Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about the relationship between fear and truth. So Pema Chodron, the great meditation teacher has this wonderful quote. She says, "Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to truth." "Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to truth." I remember the first time I heard this, it was just piercing. It really resonated.

And I had definitely experienced that in both my meditation practice and in my life. And so if we think about this in the context of a meditation practice, let's look at one of the truths that can arise, one of the forms of wisdom, which is the understanding of impermanence. And then the more we meditate, the more we see, wow, thoughts are coming and going, sensations are rising and passing, emotions are shifting. There's no aspect of our experience that we can hold onto and grasp onto for some permanent refuge. This is the truth of impermanence.

But often on the journey to really seeing that, there is some fear. We get closer to that understanding and the mind resists it. It doesn't want to come to terms with that reality. It wants to feel like it has control, predictability, stability and a sense of things being permanent, not constantly changing. But the more we stay with that fear and continue moving toward that truth, the more we eventually reorganize our mind in relationship to the reality of what's here and there's a new peace that emerges.

And so this is an example of a certain truth that we might move toward in our meditation and fear being a natural reaction and response to it. But it can also come up in our, our day-to-day life. I mean, we might be in a relationship and there might be this feeling that we, we start to be more present too, which is like, I don't know if this is right for me, but the first thing we feel is fear that comes up around that. Well, that could be an example of a truth that's arising for you and fear being a natural reaction because it just feels too difficult. It feels too hard.

Or we're, we're at a job that we've been for a while and we love our colleagues and we appreciate it for so many reasons, but there's just a sense that it's not right for us. It's not contributing to our growth. And the more we feel into that, the more fear arises. The truth is there as we get closer, fear becomes a natural reaction. And so you can use fear as a, uh, a metal detector of sorts to sort of sense where might there be certain truths that you're not listening to in your life? Oftentimes that fear is the beginning of something special happening.

It's a door into another room that you're, we could say, meant to walk into, or that perhaps you are ready to walk into. So we don't need to fear, fear. We can actually use it as an opportunity to see more clearly and as a doorway into the next chapter of our life or making a significant change. So I hope this gives you something to think about. Thank you for your practice and let's settle in for today's meditation.