Point

The fear · 15 of 24

Paper tigers

Look at one fear directly, and find out what happens.

Accept it, then let it go

Campbell's sequence for a fear has four moves, and only the last one is unusual. Notice the negative feeling. Trace it to the fear. Then — and this is the part people skip — accept it. You have to have the courage to look it right in the eye and say yes, that is my fear.

Then let it go, and observe what happens. His claim is that nothing does. All the fears that push us around, he says, that make us do and say and feel the things we do and say and feel, are paper tigers. Face one, accept it, try to let it go, and nothing terrible happens.

He does not pretend this is easy. Easy to say, not as easy to do, he adds — but it can be done, and if you have the intent to succeed at it, you will.

The instruction that makes it survivable is the one about scale. Do not try to tackle every problem and every fear at once. Pick one, deal with it, and when you succeed, deal with the next. That is why nothing in this app ever asks you for a list of your fears.

He is also honest about the timescale. Working the fear out may take a decade. The point is not to finish. The point is to be doing it.

Campbell's own words

Campbell, Buddha at the Gas Pump interview(opens in a new tab)

This session deliberately goes looking for something uncomfortable. That is the exercise, and for most people it is unremarkable — but if it turns up more than you expected, stop. Nothing here is a treatment, and there is no version of this practice that requires you to push through distress.

Before you start

  • Lighten up. Do not be intense or serious about this.
  • Sit somewhere comfortable and quiet where you will not be disturbed. A chair is fine. He does not specify anything beyond that.
  • Close your eyes.
  • Pick a time when you are not already churning. First thing on waking or last thing before sleep tend to work; straight after a big meal, or while you are angry about something, tend not to.
  • One fear. The one you found earlier this stage will do. Not the largest one you can think of — the one you actually met.
How long

Campbell’s own instruction is twenty minutes, twice a day. The shorter lengths early on are ours, not his — starting at twenty is how most people stop after a week.

The two buttons during a sit

Campbell’s mantra is not a fixed thing you repeat for twenty minutes. Its size is a dial, and you move it during the sit against how much thinking is going on. His instruction is symmetrical: if intruding thoughts constantly stream into your awareness, give the mantra a more active form; as thoughts disappear and do not return, decrease the complexity.

Busier
Your mind keeps wandering off. Give it more to hold, so there is less room for anything else. At the busiest: fill your mind with the longer chant: ah-lum-bar-dee-dum · ah-lum-baa-dee-dum. no need to make an actual sound. let it be busy.
Simpler
Nothing much is intruding any more. Let it thin out — there is no point crowding a mind that has already gone quiet.

Keep going down and you reach the end of it: If the sound slips away and no thoughts come in behind it, let it go. Drift in the quiet blankness of your consciousness. That is the whole aim — the mantra is scaffolding, and you take scaffolding down when the building stands up. Arrow keys work too, if you have a keyboard to hand.

Keep this tab open. The screen stays awake and dims itself, so the phone can lie face down. On iPhone, locking the screen or switching apps stops the sound — a browser limitation rather than a setting.