 Namaskar. My question relates to what Thomas and you were talking about. I believe in the western cultures kind of this emotional repression especially for males. I'm trying to understand this fight with fear as I'm experiencing it personally and I'm afraid of pushing through and repressing emotions. There's a whole you know somatic therapy world where you feel it, you're aware of it and that helps you process it and kind of release it and it may just be my own interpretation and lens but that feels like I'd just kind of be ignoring the experience of fear that may be coming my way so I'm curious how you think about emotional repression. Thanks. So the idea of emotional repression comes as such from a psychologizing of the entire experience of living itself where fear becomes something which is given an undue importance. It's treated as something that has to be respected. One has to be loyal to it to give it its weight in your life to give it an importance in your life. It's actually an imprint of fear which comes from religion. Religion has imprinted that. It has given you that fear. It has handed it to you and told you to hold on to it and has succeeded in keeping you in place through that fear. So it is not something intrinsic to your system and if you identify with that fear which is what psychologizing it makes you do then it becomes more difficult to actually dissolve it to detach from it. If you were to imagine that fear is actually an emotional electromagnetic wave that is around in the atmosphere and that only takes over your system because you're not in surrender and not surrender in the sense of laying down your arms but surrender in the sense of fighting through bending down. The ego is the thing to be afraid of if at all you want fear. That's what you have to be afraid of and the fear in and of itself is not something that you were born with or that you're umbilically attached to. So especially coming from I presume from the west somewhere speaking English you are the ultimate victim of this fear because it succeeds in instrumentalizing you to support and and be a be a servant of greedy capital or power mongering religion even if you don't go to church that's not what the problem is. The problem is you are supposed to be a perfect worker you're supposed not to have emotions and not to even identify with them because if you do you can't work as hard you're supposed to be a nice well behaved servant afraid so that you can be kept in line kept towing the line. So how do you step out of that paradigm? How do you shift that paradigm? It's not by focusing on the fear because the more you focus on it you try to dissolve it you try to transform it you do various psychotherapies you start to lose your manhood because you assume that it's because you're a man that you're you're having to deal with this. The fact of the matter is that whether you're a man or a woman fear is not inherent and intrinsic to your nature to your being to your to yourself to your existence it isn't. So it's not that you are avoiding it or circumventing it you're simply focusing somewhere else and where is it that you're focusing in this practice sadhana it is called in Sanskrit in this practice you focus on the truth of your being on the center of your being on that which is the soul the inner master of your being you simply focus there again and again and again and every time the fear arises you focus on the strength of your being on the center of your being and as you do this what happens is is that that fear starts to dissolve because you've been told you know that you have to project strength you have to project a certain contour you have to project intellectual perfection you have to project emotional strength by not giving into emotions which is utter nonsense because it is when you allow the emotions to happen and you actually embrace them that you master them but you master them you don't become a victim of them and how do you do that how do you how do you make that step not by focusing on the fear but by focusing on the truth by even accepting conceptually that there is a center to you which is the master of your being which is truth expressing itself in every moment and if you focus there the fear will begin to dissolve the point is that if you want to hold on to that fear because men are being told nowadays that you have to tune into your emotions and you have to give into the you know you are fearful don't be afraid to say that just because you're a man you don't have to feel ashamed of being fearful you don't have to feel ashamed of being fearful you have to decide not to be fearful it's a decision and that decision can only be reality if you understand that you are divine that there is a center to you which is divine it's not a man sitting out there on a cloud with a beard I mean I know that you don't think that obviously but that is what is underlying that idea that there is something out there and that you have to bend down to it and that if you don't go with it you are disloyal to it and betraying it and that fear grows from there that's the source of your fear so if you were to for a moment consider simply bending down to the master of your being accepting accepting that you are intrinsically love and action that you're a strong man that you're powerful that you're ready to act out of that truth fearlessly and you're ready to pierce beyond that fear to feel that truth and act from it that is going to strengthen you more than trying to psychologize that fear and you know dressing it up and tying a bow on its head and you know keeping it as a little doll in your pocket no no you will be a much more emotional being a deeper emotional being capable of true love and yet being tough as a man because that's the body you seem to have been born in and hold your own in life as a man yet able to express emotions unafraid of expressing emotions because you know that your strength is within you that the center of your being is that which is supporting you through this life and not god and the government and and and your parents and the neighbors but it's you you are divine and that is the grand difference between psychologizing these things and attempting to transform it through the spiritual journey and the spiritual path psychology will focus on the fears and try to dissolve them sometimes successfully most of the time not spirituality will focus on the truth on the divinity that you are so if you take up that practice you can attempt it you can try to take up that path for a while see what happens and that fear will dissolve it's like building a muscle just do it each moment bring yourself to this moment bend to the master within try to find the action of truth to go with and gradually the fear will dissolve