6.4 How does one become detached from fear and desire?

Fear and desire are deeply intertwined in our lives. What we desire most is often what we fear most. Fear is, in reality, the inverse of desire —”No! I don’t want that.”

Both fear and desire, experienced with intensity, can be very stressful on your whole organism, both mind and body. To become detached, you must free yourself from this stress, which invariably occurs on the path to the first enlightenment. The first and simplest technique is to enter into deep, slow meditative breathing- this will have a calming effect on your whole system.

There is also a second, more advanced, technique available to you. However, to develop in the practice of this second meditative skill you will require considerable faith. Not faith in anything particular, just faith.

Faith, pure and unbounded, grows in you naturally and spontaneously as your awareness unfolds of your role in the process that is reality. Your faith grows with the realisation of the fruits of meditation. Committed daily practice in meditation inevitably produces these fruits.

As the results of your meditation unfold, a simple fact will become clear to you. You will come to understand this fact gradually, with the certain knowledge of experience. This fact is that you and reality are one and indistinguishable.

This fact, which is the ultimate truth of reality, is not at all apparent to common sense. Only gradually will you come to understand what it means. When, finally, after many trials, you know through experience what it means, then and only then will you have attained the final stage of enlightenment.

Through time and meditation on your experiences, you will come to understand that you and karma are indistinguishably one. That is to say, everything that happens to you is a function of who you are and what you think, feel and do. It will slowly dawn on you that everything which happens in your life is part of a meaningful and purposeful pattern.

In time, with this realisation comes freedom from bondage to fear and desire. All along the path to the final stage of enlightenment, you will still have the capacity to experience fear and desire. However, through meditation, you can free yourself from attachment to fear and desire.

This freedom from attachment comes from realising that everything that happens in your life, everything, without exception, has meaning and purpose. All fear is relatively illusory, because what is happening, or will happen, is structured to teach you a lesson about your own nature. All desire is relatively illusory, because the conditions of your life will supply you with all you truly need to understand your own nature, which is the true nature of reality.

As your work in meditation develops, and your practical experience expands, you will experience a growing capacity for fearlessness and desirelessness in the face of reality. Reality is not to be feared, because you and reality are one. Trust what happens, however fearful, with a calm acceptance of the reality of life and death. Reality is not to be desired, because you and reality are one. Accept what you receive from life and have no doubt that it will be sufficient.

Put simply, whatever is happening will happen as it occurs; avoid letting your fear and desire interfere with the course of events. To develop your capacity for fearlessness and desirelessness, Live and Act throughout your life. Think long and deeply on this.