Free Buddhist Boot Camp by Timber Hawkeye

you have. It’s okay. It doesn’t mean your faith has to be wrapped up in religion. I, Timber Hawkeye, for example, am Faithfully Religionless.
    Why is acknowledging our faith so important? Because faith is the antidote to fear.
    We now know that energy flows where attention goes. So if you feed your fears they get bigger, but if you feed your faith, your fears have nothing to eat and eventually die. The problem is that fear has been drilled into us from a very young age, with its level of severity greatly varying depending on our upbringing, culture, family, etc.
    So in your “battle against fear,” I say change direction: don’t focus on letting go of fear; focus on increasing your faith . . . and the fear will disappear on its own.
    It’s like kundalini yoga, if you’ve ever done it. It involves a lot of very rapid breathing and can get very frustrating if you’re trying to breathe in and out really fast. As my yoga instructor says, however, just focus on the exhale; the inhale will happen automatically.
    Trust the process, my friends. Let it happen (it’s going to happen anyway). When you trust the process, you trust that it’s okay for people to be different from one another, that as much as we don’t like it, there’s a reason for what’s happening in the world, and the opposite of what we know is also true. Trust. The. Process.
    There is balance and harmony in the world (the north and the south poles), and we need it so that we don’t spin out of control, right?
    So just focus on feeding your faith and the fears will naturally go away. Try the breathing stuff . . . I’m serious. Close your mouth and breathe in and out through the nose really fast. It can get tricky UNLESS you just focus on the exhale and trust that the inhale will happen effortlessly.
    Being nice to those you don’t particularly like is not being two-faced; it’s called growing up. —Anonymous

It’s Never Too Late
    Angela always dreamed of seeing the world outside of her hometown. She imagined living in a small apartment somewhere, waking up to the feel of the sun on her face.
    Instead of making the decision to move, however, she spent her life riding out every situation, which meant staying with her husband until he decided to leave, working the same job for fifteen years, and only buying a new car when the old one died. She didn’t realize that NOT making any decisions is a pretty big decision in itself.
    Her sister Bonnie, on the other hand, pursued a career as far away from home as possible, and her best friend Joy went on a trip across Europe, where she decided to stay.
    Something as small as making a decision can be very empowering. We feel in control of our situation (rather than victimized by it), and when things change, we change with them. This flexibility and fluidity doesn’t happen overnight. There is a gap between needing to make a decision and actually making it, and that gap is almost always filled with fear. We fear change and the unknown, so we cling to a past that’s already gone and attempt to avoid a future that is inevitable.
    Knowing that this is our problem, however, doesn’t solve it. This is where we can draw inspiration from people everywhere who live by a different set of rules. They don’t live in a different world than the rest of us; they just look at the same world from a different perspective.
    Bonnie was filled with confidence and courage, for example, and Joy didn’t pack fear into her suitcase for the trip to Europe (she left it at home). Angela intellectually knew that if her sister and best friend could do it, she too could make some serious changes in her life, and she finally did!
    First things first: she turned off everything in her life that filled her with fear, doubt, paranoia, anxiety and anguish (i.e., television). It was a big change for her, since she habitually watched the morning news before going to work and also listened to talk radio in her car.
    True to form, the news