feeling of security

In this episode I want to say a few more words about fear, but in particular, the fear of insecurity.

Most people like to feel secure, safe, and they like things in their life to be stable, with that feeling of security that things are not about to disappear unexpectedly: a job, a relationship, a house, money, life itself. It is a difficult situation we put ourself in. On the one hand we want to feel secure. We want the things in our life to feel secure. But on the other hand, there is no security. There is no guarantee. And so we set up a tension between reality which is insecure, unknown, unpredictable, and what we want, which is that feeling of security, feeling of the known, feeling of predictability. Reality is rather uncomfortable and we seek comfort.

And this tension runs through almost every aspect of our life, and it’s felt as unpleasant – a fight, a struggle to create a security or at least a feeling of security. But that feeling of security, if we manage to create it for a while, that feeling is an illusion. We never know what the future holds, we never know when some catastrophe might strike and we could lose everything, everything that we hold dear, everything that we have attachment for. That is the reality of life. It is implicit in the word life.

Life means change. Things are changing and we don’t know how they are going to change. So part of our spiritual journey is about coming to terms with the insecurity of life. If we can relax even whilst feeling insecure, then the struggle is over, for we have relaxed into reality. And if we can do this, if we can accept that the future is unknown, unpredictable, uncontrollable, then we can actually come to appreciate this moment more. Today becomes a greater treasure if tomorrow is uncertain.