By ANGIE PARRISH

“Isn’t some anxiety normal?” Fred was asked on Day One of our recent retreat on Composting Fear into Fearlessness. Doesn’t everyone sometimes get worried or anxious about potentially unpleasant encounters, not being liked, getting sick or injured, approaching hurricanes, climate change, election outcomes, and so forth?  

Fred’s resounding “No!” surprised many of us. 

Anxiety and worry may be widespread, he taught, but this kind of fear is neither innate nor helpful. Yes, fear is helpful when we’re faced with imminent physical danger that triggers a fight or flight response, such as a bear poised to attack. But fear and anxiety arising in response to thoughts about what could happen in the future do nothing to protect us. Such imaginings only cause us to suffer and rob us of ease, joy and intimacy with life and other beings.

Amid engaging teacher/student interaction that included much laughter, Fred’s teachings and Bill MacMillen’s guided meditations during the retreat helped us to see how we could begin to understand and transform our fear into fearlessness.

We learned how:  

• We’re not born fearful and anxious. Fear arises and grows in our mind as a consequence of how we perceive and respond to life experiences.  
  
• Fear causes us to contract, constrict, and live from a place of protecting “self” instead of responding to life with confidence and ease.
  
• Worry, anxiety, and fear arise in the mind as a response to worrisome thoughts.  External triggers are not the root of our fear. If they were, everyone would be afraid of spiders.
  
• We humans tend to overestimate danger and undervalue our capacity to respond effectively. Fred used two hands (picture a scale of justice with two pans) to represent how fear arises in the imbalance between the perceived danger on one hand and our capacity to respond on the other.
  
• We cannot accurately predict the future. All we can do is prepare for reasonable possibilities and then deal with whatever happens when it does, remembering always to investigate our fear by asking, “Is it true?”
  
• Mindfulness is absolutely essential to transforming our fear into fearlessness. IF we notice fear arising in the mind or body, AND we stop to name and welcome it, we can calm it by coming back to the present moment, placing attention on the breath, and letting go of those fearful thoughts about what might happen in the future.   

At our closing circle early Sunday morning, everyone shared their insights from the retreat and plans for bringing the teachings into their daily lives. Later during Sunday Sangha, Fred asked three retreatants to share their experiences. 

• Monica shared how much stress she was experiencing from the accumulation of many small fears around her work as a teacher. She realized that her fear of imperfection was creating stress for herself and possibly for her students, and that she could choose to see the beauty of each child and where they weere in the learning process instead of worrying about imperfection. As Monica said, “I think this insight is going to transform who I am as a teacher.”
  
• Patrick, a hedge fund analyst, shared learning that our fears are actually imaginary – made up in our minds – which was a transformational wake-up for him. In the past he had identified as a worrier or anxious person.  Now he saw how none of us is an anxious or fearful person by nature because no one is born fearful or anxious. So he can transform his fear instead of continuing to be a worrier. 
  
• Joan, a retired psychiatrist attending her first retreat with FCM, shared coming into the retreat with some anxiety but telling herself that her kind of anxiety was normal, and so not a problem. She was surprised to discover there’s no such thing as “normal anxiety.” She described her retreat experience as “beginning a process of unraveling all the tentacles of fear in my life…just sort of peeling the blinders off. And, Step Two, acquiring some tools, which I’m just learning how to use.” 
  

Like all FCM retreats, this one supported us in healing and transforming our suffering. I know first-hand this is why our teacher Fred founded FCM and it remains our shared purpose for existing. I am deeply grateful to Fred and to the many volunteers at the Florida Community of Mindfulness who find our shared purpose so meaningful and give so much support to our mission and vision.

Angie Parrish is Dharma Programs Leader for the Florida Community of Mindfulness. She has been a student of Fred since 1999.