Fear

I am reading Osho's book titled Fear nowadays. It talks about understanding and accepting insecurities in one's life. IN the course of the book, I started introspecting about my own fears in life. But before dwelling into that, I wish to clarify the interlinkages between fear, dislike, frustration, and reluctance. Anything which we do not want to do in life is either rooted in fear or relates to value conflict. But even prospects of value conflict reduces to fear of something after a point.

Let us understand this by an example. For example, If a girl does not want to eat too much, then she is possibly having a fear of becoming fat or she may have some medical problem which again will reduce to fear of death. Let us say, Girl does not want to steal something. Definitely, it is not because of fear of being caught and branded thief. Instead, it is because of her values of truthfulness, honesty and so on. So here the denial of performing something is due to value conflict. But why there is any abhorrence to such value conflict? What if the conflict occurs? It will cause dissonance in one's mind. The dissonance will distort girl's self- concept. so again it reduces to the fear of disturbing my peace of mind.

Therefore, fear itself can be divided into two parts. One kind of fear promotes my peace of mind and other kinds of fear disturb our peace of mind. In theory, Fear is a human defence mechanism which aims at promoting our peace of mind but in the process, it turns humans into diffident, servile and weak creatures. So Here I am talking about those fears who either disturb my peace of mind or turn me into servile creatures. This fear induced servility is a very dangerous thing in our life. It distorts our sense of destiny. It stops us from blooming into our full inner core and acts as a membrane which separates our inner core with outer behaviour. I introspected to find out such fears in my life. So here I am listing one.

First, The fear of becoming irrelevant. I feel that if I do not work in technology domain then I may become irrelevant in the future. Look at the pace of technology. It is breathtakingly fast. So despite having a family business, or teaching opportunities or the entrepreneurship, I have opted a job in the technology domain.

Second, Fear of having an unproductive day. I wish to have a sense of achievement every day. If my day turns unproductive, it disturbs me and at the core of it is my fear of failure in certain exam or competition in the life. So this is why I have never been able to appreciate my sleep or aesthetic beauty around me. If I oversleep or engage in social loafing, I feel the tinge of dissonance. I strongly feel this is because of my strong desire towards my goal. Maybe once it is settled either way I will be back in the normal orbit.

Third, Reluctance toward marriage or affair. This is partly due to my commitment towards my goal. And rest is due to fear of losing the trust of my parents (in the context of an affair).

Fourth, Fear of becoming bald. This is fast becoming reality. It is rooted in my desire to look handsome.

Fifth,

Six, Like-Dislike toward Porn. I do watch porn but it generally occurs in short duration burst which lasts for a week or so and then I develop some sort of dislike. I just do not know what drives me to watch porn. And I do not know if this is the right thing to do or not.

Anyway, Osho says balanced growth is a 3 step process. First, drop the idea of dropping fear, Second, accept it as part of yours and third watch it, observe it and understand it. That is the key to real happiness.