An illustration: suppose you’re driving your car, and suppose a fear of being in an accident arises.

Let’s say that you use some form of cognitive, or reason-based, therapy to talk this through. You might note that accidents, in some grand sense, rarely occur. You might note that you’re a meditator who is keenly observant; that your driving skills fall at least into the range of competence; that these roads are well-built and that this afternoon it’s stunningly sunny (not rainy, not windy, not snowy); and that drivers are at least able to a high degree–see Harari’s Sapiens–such that they’re not engaging in outright violent acts. And so on.

Let’s say that this approach, in a certain sense, works. The fear subsides, and you’re able to focus pretty well on getting to your destination.

So, where’s the criticism?

It’s this: You haven’t actually seen, understood, welcomed, and allowed to naturally dissolve that ego-form on whose behalf the fear was arising in the first place. Let’s call that particular ego-form “the powerless little boy.”

Let’s call the arising of fear “experience 1.”

Instead, the reason the rational approach seemed to work, I’ll argue, is that the one speaking or thinking–let’s call this ego-form “the wiseman”–is addressing a second, imagined ego-form–let’s call this one “the sensible adult.” And let’s call this–that is, the wiseman speaking to the sensible adult–“experience 2.”

This is Advaita Vedanta Lesson 101: when experience 2 arises, necessarily experience 1 has subsided (since there can only be one experience at any one time). Therefore, obviously the fear, which is arising on behalf of the deducible powerless little boy, has disappeared. Meanwhile, experience 2, which involves two different characters, works inasmuch as the car is operated well enough.

In short, it’s a bait and switch.

Now, does this approach actually lead to the end of suffering (nirvana)? Hardly. In fact, it’s just the prolongation of samsara by other means. To be sure, it may be pragmatically efficacious, but in the long run the fear, on behalf of the powerless little boy, will arise, intermittently, again and again and again. Sure, you won the battle, but you’ll keep losing the war, so to say.

What’s a more skillful approach, then? Clean Up. Perhaps take a cue from Internal Family Systems (IFS): gently open to, even dialogue with the powerless little boy (*). By virtue of opening to while understanding the latter, it will slowly merge into the Awareness that we ultimately are.

Note

(*) A pragmatic remark: if it’s necessary to talk oneself out of fear in a given situation, then fine. But use the “echo” of the experience to revisit, here, the powerless little boy so as to go to the heart of the matter. Let Cleaning Up be in the service of Waking Up.