Dear ones,

Sooner or later, life brings each of us to places we never planned to visit. Illness, loss, uncertainty, aging, disappointment—no amount of wisdom can exempt us from being human. What changes through practice is not that fear disappears, but that we learn we don’t have to be ruled by it. We can acknowledge that fear is trying to protect us and say, “Thank you. I am OK just now.” Then we can sense the deeper truth: awareness itself—who we really are—is so much bigger than the fear.

Years ago, after experiencing troubling symptoms and receiving a frightening diagnosis that later proved to be mistaken, I found myself far more afraid than I expected. Even after decades of meditation, teaching, and sitting beside people facing death, there was a part of me that recoiled. When I later shared the story with my dear friend Ram Dass, he listened, smiled, and said, “Oh yeah, I flunked the course a number of times myself.” His response was both humbling and comforting. The spiritual path isn’t about becoming fearless. It’s about learning to meet our fear—and all of our humanity—with compassion and a free heart.

One of the great gifts of this path is the discovery that we are larger than the stories of fear that move through the mind. We can learn to sit with uncertainty, to soften around our anxieties, and to trust the heart’s capacity to meet whatever arises. This trust is not blind optimism. It grows from seeing, again and again, that even in life’s most difficult moments, love, presence, timeless awareness, and dignity remain available.

In the conversation above with Tami Simon, we explore how to welcome fear with compassion, how to rest in awareness rather than struggle against experience, and how to remember the deeper truth of who we are beneath every contraction of the heart. May this offering help bring you home to your birthright as loving awareness.

With metta,
Jack