A thought crossed my mind last night after sitting. It's about fear. We all have it, and fear, in my opinion, is the most primal emotion. Other emotions - anger, aggression, hatred, envy - can all be seen, in some way, to arise from fear. There's not much we can do to avoid fear, except to try and be fearless, but then something happens, and once again, fear arises from our lizard brain, and takes over in a fight-or-flight reaction that has evolved to save us from Danger.

Perhaps fear is one of the things that prevents us from making realizations when sitting. Not the fear that expresses itself as anger or hatred, but the fear of seeing the Truth, of realizing Non-Self, of grasping Emptiness. If you've ever had any kensho experiences - I've had a few over the years, both during meditation, and, some decades ago, through chemical ingestion - you may have had the feeling that you were suspended over a great Unknown, an empty space with nothing to support you but your own confidence and trust. This Unknown can be like a huge ocean, a vast empty space; it can be like walking off the edge of a high building, and looking down, like Wile E. Coyote, suddenly realizing that there's nothing under your feet.

It may be that overcoming this fear is the biggest hurdle to realizations when sitting. It may be that we need to grasp this fear and hold on to it until we become one with it, then take that step into the void. But fear is so primal that it's hard to ignore. When it arises, we can't simply step around it; we get absorbed by it.

We need to face this fear and go beyond it.