When Fear Falls Away

In August 2003, virtually overnight, Jan Frazier experienced "a dramatic falling away of fear" - not just the immediate fear of her annual medical procedure but, as she learned as time went on, her fear of everything. She was "flooded with a causeless joy that has never left me". Jan Frazier is not a guru sitting lotus-style on a mountaintop. She's a divorced, working mother who found "a pool of calm, a condition of unassailable well-being" beneath the layers of conditioning, beyond the deafening disinformation and cultural racket of "modern life". She found it by asking, "Is it possible for me not to be afraid?" It turns out, it is - for all of us. All we long to touch, to realize, is already within us. Anyone can be enlightened, and all we need to do is ask. "We suffer because we are conditioned to believe that the mind-produced picture of reality is the whole truth of who we are", Jan Frazier writes. "Yet, deeply buried within every human being, is a state of joy and peace in which no problems can exist - the state that mystics call enlightenment. It took the better part of a year for me to incorporate this radically altered inner reality into my daily activities - to be able to be "in both worlds" at once, to sustain an awareness of the deeper reality even while carrying out familiar tasks." Frazier is a clear-eyed reporter of her own experience, recounted here with a seeker's attention to truth and a poet's attention to detail. Her message is simple and profound: that this state of constant peace and joy is possible for any of us to achieve.