Frequently I devote one day where I commit myself to the practice of saying yes to fear. What this means is that upon feeling even a hint of anxiety, I practice moving toward the fear, not with the heaviness of "my suffering" but rather with a certain lightness of heart that comes from seeing fear as nothing more than the human conditioning to which we are all subject. Without this lightness of heart, how could we ever step beyond the protective cocoon?
The transformation of fear does not mean that we no longer have fearful responses. It means that we no longer believe that those responses are who we are. This is what practice is about: learning to stop believing that our deep-seated reactivity is who we are. Who we really are is much bigger than any of our fear-based conditioned responses. When we can really experience fear, we can see through this false identification, perhaps even glimpsing a vaster sense of Being.
— Ezra Bayda, Being Zen