Photograph of Santa Cruz Island

How to Let Go of Fear and Worry

by Thomas Razzeto

For an easy-to-print Adobe Acrobat PDF version of this essay, click here.

Your natural emotional state of being is one of peace and joy. When you let go of fear, this is what you relax into.

I hope this essay will help you relax into peace and joy more easily and more often. You don’t need to know why it might be possible to let go of fear and worry at any time, you only need to sincerely give it a try. What I offer here is pretty simple so let’s see how well it works for you.

Let’s start off with one of my favorite affirmations: I, (your name), let go of fear and worry, and joyfully take action now by stepping forward fully into my life as a loving person now. [1]

The first thing I want to point out is that you are just letting go of fear. In other words, you are not in a battle with fear. It is not a big monster that you need to overpower. All you are doing is letting go and it doesn’t take any effort at all to let go of something. So this should be pretty easy.

And yet many people have trouble doing this. Just yesterday I was walking down by the beach and two people were walking towards me. As they passed, one said to the other, “My life has been completely taken over by stress.” I wondered what was so stressful about walking along the beach on a beautiful day, but of course that was not the cause of her stress. Her stress came from her mental evaluation of the conditions of her life and her belief that something bad might be just around the corner and that she would not have the resources to handle it.

In just a minute, I will talk about how you can reduce your stress and shift into a more joyful state of being. But first, let’s see if we can learn something about our emotions from our regular nighttime dreams.

(This essay continues after my book and donation links)


My book is at Amazon
Third Edition, March 2023

Living the Paradox of Enlightenment

My unusual business philosophy

Donations are appreciated


(continuing)

Scary Dreams and What They Can Teach Us: You Have Nothing to Be Afraid Of

Have you ever had a dream where you felt like you were in danger? I remember one where I was hanging from a high cliff. I felt the strain on my hands, arms and shoulders as gravity pulled strongly on the weight of my body. Could I pull myself up? No way! I wasn’t even sure if I could hang on for another minute! What was I going to do? The sense of danger sent a wave of fear all over me; I was surely doomed! And yet, here I am, alive and well. I lived to tell the tale! So how did I escape? Did I become lucid and fly safely down to the valley below? Nope. I just woke up. That’s all. I just woke up and it all went away.

But the important point is that waking up did not really save me from any danger. Instead, it revealed that there never really was any danger. Now I want to be precise with my words here. It is not correct to say that dreams aren’t real, as you so often hear. It’s much better to say that dreams exist as something that you can witness. So they are real. Yet they exist in a deceptive way and this is what makes them illusions.

During a scary dream, it is easy to believe the false idea that the dream really is dangerous since that’s what it looks like. It is this mistaken evaluation that creates the real emotion of fear within you. The evaluation is incorrect but nevertheless, the fear is real. Yet thankfully, the recognition of the truth will quickly remove this fear.

And here’s another important point:

While it is true that dreams are harmless illusions, we don’t discredit them since we don’t discredit any of our experiences or any of our emotions.

Now imagine that later tonight you have a scary dream. And imagine that during this dream, you become lucid and recognize that you are witnessing a regular nighttime dream. So now, no matter how dangerous the dream appears to be, you will know that you are not really in any danger at all, and you can choose to take action within the dream without any fear about what is happening or what will happen next.

The dream figure that you appear to be while dreaming is not really who you truly are in the most fundamental way, it only seems like it is while you are dreaming without being lucid. But no matter if you are lucid or not, who you truly are is never in any danger from the circumstances of the dream. The real you is always safe even though the dream figure might seem to be in danger. The dream figure that seems to be you in a fundamental way is really just your point of view while you witness the dream. The belief that the dream can actually be dangerous is simply a false belief.

And notice what happens in the dream when you become lucid and let go of this false belief. Not only does your fear immediately fall away but it is replaced with joy. It is not replaced with a flat, dull attitude such as “Oh, none of this matters since this is just a dream.” Instead, a delightful exuberance spontaneously arise when you recognizing that you are vibrantly alive and that you are always safe because who you truly are transcends all of the circumstances of the dream. The dream has no power over your emotional state of being and cannot impair the well-being of your true self. So you can relax into your natural emotional state of being of peace and joy.

It is not that the circumstances of your dream should not concern you at all, it is that they don’t control your emotional state of being or threaten your true self in any way.

So you can interact with the circumstances of your dream in any way that you are inspired, and you are liberated from any fear or worry that would have arisen with your old understanding.

But This Is Not a Dream, This Is Real Life!

So what do regular nighttime dreams have to do with our ordinary world? Isn’t our ordinary world real and our dreams mere illusions that lack solid substance? Well, here’s the thing. While our ordinary world is much different from our nighttime dreams, it is also an illusion since it too exists in a deceptive way. There is more to our ordinary world than meets the eye. So just like our dreams, our ordinary world is both real and an illusion. This is not a paradox, this is just the correct use of the words. An illusion is something that exists in a deceptive way, not something that isn’t real.

