fear. It has a certain energy and presence right? This means it is an “object”
in your awareness. We usually think of emotions as being in our body or mind, so this is probably the
location of your fear. Right? Just feel where it is.
 
Now imagine expanding your fear. It’s not just inside your body anymore. Imagine the whole room
feeling this fear . . . then the whole house. Imagine the fear spreading through the whole neighborhood,
your entire city.
 
Intensify it! It continues to spread through the state, the country, the whole world. Now it spreads beyond
the world to the solar system. It is really on the move! It is engulfing Jupiter (thousands of times bigger than
the earth!) and moving on into the space beyond the solar system!
 
Your fear is spreading throughout the galaxy now. Take your time and really sense it spreading to all the millions
of stars and star systems and all the beings of whatever sort – innumerable in their multitudes.
 
What  happens to your fear when you make it bigger in this way? How do you feel when you let it expand into the
infinite universe, instead of trying to control it or push it down?
 
Many of my clients have found these techniques very empowering ways to work with fear and other disturbing emotions.
If you tried it out just now, please leave a comment and tell me how it went.
 
May we all flourish in peace and harmony. Roooaar!

©January, 2011, Jack Elias, http://FindingTrueMagic.com, All Rights Reserved