Addressing Fear, Doubt and Worry

Addressing Fear, Doubt and Worry
by Kambra McConnel

Sat Chit Ananda Guru Ki Jay!

Over more than a decade, every time I engage in my daily spiritual practices as instructed by Kedarji, I experience an expanding awareness that embracing my Guru’s Grace and blessings, and putting forth the self -effort that is my Grace, is exactly how to address fear, doubt and worry.

There is no other way.

As Kedarji utters, “Stick to me.”

When I follow my Guru’s instruction to “stick to” him by following his authentic spiritual leadership, then there is nothing for emotions – such as fear, doubt or worry – to “stick” to.

All that remains is Love, indescribable Joy, Peace and Content. What Grace!

So, to address fear, doubt and worry, I “stick” to the methods that Kedarji instructs in our Nityananda Shatkipat Yoga approach. I imbibe The Spiritual Power, Improved Mental State, Emotional Resilience, and Vibrant Health – four Pillars of Joy in Daily Living that Kedarji offers as a frame to help people experience permanent spiritual transformation over time, through continuous, steady, daily spiritual practice.

Reach for The Spiritual Power

The Spiritual Power is the fundamental pillar upon which all of Kedarji’s Pillars of Joy in Daily Living stand. In an integrated way, The Spiritual Power makes it possible to experience an Improved Mental State and Emotional Resilience, as well as Vibrant Health, because it is not possible to make useful, sustainable choices for Vibrant Health without fully engaging the other three Pillars.

To imbibe The Spiritual Power, among our numerous methods for daily spiritual practice, I most consistently engage in meditation, japa (mantra repetition), and contemplation of sacred texts. And I embrace every privilege of engaging in selfless service – the practice of offering all activity as a blessed sacrament to God. In this way, I can make every action and interaction holy by putting forth self-effort to perfect activity without concern about outcomes, and by remembering that my Guru and Lineage of Saints and Sages stand behind me like a mountain.

Although the specific methods that I practice, or how often I practice each of them, may vary from day to day, I always make sure that I practice daily – and remember that, as Kedarji utters, “God alone exists.”

Letting Go of Useless Habits

I have a long-standing habit of acquiescing to fear, doubt and worry. Before crossing paths with Kedarji, I believed that I could address fear, doubt and worry through magical thinking – that I could ignore, rationalize, or wish them away. I believed that I could rely on someone or something else to lessen or remove them. I held the understanding that they were an inevitable part of life that I would always have to deal with.

But today, thanks to the Grace of Kedarji’s leadership and my daily spiritual practices, I no longer hold these useless understandings. I no longer believe that I must “be” something or someone, or that I have to rely on someone else who appears to be “better” or “stronger” than I am, to address fear, doubt and worry.

Now, I have the means to cultivate and experience The Spiritual Power by heightening my spiritual witnessing awareness that God exists in everyone and everything, everywhere, equally, even in what appear to be casual interactions during mundane activities.

And my responsibility is to vigilantly keep the inner and outer company of my Guru – to “stick” to him – in order to let go of fear, doubt and worry. I take full responsibility to observe where the energy of my mind goes, and to quiet, silence and dissolve it when it becomes restless, so that my mind becomes focused, one-pointed, and absorbs in the Supreme Self.

Using Obstacles to Turn Back Inside

To address fear, which breeds doubt and worry, I often contemplate the following verse and commentary from one of our great sacred texts.

In verse #156 of his Chidakasha Gita, Bhagawan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri utters:

“If you are afraid of water, you cannot cross a river in a boat. If you are afraid of fire, you cannot heat water.  Fear must be banished. To accomplish anything worth doing, one must be thoroughly fearless. Mind is the cause of anything we do.”

