Fear ceases when one sees the truth

Why is it that the best techniques out there aren’t able to provide lasting relief? Have you ever found a special breath work, a ritual, a trick that just resolved anxieties?

Sure, some exercise may bring you feeling of peace, but for how long?

I’ve done my search. I tried tons to techniques, approaches, schools of thoughts, etc to find that there is nothing out there that can set me free from worry. Of course, some mindfulness meditation could distract me from anxiety, but that just created an illusion that it worked. Anxiety would keep coming back.

As paradoxical as it sounds, insomnia has taught me how to set myself free from anxiety and fear without doing anything. I know it sounds intriguing, but some people might not like what I am about to write. That’s okay.

I no longer have the fear of sleeplessness, and I don’t struggle with sleep anymore: it happens just like it did before insomnia. Anxiety simply ceases to arise, because I got to know the truth, not because I learned some cool technique – I have no techniques.

The truth is..

I’m just not in control of things. I can’t make myself asleep, I can’t stop anxiety at will. There is nothing I can do to fall sleep, there is nothing I can do to stop anxiety from arising. These are the forces beyond my control. They never were in my control, it was the illusion of control. Insomnia just uncovered the truth about it and I didn’t like this truth, I tried to change it… with no luck.

Yet, none of this could harm me. Fear is a feeling, but it’s never permanent, sleeplessness is wakefulness, but I can’t be awake forever.

Any activity becomes irrelevant to the nature of those things. It doesn’t matter what I do before I go to sleep, I’m not in control of sleep. It doesn’t matter what I think before sleep – no thought will produce sleep. And if it doesn’t matter, aren’t we free to choose whatever we like? Why invent the hard way, create rules and all these “shoulds“ and “shouldn’ts“ – if all of them are destined to fail?

Fear ceases when we expose ourselves to that truth, over and over. When we see things we thought would work - not working. But also we see that in spite of that we are still alive. And it happens naturally, never with force. Sleep efforts become non-existent, because we no longer see point in them. We just feel liberated and relieved to know that we don’t have to keep figuring things out - there is nothing to figure out. We just keep doing our thing, living life the best as we can – the rest catches up.

I dedicated a video to a similar topic, you can check it out if you still haven’t

Take care <3

Ali