by Kelvin H. Chin, Life After Life Expert & Meditation Teacher
“Thinking clearly” is highly underrated.
Let’s look at it through the lens of sports.
What describes a true sports fan? The unwavering belief that their team will win the game. Right?
But if they were being truthful, they would also tell you that they often harbored the fear it may not happen.
Common experience?
Absolutely. You’ve probably experienced this yourself.
How does it make you feel?
Insecure, anxious, ungrounded, unstable, difficult to sleep. In a word, afraid.
Sound familiar?
Well, people also do it with the fear of death all too frequently. Their thinking is often unclear and leads to irrational fears.
For example, I regularly hear people claim to have the First Belief System (the physical science belief about death...that when the brain/body dies, the mind dies), yet they also complain of having a fear that they may experience nothingness after they die, and they don’t want to. Which is it? You cannot have it both ways. You cannot say that you fully believe in the First Belief System, and still have the fear of not continuing or continuing after you die. That is the Second Belief System, not the First.
It is very much like the sports enthusiast who claims to absolutely believe that his or her team is going to win the playoffs, however, they wonder “what if” their team doesn’t.…
If they were candid and honest with themselves, they would admit that they do not really, fully, 100% believe that their team will win the playoffs. Their doubt, concern and fear that they may not win are proof of that. But often, because of our sports-minded culture, that sort of admission is unacceptable. What is culturally accepted is a sort of “fanaticism” about one’s team winning and as a result, the belief that it will happen becomes paramount.
The belief trumps clear thinking.
In my opinion, that is the seed, the very beginning of irrational thinking which leads to irrational fears.
What are irrational fears? They are fears that do not make sense. They do not make sense in light of clear, rational thinking. They are illogical.
Such is the case with people who claim to believe in the First Belief System about death, yet still harbor the fear that their desire to continue after they die will not happen.
What is fear?
“Fear is the emotion caused by the anticipation of unhappiness.”
So if you believe the First Belief System, there will be no experience after you die so you cannot have any fear about that, since you will have no experience to be afraid of. Getting clarity that your fear is not of that, not of dying, but of not being able to continue after you die is important. Your fear is of the unknown, of not knowing for sure.
Just like the sports fanatic, to reduce his fear about the playoffs, he should instead look at the statistics, look at what the probability is of his team winning, and base his happiness on that. That would be a more rational and arguably a more effective approach. And a small number of sports enthusiasts actually do that — professionally we call them “sports analysts” and we see them every week on TV before major games.
But most people choose the fanatic route instead. Why? I think it’s because of the emotional high and low that they experience with the fear of the unknown. They embrace that and look forward to that adrenaline rush. We as a culture are addicted to the “fight or flight” response that kicks in when the HPA axis gets excessively turned on inside our nervous system.
And because we are so addicted to that feeling, we forget that it should not get turned on when we are thinking about and trying to reduce our fears about things like death and dying. Instead, our default mechanism gets turned on. We continue to think unclearly, which leads to irrational thinking, which leads to irrational fears.
I would argue that clarifying our thinking about what our beliefs are is the very first step in loosening the grip on our minds and nervous systems about fears that we may have.
That along with “turning within” and learning an effortless technique like the meditation that I teach — because it is equally important to cleanse the physiology from the build up of overexercise of the “fight or flight” response. The build up of cortisol, lactic acid, and other chemicals that can accumulate in the muscle tissues, brain tissues, and other parts of our bodies, causing calcification and improper cellular growth, that can contribute to and cause anxieties and fear responses in our minds.
So, in summary, just like the sports enthusiast who does his homework and rationally figures out his team’s probabilities about winning the playoffs, along with doing his jumping jacks before he sits down to watch his favorite team, the seeker who wishes to overcome her fear of death needs to think clearly and rationally about her belief about death, and “turn within” and meditate to neurophysiologically cleanse the body of the build up of excess residual chemicals and to reduce the stress and the anxiety in the mind.
That is the power of clear thinking along with “turning within” that will conquer our fears and give us the freedom to reclaim the power of life over death.
Kelvin H. Chin is a Meditation Teacher, Life After Life Expert, and Author of “Overcoming the Fear of Death.” He learned to meditate at age 19, and has been teaching Turning Within and coaching others in their self-growth for 40 years. He helps people understand their life challenges through their individual belief systems, and helps them find their own solutions. His past life memories reach back many centuries, and he accesses those memories in his teaching and his coaching in the same way all coaches draw on their own available experiences for perspective and effective analogies. He can be reached at www.OvercomingTheFearOfDeath.org or www.TurningWithin.org.