Most people feel good when things look pleasant and feel bad when things do not go the way they want. But the truth is that the outer conditions of your life have no power at all over your emotional state of being, just like what we saw in our dreams. This is what allows you to reduce your stress and increase your peace and joy. While there are plenty of good techniques for stress reduction, here I want to offer an approach that focuses directly on being happy first. As soon as you allow yourself to be happy, your fear and worry will fall away. This can be done conditionally or unconditionally. Let’s take a closer look.

Happiness Is a Choice in Every Moment

Bashar, as channeled by Darryl Anka, proclaims loudly, “Circumstances don’t matter! Only [your] state of being matters!” With this he is saying that 1) your circumstances do not control your emotional state of being and that 2) your state of being “matters” (materializes) in the world around you. Your chosen core beliefs are the seeds that create your emotional state of being and these work together with your actions to create the circumstances that arise all around you. (More here.)

And Bashar enjoys emphasizing that you should not try to fix your outer conditions first so that you can then become happy. Instead, you have to choose to be happy first, then follow your wholesome, unselfish inspirations without emotionally pushing back against whatever arises.

Bashar puts it like this. If you are looking into a mirror, you must smile first in order to see a smile reflected back to you. Likewise, he says that the circumstances of your personal life are also a reflection and they can only change in their nature if you first change the nature of your state of being. If you insist that favorable circumstances arrive before you choose to be happy, you will wait forever.

Joyfully seek what you love, and joyfully love what you find.

But many people instead think something like this: “Hey, I don’t want to be happy if I am still poor. I only want to be happy if I am rich.” (Pick whatever life condition you want to use as an example. Love, health and money are the most common areas of interest.) But if you choose to be happy now, no matter what your circumstances are, you will improve your emotional state of being immediately plus you will allow your life to unfold in a way that is more receptive to God’s gifts. If you are trying to get a particular thing so that you can then become happy, you are misunderstanding the creative process and you will most likely be disappointed.

So find something to be happy about right now. Even though this is conditional happiness, it is a start. Try your best to nurture your happiness by always looking for something to feel grateful for. I notice that some people say grace before dinner but then they forget to continue in that state of gratefulness throughout the entire meal. Be grateful as you taste every bite. And after you finish your meal, continue in that state of gratefulness as you taste every bite of your life. Pour your loving heart into every moment.

The next stage is mastering the skill of being unconditionally happy. This will unfold naturally. You will discover that happiness is a choice in every moment. When you choose to be truly happy without requiring any specific outer circumstances, then you will know you have really changed your core beliefs about happiness. Note that there is often a delay before there is a shift in the nature of your circumstances and this allows you to prove to yourself that you are not making your happiness conditional on your outer circumstances. This demonstration is a crucial part of the creative process and a key step in the evolution of this wisdom within you.

So the stages are: 1) habitually choosing to be unhappy because things are not what you want, then 2) consciously choosing to find something to be grateful for, and then 3) consciously choosing to be happy in every moment just because you can.

And with all this talk of happiness, I want to point out that it is okay to cry when the tears are genuinely called for in a natural way. While the tears are flowing, you can still dwell in the deeper Divine Bliss that is always available, a Bliss that holds all human emotions, a Bliss that understands the profound beauty of all human tears. (More here.)

And here’s a very important point. When your chosen role in life includes helping the many people who are stuck in fear and confusion, you might find yourself in the middle of the turmoil that is a reflection of their beliefs. So even though you are holding steady in your own inner peace, your outer circumstances may not be as peaceful as you might expect. But notice that these circumstances really do reflect the bigger picture of a peaceful person who is comfortable going into the chaos of the world in order to help others.

You can easily radiate peace, love and joy while engaging in wholesome, unselfish action. Don’t doubt that you can do this.

Some Concluding Thoughts

We have all heard it said that before enlightenment, we have to chop wood and carry water, and that after enlightenment, we still have to chop wood and carry water. I’m not sure that a modern marketing department would want to emphasize this point since it makes it sound like there’s no practical benefit to enlightenment. But there really are profoundly practical benefits which grow daily as this understanding becomes clearer. While your daily tasks and problems won’t go away, your worry about them will gradually dissolve completely. With this, your problems will be transformed into just things to work on. Without worry, you are free to abide continuously in Divine Bliss while chopping wood and carrying water.

This is how this ancient nondual wisdom becomes oh so very practical! Love, joy and peace cascade from within, flowing freely into your experience without any hindrance, always unconditional available.

Now, please allow me to end by making a suggestion. Slowly re-read the section titled “Scary Dreams and What They Can Teach Us” and this time, do so with the idea that I am talking about our ordinary world rather than a dream. The person you appear to be right here and right now is really the point of view used by your True Self to witness the circumstances and emotions of your life. The person is not who you are fundamentally, it is just a dream figure, a point of view. Waking up to your True Self is what reveals your eternal nature and opens up your loving heart in a very deep and profound way. (More here.)

Well, that’ll wrap it up for today. I hope you found this helpful. And since this wisdom unfolds more freely and completely when there is a dynamic two-way conversation, please feel free to get in touch with me via email. After that, maybe we will be able to speak on the phone or on a video call over the internet.

In truth, I honor your divine nature.

All my best, Thomas Razzeto

Written September 3, 2018.

Footnote:

[1] Yes, I know I used the word “now” twice but that’s the way it feels best for me. You should use the words that feel best for you, too.

Back to top