Opinion | Don’t Run Away From Fear. ‘Agree’ With It.

You’ve a line that I find very evocative. You said, “I once asked the zen master Kobun Chino -” – Rashee Kobun Chino, yeah, how he related with fear. And he said, “I agree.” I agree, I agree. Yeah, it was such a beautiful answer. It was shorthand for this whole thing that we’re talking about. I stress the warmth and the friendliness because people seem to need that a lot. But the fundamental thing, if you’re saying, “What are we actually trying to do here?” It’s like agreeing rather than disagreeing, accepting rather than rejecting, staying with rather than running away. What I like about this approach, and what seems to be attractive to people, is it doesn’t matter where you are in the process, you can make friends with that. So, so for instance, it might be very common for people who have low self-esteem, which is many, many, many, many people that they hear a meditation instruction. And then it’s just another thing to beat themselves up on it, because I could never do that. So then if I had an opportunity to work closely with someone, I would just say, “Well, then let’s just work with what happens in your body when you feel like you’re a loser or you feel like you’re can never get it right, or let’s go under the words of what is, let’s get at what it feels like physically to feel like I’m always messing up or I’m inadequate or there’s something fundamentally unlovable about me so somehow getting right to the core of a lot of the dysfunction that they might be feeling. I think we all need a lot of help to start to agree with what’s happening with us, rather than feel that it’s because it’s uncomfortable, that it has to be rejected. Everybody needs a lot of time and willingness and intention to be able to hold more discomfort, hold more pain, really know.