one of the major causes of fear

One of the major causes of fear is that we do not want to face ourselves as we are.

This quote from Krishnamurti touches on some very important points about our psychology. First of all, most people are living in a state of fear most of the time. They might not even really be aware of it. Perhaps it's quite a low level fear, a background anxiety, some worries, but these are fear. And when fear is controlling our life, we're not going to be making the most of it. Fear causes us to become defensive, to shrink, to try and create a sense of security, which we normally do by creating a comfortable setting, a lifestyle where we know what's going to happen. And we stop taking risks.

We stop going on adventures. We stop exploring. We stop going into unknown spaces. We just stay in our comfort zone. And in this way, we minimise our life. And yes, it feels safer and more comfortable. But it doesn't fulfil us. It doesn't allow us to reach energy anything like our full potential. We miss so much of life when we live it from fear.

Of course, like most aspects of our psychology, fear has a valid role to play. But that valid role tends to be in moments of immediate physical danger: when a bus is careering towards us and we have to jump out of the way. The physical adrenaline response, which is one aspect of fear, keeps us alive in those situations.

But most of our fears these days are nothing like that at all. They're psychological worries: worries about losing our job, worries about not performing well enough, worries about not being in the right relationship. All sorts of worries that really will never go away unless we look more deeply into our psychology.

So fear is a very important subject to look into inside oneself. Under what circumstances do we get anxious or worry? And what's really going on when we are fearful, even if it's in a rather low key way? And in this quotation, Krishnamurti asserts that one of the major causes of fear is that we don't want to face ourselves as we are.

We don't want to face ourselves as we are. This is really the root cause of all human suffering. If each of us could face who we are, everything that we are, all the multiple aspects of our personality, our body, everything, if we could see it all clearly, and accept it – this is who I am – then there would be so much less suffering in the world.

And Krishnamurti is right to say that we don't want to see ourselves as we are. There are many aspects of ourselves that we've rejected, that we've deemed unacceptable in some way. Perhaps we've been told that's unacceptable. And those aspects have been pushed into the shadow, into the usually unconscious part of our personality that we deem unacceptable. And we foolishly believe, perhaps implicitly, that we can suppress those aspects of our personality.

But it doesn't work that way, not at all. In fact, quite the contrary. Anything that's in us that we reject in this way and try to suppress, merely starts to invade our life in subtle ways. The energy is still within us, but once we've lost conscious contact with it, it can wreak all sorts of havoc. One common way, of course, is for us to project these things on to the outer world, see them in other people, and perhaps react very angrily, in a hostile way, when we do see them in other people. Homophobia, for example, a fear of homosexuality can cause some people who label themselves, regard themselves, as heterosexual, can cause some people to become very angry or disturbed. But all that's really going on is that they've suppressed the homosexual aspect within themself. They've denied it, and that allows them to identify strongly with being heterosexual. But of course, that energy of homosexual attraction – which is in most people to some extent, perhaps everybody, even if it's just a tiny amount – that aspect is still an energy within us if we've suppressed it. And that's why it has to come out. All energy has to move. And it will come out as anger or disgust towards homosexuals. That's just one example.

We're always projecting things that we don't like about ourself onto to other people, and then condemning them for it. So it's not just a fear that is caused, at least largely by this refusal to see ourselves as we are. It is a major cause of fear, but it's also a major cause of anger, disgust, resentment. Many of our negative emotional reactions towards other people are really born from this refusal to see those aspects within ourself.

But there's another way in which we don't really want to see ourselves as we are. And this is rather strange and curious. I think Nelson Mandela may have said something about it. And this is, we don't want to accept just how great we are, how amazing we are. We can't face the fact that we are divine beings.

So both those things that we deem unacceptably bad, but also those things that we somehow can't handle because of their greatness, all of this can get pushed into the unconscious, repressed. And what a pity. We also then tend to project those amazing qualities unto other people. And then we might be envious. And of course, we'll often be disappointed because we're somehow expecting those other people to live up to that greatness all the time. That's why no husband or wife can please their partner for more than a few years, usually. Sooner or later, it's impossible to ignore reality: that each of us is human, with a huge and complex mixture of elements to our personality, some that we might deem wonderful, and some that we might deem to be horrible, unacceptable. But all of this seen in other people is just a reflection of what we're avoiding in ourself: both the dark elements of the shadow, 

but also our greatness, just how divine we are, just how beautiful we are as beings. And we're afraid of this. We're actually afraid of the power that's within us.

Once one has realised one's true nature, once one's seen all this for oneself, there's immense power. But it's not a power over other people. It's not a power that can be abused. It's simply the power to be who we are in the world. And there's a great dignity in that. That divine part of our essence is incorruptible. There's no shame in us, no guilt, when we have seen everything that we are, including this grandeur.

But until that point, we are somehow afraid of it. It's as if we are afraid that we can't handle it, that it'll be too much for us, that we will be overwhelmed by it. There's a sense that we are afraid that we can't contain ourselves. And it's true, we can't contain ourselves. This is why an enlightened person never knows what she or he is going to do next. Anything could happen. And that's basically the feeling that causes many of us to become fearful: the feeling that anything could happen.

But at some point, one might get in touch with the part of us that likes that feeling. That is the feeling of the unknown. That's the feeling of the mystery of life, and the mystery of who I am. Yes, it can be uncomfortable. There's no security in it. Anything can happen. And yet, that is life. Everything else is a mere shadow of life.

So let's see if we can break through this fear and really see ourselves as as we are. If we can meet ourself in this way, then the work is done. And we are free.