Fear of Falling Sick
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Fear of Falling Sick
Everybody wants to be healthy. At the same time,
we must understand that once we assume a body, illness, old age, and death are
natural processes of life. Taking good care of the body is definitely our
business, but once we have a physical body, we know that illness may happen at
any moment. However, if we are paranoid about ill health or death, we will not
take good care of the body. The very anxiety of what may happen will destroy
the body. If we become excessively concerned about illness or health, that itself
becomes an illness. An illness is something that restricts our life. That is
why we don't like it. But just the fear of illness also restricts our life.
There are so many people whose fear of illness
becomes very strong once they cross forty or forty-five years of age. When they
were young, they didn't have this fear because they thought they were immortal!
It is only as we grow older that the fact that we are mortal comes to us. Our
fear is not of illness, our fear is of dying. Illness is the passage – the
first step towards death. We are still not addressing death directly, but we
are addressing illness because we know that if illness comes, the other one
will follow.
Generally, in social situations, people have been
going about convincing us that fear of death is natural. Unfortunately, people
think that whatever the majority is doing is natural. If most people were
smoking cigarettes, people would say smoking is a natural thing. They were saying that a few years ago. Certain groups of people
still say, “What's wrong with smoking? It is only natural.” A human being is
not made to smoke. We are not automobiles! Similarly, the fear of death has
been made natural by social situations, but it is not so.
If life happens, death is a natural process. Being
afraid of a natural process is unnatural. This fear has come because of a
certain sense of ignorance and unawareness. We are not in touch with reality
and we have gotten deeply identified with this body. This has happened because
we have not explored other dimensions. If we had explored and established
ourselves in other dimensions of experience, the body would not be such a big
issue. But now our whole experience of life is limited to this body. No matter
what kind of teachings other people give us, whether somebody tells us that we
are Atma, Paramatma or whatever else, our experience is limited to the physical
body. So, the fear of losing it is natural. But if we establish ourselves in
other dimensions of experience, the body becomes an easy thing to handle. Life
or death won't make such a big difference.
Through regular meditation we realise that we are
not the body, we are the soul and in time our health itself becomes a non-issue
as soul consciousness takes over and body consciousness is left far behind.
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