Dr. Vijai S Shankar MD.PhD.
Published on www.academy-advaita.com
The Netherlands
19 September 2019
Trust (4)
“Certainty”
A very important aspect of life, which troubles man unnecessarily, is fear. Man is constantly in fear. Fear seems to be a very big problem. Man tries so much to get rid of it, but it appears that he has not done so as yet. He is frightened of so many things.
The problem is lack of trust. Because of fear man argues. Man gets angry; he gets sad; he gets depressed and all because of fear. Ironically, fear is not man’s problem at all; the problem is lack of trust.
If you observe fear, you will notice that it is only in the past or the future. Nobody trusts the past and nobody trusts the future. You trust what is happening to you. Your trust is in the present.
If fear cannot be in the present, how could that be a problem? Trust is not in the present and that is your problem. Because trust is not in the present, you feel frightened.
The fear is only of the past or the future, never the present. So why does this fear happen at all? It happens because trust has not happened to man, that is the reason.
The question should not be ‘why does fear happen?’ It should be ‘why has trust not happened?’
If you observe very carefully, man does not trust anybody. He does not even trust himself. Not a single person does he trust totally - body, mind and beyond. Trust means a total acceptance.
The problem is that man is not accepting totally the moment which is in front of him. If he were to accept the other totally – his entire body, his entire mind, whatever is expressed as ‘you’- a certain magic would happen. You become love and love means total trust.
If man were to accept that the moment in life is manifested by the intelligence in life and that the moment in life is made neither by man nor by woman, man would understand that what is within the moment too is manifested by life and not by man or by woman.
The enlightened accepts every man and woman as he or she is in any moment, because the enlightened trusts life and understands that he will meet who he is meant to meet in any moment in life.
Author: Dr. Vijai S. Shankar
© Copyright V. S. Shankar 2019
Editor’s Note:
Fear stalks all of us. There seems to be no escaping from it, however transient the trigger for the fear may be. The more we try to incapacitate the trigger that is not actually present within the moment that is, the more fearful it becomes. In compassion for man’s predicament, Dr Shankar’s total acceptance of each moment and its content is shared and gifted here. Acceptance of this gift is the beginning of release from the shackles of daily fear, albeit illusory. Hail the magician!
Julian Capper, UK
German Translator’s Note:
Everything that man ever needs to understand about his fears and worries is contained in this article. Yet the subject of fear fills entire libraries with psychological, philosophical, religious and spiritual books. That fear is the lack of unconditional trust in life is the key to a life without fear in the timeless Here and thoughtless Now. What remains is eternal gratitude.
Marcus Stegmaier, Germany.