And in his commentary on this verse, Kedarji utters: “Fear prevents transformation and, therefore, should be removed completely. In order to accomplish anything in life, you have to be fearless. In spiritual life also, in order to make progress in Sadhana, you have to destroy your fears. Action is filtered through the mind. For this reason, the mind has to become very focused. It cannot maintain focus when fear exists. So, one of the primary goals of spiritual practice is to remove fear. With the primary goal of the destruction of the ego-idea attained, you automatically become fearless.”

I love these wisdom utterances because they always remind me to go back inside – to inwardly heighten my spiritual witnessing awareness, and to reach for the highest understandings when I experience fear, doubt or worry.

Specifically, at times, I feel that I cannot address a task that appears to be insurmountable because it requires a level of physical exertion that my body, alone, cannot possibly meet.

And because I cannot single-handedly address it at an unrealistic level of perfection that I expect – or that I superimpose others will expect – then my Improved Mental State contracts into a Poor Mental State, where fear fuels doubt and worry. My Emotional Resilience erodes, and I feel helpless, incompetent, and stuck in inertia.

Then, my Vibrant Health suffers, because I do not apply a level of physical effort that I can reasonably offer, which would strengthen my body. And when the energy of my mind contracts in this way, I tend to adopt an “all or nothing” approach.

However, when I choose to reach for The Spiritual Power while perceiving an obstacle, then I am inspired from within regarding how to find – and welcome – a helping hand, and how to work smarter rather than work harder.

A Mountain of Grace in a Molehill

On a property that our School owns, there is a large patch of gravel with abundant, gnarly weeds that grew aggressively this year.

When my mind contracted in fear about how to address it, that fear fueled doubt and worry. My mind reached for understandings like “It’s too big of a job to dig up that area and clear it out,” and “There are probably snakes and stinging insects hiding there,” and so on.

Then, when I was offered the selfless service of joining another member of our spiritual community to clear this patch, both of our minds contracted further. We contemplated whether we could hire professionals to excavate the area. But when we realized that was not possible, then we resolved to reach for The Spiritual Power, which took us back inside and inspired us regarding how to approach this selfless service in ways that we had not previously considered – ways that were well within our capabilities.

I started digging and bagging weeds rooted in mud and gravel, which I quickly realized was not practical, due to their combined weight. Then, my friend felt inspired to use a large, portable device with a strong blade to cut the weeds all the way down to the ground, and I raked the weed clippings into trash bags. We resolved to address the gravel and re-growth later, after first focusing on simply chopping down the weeds.

Within a few hours, while performing japa (mantra repetition) inwardly as we made our offering, we experienced the delight of an Improved Mental State due to a quiet mind; Emotional Resilience due to engaging in this activity with one-pointed focus, inner peace and content; and Vibrant Health, as the exertion strengthened our bodies without tearing them down.

Brilliantly, while we were working, a mole suddenly surfaced for both of us to see. It was beautiful, agile, supple, with smooth, velvety grey skin. It moved effortlessly, weaving both above and below the surface of the ground. My mind was awe-struck.

In the moment and over time, I felt inspired to contemplate how in Native American and other cultures, the mole represents intuition, inner wisdom, persistence, faith and balance.

Due to their physical blindness, moles rely on trusting instincts and using inner wisdom, plus keen awareness of what appears to occur around them, in order to navigate obstacles.

What a perfect analogy for the Grace of Kedarji’s leadership and our self-effort, which reveal how we can learn to trust inner knowing and expand spiritual witnessing awareness with persistence, faith and balance, to navigate perceived challenges that are created by the energy of the mind, due to thoughts that lie just beneath the surface of our conscious awareness.

And what a perfect reflection the mole offers, as a mirror of the Self – the true God nature that alone threads through everyone, everything, everywhere, including my Guru and the Lineage that stands behind us like a mountain. What Grace! Om Guru Om.

Kambra McConnel is the Treasurer of The Bhakta School of Transformation. She sits on our Board of Directors and also volunteers as a certified staff teacher and program leader for Nityananda Shaktipat Yoga.