Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself

There was a time—many times, really—when fear crept in like a fog over a field at dawn, soft and invisible, until it wrapped around my chest so tightly I could hardly breathe. My mind would say, “Danger,” but the truth was, there was none. Not a tiger lurking in the woods. Not an earthquake or storm. Just a decision to make. A change to embrace. A truth too big to ignore. And still, I froze.

I remember standing at the threshold of my first yoga studio, heart pounding and palms slick with anxiety, as the weight of foreclosure on my home pressed in. I recall sleepless nights spent in a haze of dread, questioning whether I had taken the wrong leap—abandoning a secure path, misplacing trust, or chasing a dream that might be a disastrous misstep. Fear, subtle and insidious, never roars in that moment; instead, it whispers its uncertainties.

But in the quietest corners of my soul—those corners that the study yoga and  meditation has taught me to reach and tend like small fires—I began to ask: What is this fear, really? And why does it keep coming.

In the yogic tradition, fear is called bhaya, and it is deeply tied to avidya—ignorance or forgetfulness of our true nature. Patanjali, in the Yoga Sutras, writes that the root of suffering is not knowing who we are. And when we forget that we are divine, fear rushes in to fill the space. It says: You are small. You are fragile. You will fall.

But that’s not the truth.

The truth, as Krishna reminds Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, is that we are eternal. We are Atman, unbreakable spirit wrapped for a little while in skin and story. Fear only lives in the mind, never in the soul. And once I understood that, I began to see fear differently—not as an enemy, but as a signal. Not a wall, but a doorway.

Fear, I’ve learned, is often the soul’s alarm bell when we’re close to transformation. That panic before speaking your truth? It means the truth matters. That terror before leaving the job, the city, the relationship? It might mean your freedom is waiting just outside the door you’re afraid to open.

I think of fear now like the storm just before the clearing. It is not here to paralyze me. It is here to wake me.

The yogis say that where there is fear, there is also karma unraveling. That moment you feel frozen is often a place where your old samskaras—your imprinted tendencies—are surfacing for release. That tightness in the chest? That might be lifetimes of silencing yourself, rising up to be spoken through.

I’ve started doing a thing, whenever fear creeps in. I greet it like an old friend.

“Oh, it’s you again,” I say. “Something must be shifting.”

Then I breathe,  and  I pray, and maybe I cry, and then breathe again.

I place my hand over my heart and say a mantra. Not just any mantra, but the one that steadies me:

“So’ham.”

I am That.

I remind myself: I am not the fear. I am the watcher. I am the eternal spark behind the storm of emotion.

And with that, something magical often happens. The fear—just a shadow in the light of awareness—starts to lose its grip. My breath deepens. My body softens. And that door I thought was locked… begins to open.

Now, when students come to me afraid—of speaking, of changing, of becoming—I tell them this:

“Fear means something good is coming. It means your soul is waking up. It means you’re on the threshold of something holy.”

The caterpillar does not know what it feels like to fly. But just before the wings come, there is a darkness, a dissolving. That is what fear feels like. It’s not death. It’s the becoming.

And so I invite you, when the fear arrives again—as it surely will—to bless it. Light a candle. Take a breath. Whisper a prayer. Move your body, even just a little. And remember: You are not the fear. You are the flame it cannot touch.

There is nothing to fear but fear itself—and even that, perhaps, is just a messenger sent to lead us home.

Hari Om Tat  Sat