Does Fear Get In The Way Of Your Meditation Practice, or Your Success With Guided Meditation?

When we do a guided meditation, or simply meditate, the biggest limitation we face is our intellect getting in the way. We can't stop thinking long enough to let go and flow with the meditation program. Fear is at the root of this problem.

What's fear got to do with meditation? Usually not much, but it has a great deal to do with the intellect. We all carry fear inside of us -- an accumulation of fear that's been added to every time something threatening happens to us. The more we've been hurt -- physically or emotionally, it makes no difference -- the more fear residue we have. (Unless of course we've done the inner work required to release it. That's where therapy comes in.)

Fear, if we carry enough of it, can start to get in the way of living a normal life. In fact, it can be downright paralyzing. But fortunately we have this piece of operating equipment with us to help, called the ego. The ego gets a bad rap, but it's actually not a bad thing. Its job is to help us stay vertical, move through life, and get things done. When we're carrying a lot of fear, the ego, in order to do it's job, will try to help us not feel the fear so much. If we don't feel the fear, the fear won't slow us down the way it might if we were in touch with it all the time. Good job, ego!

One of the ways the ego helps us not to feel fear is by keeping us in our head -- in the intellect. We can't be in two places at the same time, so if we're in our intellect thinking, then we're not in touch with our gut where the fear tends to be. Another way of saying this is that the ego keeps us in our intellect, to give us a sense of control. A sense. We have no more control over life when we're in our intellect than we do otherwise, but all we need is the sense of control, to keep us out of fear. The intellect becomes like a security blanket.

And we don't want to ever let go of a security blanket. That would make us uncomfortable. And that is why, when we try to meditate, the intellect won't let go. Fear is unconsciously keeping us stuck there. Doing a guided meditation to deal with fear directly is going to be tricky, because in order to have an effective session, you'd need the fear out of the way. But if the fear were out of the way, you wouldn't need the session. It's tricky, but it's not impossible.

Max Highstein has authored many guided imagery and guided meditation recordings, including a forthcoming one on fear. To hear samples, visit The Healing Waterfall, his guided meditation website.


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