An elderly therapist, with decades of experience, said to me once: "Where there is grief or anger, fear always lies below. Look underneath any emotional storm, to see what is there."
She was right. Not only are grief and anger closely linked; they travel as a pair, I've found. But fear too is present, often deeply hidden from view. It's no surprise. Ego or little self nourishes fear in order to keep itself employed!
With a little practice - and some steady curiosity -- each of us can identify grief and anger. But peeking underneath them takes unusual courage. That too can become a powerful practice.
Manjushri offers a very simple way to begin. You must remember It is a delicate process to uncover those deeply rooted fears and begin the long and hard work of dissolving them.
The steps of this process, however, are simple and straightforward. First, identify the fear lurking deep in your heart and mind. Give it a name, and as best you can, bring it up to the surface. Then, greet it with kindness and understanding, over and over, day after day. Become familiar with it, as it slowly dissolves. It will lose its power to trigger a sense of danger, to initiate a counter-attack and to escalate a situation out of all proportion to its actual size and heft in the world.
You will be rewarded with much more ease in your own life and with those around you. It will reduce the violence in your community and world, as you no longer fuel it with your own fearfulness. It may seem too small to make a difference, but truly, it is probably the best way to begin to heal the generations of fear and violence in the United States.
Penny Gill (On Fear 2015)
For more of Manjushri's rich Teachings on fear, see What in the World Is Going On? Wisdom Teachings for our Time, 2nd ed. And don't miss his remarkable sentence there: "Politics is condensed fear".
Perhaps more on that later?