And I summoned the courage to see that fear resides within and not without. I am my own fear. And then a thought flashed through my mind, more like a shooting star one sees in the dark of the night against a speckled blanket of black. "Am I even a ME?" Do I really exist as the person I think I am? Or am I just a fragment of another's perception? And try as I might I was unable to shake this thought away. When one says "be the best that you can be" does that mean be the best as what others think I should be? Because if there is no ME and I am purely a figment of another's perception then where is the "be the best you can be?"

Yet, for relevance, I shall use I, ME and MINE.

Well then, summoning the courage was hard enough. It is a strange position to be in; to be honest with one self. All through life we tend to have this "designed" image of ourselves in our mind. We don't want to know our flaws - we want to be perfect in our own eyes. So this is the hard part, honesty with one-self. It is also the first path to be treaded on in this journey of self-discovery leading to the discovery that there is no self. 

This honesty brings with itself a form of bliss. It's like telling the truth when you are caught and not getting punished for it. It is like the sigh of relief that passes a spared wanton child's repented lips. It makes your whole being feel light enough to float with the air. It makes your soul want to soar with the birds. In a way it is a first date for the self and life, a blind one but a date none-the-less. It is the beginning of the end and the end of a beginning.

There was no analyzing required. The fear stares back at you as plain as daylight. There is was, categorized into compartments of desires, expectations and attachments. And I realized that all this fear which was shrouded by the mind of perfection was nothing but petty. So petty that it seemed totally meaningless. It was irrelevant what started it, what was relevant in the mind was just the fear. It had no base. It had no foundation. It seemed silly. There was no place for this fear in me. The mind was hoarding it so that it had something to feel sorry about, something to fall back on in dire times. Something to extract sympathy from. Something to use as a defense against being honest with the self. It was a ploy, I could see that clearly now. It was a ploy, of the selfish mind full of attachments, to barricade the truth. To barricade life itself.

The truth is hard to accept. But it can make you laugh too. When in it's full glory it shows you the pettiness of your own mind, of your own being. The pettiness of all your wants and needs and desires and miseries. Yes. Miseries. We cause our own miseries, let there be no mistake of that. The mind will grasp onto that one thing that makes us a tad bit uncomfortable and then churns it round and round within itself till it hardens into misery. 

Look deeply into this misery and one will realize that it really has no foundation. It now simply resides as misery, how, why, where all these questions become irrelevant to the petty mind. All it dwells in is this misery. It glorifies in it. Turns it round and round and holds it close like a well-earned trophy, until it tires and grasps onto another pain to glorify in. And it continues on in this never-ending cycle till you stop one day and realize that you have not really lived. 

I realized that the fear was nothing else but me. I was afraid of doing and saying things that I had no reason to fear. So you see, my own self generated the fear. There was no outside factor that was influencing my fear. There was no one standing there with a knife pointed at my heart. It was I all along. I was my own fear. Out of the womb of my attachment was born this fear. 

I know that I will never really be free of attachments and fears around me. But I realized that I can be aware of them and in so doing I will not hold them, I will walk with them but not touch them, I will see them but not linger on them. I will be in the midst of it yet far away. Yet it is a long journey, this road to that destination. And hopefully I will laugh my way to the end.