If you gathered up all the fearful thoughts that exist in the mind of the average person, looked at them objectively, and tried to decide just how much good they provided that person, you would see that not some but all fearful thoughts are useless. They do no good. Zero. They interfere with dreams, hopes, desires, and progress. Fearful thoughts take many different forms. Sometimes they sound reasonable: “I’m just being careful, so I’m taking my time.” Other times they are tied to your past: “I’ve tried that before and it didn’t work.” Occasionally, fears are cleverly disguised as being realistic: “Most people fail, so I want to be absolutely sure before I get started.” I could fill page after page with other examples. Yet when you take a close, honest look at every fearful thought, there are threads of similarity. All of them are explanations or rationalizations for why something shouldn’t or can’t work. They are usually justifications for quitting, or for not getting started. Fea
We know that there is something which distinguishes a dead body from a living body. That we can understand. Suppose your father dies. You will lament, "Oh, my father is no more! He has gone away." But where has he gone? Your father is lying on the bed. Why do you say that your father has gone away? "No, he is dead and gone." This shows you understand that the body lying on the bed is not your real father. So, actually, you have no eyes to see your real father. During the lifetime of your father you did not know who he was. Therefore, when the actual father goes away, you cry, "My father is gone!" The actual father is the spiritual soul within the body. And when the soul goes away from the body, that is known as death. At the present moment everyone is acting according to the bodily conception of life. But we are not the body. So we are acting for something that we are not. Therefore, we are in maya, or illusion. Our whole existence is a phantasma