Sometimes it is through our fears that we come to see where we need to grow.  In our sitting we get an insight into the ongoing commentary that we conduct in our lives and the hidden fears behind it. We plan, daydream, worry and compare and when we notice this we can see the ways in which we prefer to avoid our life as it actually is.  It is also true that it is often in difficult moments that we learn most. Therefore our fears and our difficult moments are often the places where we can grow most.

But what we find is that fear is a tough energy to work with and our first reaction is often to move away from it. However, it we manage to create a small gap and to simply acknowledge “there is fear”, we reduce its power over us and it can become a place where we can learn. When we try this,  we notice that it is hard to resist the urge to change the situation when fear arises. But what would it be like if we could just accept it and stay with the fear for just a tiny bit longer than we normally would? Maybe the way it affects our life would begin to change. We may start to heal the conditioned pattterns in our brains which the situation has provoked. We could see a change in the stories which used to run our lives.

What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.  Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the  first time we see how beautiful they are.

Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke (1960)