Question: I am following the path of my heart. But there is so much fear. So, how to face that fear and survive? How to face that risk of survival?
Acharya Prashant: Continue living in that fear. Just don’t give up!
Fear will be there. Fear is the price that you are paying. Continue paying that price.
Listener 1: But when you choose the path of what you want to do, it should give you Joy. It should not give you fear.
AP: *Joy is living in fear without being defeated by fear *.
Who said that joy means the absence of fear?
Please note the difference between these two.
Absence of fear is one thing and freedom from fear is another thing. Freedom from fear means being untouched by fear even when fear is there. Fear will be there but you will not be defeated by fear—that is called freedom from fear. If you are wanting absence of fear, that will not come. You will be afraid. Yes, of course, the intensity of fear may go down, but kindly do not wish for a day when you experience no fear. Every cell of this body is conditioned to be afraid. So fear will be there.
Fun lies in not being afraid even while being afraid.
Are you getting this?
There has to be something within you which is not afraid even when you are shivering and trembling in fear. So to others, it is looking that you are deeply afraid. And you are afraid, yet you are not afraid. Even in the middle of fear you are doing the right thing. Even in the middle of fear, you are continuing to hold Faith.
*Deeply afraid, you are still not giving up. That is Joy.*
Joy is only for the warriors. It is not for nothing that the Bhagwat Gita is narrated in a battlefield. Yes?
L2: Sir, is liberation from desire the same?
AP: Yes, Yes. Of course.
L2: Desire will always be there?
AP: Yes. Its intensity, just like the intensity of fear may come down. But desire will be there. It’s just that you won’t be ruled by the desire. And you know what? A very amusing thing starts happening. When you are not being ruled by desire, then you are also not afraid of desire. Then you can even allow desire to rule you.
I will repeat this.
When you are not being ruled by desire, only then can you allow desire to rule you.
Have you seen how you pick little kids up sometimes? And have them sit on your shoulders. Have you never done that? Have you never picked the little one up and having sit here? (pointing to the shoulders) . You have done that, right? That’s how the spiritual mind treats desires— “Alright, now that you have come, come sit here. Now where do you want to go? I am your horse. I will take you there”. He does not fight desire. He does not come and say, “O Guru, tell me, how to kill all the desires?” Why must you kill all the desires? By killing all the desires, you are killing yourself as well.
Have fun with the desires. Become so big, by coming in intimacy with the big that all desires become very small for you. Then they are like kids, now you can have fun with them.
A desire has come, and you gloriously succumb to the desire. That is why saints have been so whimsical. In the middle of night, there was one particular one, who would get up and say, “I want some *Gulab jamun*”. Now people would be astonished. They would say, ‘Saints are supposed to be renunciates, free of all desires. And this one, in the middle of night, wants a gulab jamun to eat.’
Yes, he wants. And he won’t rest before he gets that gulab jamun. He is not afraid of desire anymore. We are afraid of desire. Have you not seen how our heart beats in our moments of desire? Have you not seen that when the desire arises in us, parallelly fear also rises? Fear,that the desire will not be fulfilled. Fear that you might be doing the wrong thing. Fear of being immoral. Fear of being on the wrong side of the society. A saint embraces his desire. He says, “Now that the desire has come, who am I to refuse it?”.
The next amazing thing is, when you bow down, without resistance to desire, desire does not find too much energy.
The energy of desire is the energy of the resistance you give to the desire.The lesser is the resistance that you give to the desire, the lesser is the energy of the desire.
Try that.