Let's Pretend: How Would It Feel...?

Let's Pretend: How Would It Feel...?
by Scott Bradley

How would it feel to be free of all fear? Can you suspend the need to rationally justify such a feeling and simply try to feel it? Go ahead. Just pretend. You don’t have to believe anything. You needn’t make a commitment...join a group...make a donation...give a reason. Just for fun: pretend.

How would it feel to be free of all fear? Fear of death. Fear of life. Fear of failure. Fear of success. Fear of others. Fear of self. Fear of loss. Fear of pain. Fear of fear.

I doubt that you can do this now, staring at a computer screen, but how about in the quiet morning with a mug of coffee cooling in your fist or in the evening, watching the stars with a cup of sleepy-time tea?

In imagining the experience of being free of fear, we learn what our fears are. And learning this, we can discover what gives them rise. And then, if we wish, we can imagine what it would be like to be free of these.

Take the fear of death, for example — for me it is rooted in the fear of loss. Loss of what? A real and fixed ‘me’, of course! How would it feel to have no ‘me’ to lose? How would it feel to have absolutely nothing that can be lost?

Thus, we begin to realize an experience not because it is a truth prescribed, but because we have already experienced its possibility.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.