Page 143 - https://ia800806.us.archive.org/12/items/mwk-eng-book/Leading-a-Spiritual-Life.pdf

How to Overcome Fear

Fear is like an intellectual earthquake for our minds. It
stimulates intellectual activity, which leads to creative thinking.

ear is a common problem for every man and woman.
FWhat is fear? According to the dictionary, it is a
feeling of distress, apprehension, or alarm caused by
a sense of impending danger. To overcome fear, some
counseling experts prescribe certain techniques which
are physical in nature. Fear, however, being a problem of
the mind, is unlikely to be allayed by physical solutions.
The fact is that man is a rational animal. This being
so, he can readily accept only that kind of answer which
addresses his reason. So, the right way to proceed is
to identify the cause of fear and then eradicate it by
reasoning. If one’s mind can reason things out, it can
surely succeed in overcoming fear.

It is a common experience to arrive at the railway
station and find that your train is late. If there is some
rational cause for its lateness, you will have no anxiety
about it. But if the reason for the train being late is not
known, you will become apprehensive. This example
illustrates that the only way to solve the problem of fear
is to reason it out. There is no better way to do so.
I should like to share a personal experience which

142