It lingers in my heart and hijacks my awareness, keeping me in a state of numbness. When I become aware of it, when I am not just the confused animal, it chills my spine. There is a fine line between fear and worry, and sometimes I wonder if it is just worry, though at the base of it anyhow I know that I am dealing with fear.
Fear of poverty, fear of losing my mom, fear of wrong decisions and consequences, fear of people, fear of open spaces…
They say at the root of it all is the fear of Death. I wonder if I am more afraid of a badly lived life.
Though, I know intellectually that it is my Ego that is worried with such issues. One life doesn’t make such difference in this grand galaxy anyway. But I am still to disassociate with my Ego.
Ego is the limited identification of the self with our individual Mind, or self-image. We live with our strength, weakness, strength and threats (SWOT), our “perceived victories and defeats. We live with our “dreams and desires”, and our fears, likes and dislikes. We identify
ourselves with time, our so-called age. I will be 31 this October. We identify with our past and the luggage. And that becomes the sum-total of our identity.
They say that untying our knot with the Ego takes several lifetimes.
To be able to know that one is not this limited self, but beyond. That even when one will die, one will still live on… not to understand it intellectually but to feel it in our guts… to know that one is actually a part of Nature, that others are but just an extension of oneself… one’s illusion.
They say that it takes the grace of a Guru to help one to tear through this illusion. That devotion (bhakti) which the scriptures say is so rare to attain, is in itself the boat to escape the trap of Maya (illusion – self-identification with material world) which God Himself has thrown in the ocean. How far can anyone swim without his grace?
That is what they say, and to know it does not help much. It just makes one resolve to find a Guru and surrender completely once having found him/ her. The trials and tribulations on the way make the Vairagya stronger.
– Suresh Velu