Here's What to Do When Fear Shows Up | Jack Kornfield

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:15]Now, I wanted to ask you >> [music] >> about this quote from your book No Time Like the Present that I think is relevant here. You write the best forms of healing, therapy, and meditation are all about learning to trust.

[00:00:31]So, tell me about your journey of learning to trust and what that means.

[00:00:37]We think we're in charge of this dance.

[00:00:41]And we're not. I mean, we get a chance to act and create, but really there's something so much bigger going. And so, that capacity to trust. So, I learned it in the monastery cuz I went through the monsoons and the cold and the something I could do this. I began to trust myself. I learned how to trust that I could be with all the inner storms and fears and so forth.

[00:01:04]I learned more how to trust in relationship, and that takes its own time. Whether it's the emotions or the images or the phases of our life, we're given the gift of life and it's not the way we want it.

[00:01:18]But, it's what we need to open our hearts to learn whatever lesson there is to find freedom.

[00:01:25]And I needed to learn that in all these different ways or I wanted to learn it. I don't know. I was graced to learn it.

[00:01:33]Um and now people call me in the middle of all kinds of things.

[00:01:39]And I can listen or I can talk with them. I say, "Yeah, and it's okay."

[00:01:44]And I mean it in the deepest deepest way. I mean it working in the refugee camps and meeting those people in the refugee camps where everything was taken. And then there are certain people who carry a kind of dignity and love that no one can take from them.

[00:02:01]And I've seen it. And I know it, so it gives me a trust in the human heart and the human spirit. You've referenced Jack light. You talked about Thomas Merton, the light in everyone behind the eyes. I've been looking in in your eyes as part of this conversation and I see the light in your eyes. It's beautiful.

[00:02:22]>> Well, thank you.

[00:02:23]>> It's beautiful and it made me curious.

[00:02:25]Is light a metaphor, an actual experience of the physical light we see and sense, both?

[00:02:34]How do you relate to light? I'm an all of the above kind of person.

[00:02:38]When I sat in the monastery and again began to have the experiences that I wasn't this small sense of self that sometimes called the body of fear, but things started dissolve and open, I experienced my body dissolving into light. It was literal. In fact, I had to open my eyes sometimes cuz it was so bright. It's like, is it lighting up the room? Am I bothering, you know, the monks in the other part of the forest?

[00:03:02]It is literal.

[00:03:04]Consciousness itself in one of its forms is light. That's another It's another way we perceive or know it and it's not just through our eyes, but it's the inner eye.

[00:03:15]And that sense of things filled with light, you could call it part of the mystic's vision or the ability to see that everything sparkles with the sacred and that that's experienced as light.

[00:03:33]It's just beautiful to see the light behind the eyes of everybody.

[00:03:38]It's who we are.

[00:03:40]Now, I'm glad you brought up this reference to the body of fear and how when you were in the monastery, you had the experience of the body of fear dissolving into light. I think a lot of people, even if they've touched some type of mystical awakening, still if they were to tell the truth about their current experience would say, "I am living with some type of body of fear. I feel fear a lot. I can sense it.

[00:04:07]I can sense it is kind of creating the the architecture of myself."

[00:04:13]And I'm curious what you have to say to that and how can you help that person who would like more of their fear to dissolve?

[00:04:21]Rather than dissolve, I would say thank it.

[00:04:27]You see, all those stories, I mean, Mark Twain Mark Twain said, "My life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which never happened." Right? So, fear has a bodily anxiety, but it also usually has a whole lot of stories.

[00:04:43]It's trying to protect you.

[00:04:45]Your brain, your nervous system, as an organism that moves around the planet, has been tuned to threat.

[00:04:52]And it wants to figure out things in advance. That's the fear of the fear.

[00:04:56]Instead, as Thick Nhat Hanh would say, invite it for tea.

[00:04:59]Say, "Okay, I know you. Yes, you're fear. Thank you for trying to take care of me.

[00:05:04]Actually, I'm okay right now.

[00:05:07]But you can relax. You can rest for a moment. I'm okay. Thank you."

[00:05:12]And that inner shift of living in the consciousness, what I call the small sense of self or the body of fear, you know, it's built in.

[00:05:23]And so, it thank you for doing your job, but that's not who you are.

[00:05:30]I think a lot of my job has been to be with people and communicate a sense of trust that what's in there, whatever is opening, or the trauma that you have, and there are really skillful ways to be with trauma to resource and make a place where it's safe, so you're not retraumatizing, and let it open from the body or tell its story, but underneath or around all that is just the sense of trust that we know how to do this. We can be present for this life with a tenderness and a love and and a I was going to say and a fearlessness that includes fear that allows it to be part of the palette of life.

[00:06:11]Does fear arise for you in your life and does thanking it how does that how does that work for you Jack?

[00:06:17]>> Yeah, it arises occasionally. I I don't live with a lot of fear and maybe that's just a blessing in my life, you know.

[00:06:23]>> Uh-huh. But it will come on occasion and thanking it helps. And also it just acknowledge your oh fear I know you. You know, in the Buddhist mythology, Mara is the name for the Indian God who the personification of all the difficulties of the world and the Buddha seated under the Bodhi tree wants to get enlightened in this story or this myth and then Mara comes first with all the temptations of you know, all the most beautiful, you know, maidens and the best food and so forth and the Buddha sits there and then Mara comes with his armies of aggression, of fear and so forth and the Buddha just sits there and then Mara comes with doubt. Well, you can't do this. This is not possible.

[00:07:08]Nobody and in all of these the Buddhist looks up and says, "Oh Mara, I see you. I see who you are."

[00:07:19]Not with judgement, but just saying, "Oh, I see you Mara."

[00:07:23]And in that moment the Buddha becomes the one who knows, becomes the place of wisdom in us that sees all of that. So yeah, I get caught and there was a time I you know, you may notice I have a bit of a tremor and I was started passing out on stage in front of all these people and I had more tremors and all this stuff happening in my body. It was about a dozen years ago.

[00:07:45]And I got every test, you know, they take you and they test you from top to bottom. And I got misdiagnosed with something that was like ALS but worse and they said with it's happening quickly your body's going to deteriorate. I'm okay.

[00:07:58]Okay, I'm I think I'm okay with that.

[00:08:01]And then they said, "Oh, and dementia comes with it." Uh-huh. And I did not like that. That was not in my program and I got really afraid.

[00:08:10]Much more than I thought cuz I survived that with the buying bodies. I've been lost with but dementia was not okay.

[00:08:16]So it had activated a great deal of fear.

[00:08:19]Um fortunately some you know, couple weeks later it turned out it wasn't the right diagnosis. I'm fine.

[00:08:27]But I remember going to talk to Ram Dass about it and telling this story and he listened and he smiled and he says, "Oh, yeah, I flunked the course a number of times myself." And it was just it was so comforting because the idea isn't to to be some way with or without fear or something like that.

[00:08:46]It's to be human and love it. To love it all including, you know, the contraction as well as the expansion.

[00:08:54]That who we are is bigger than all of that.

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