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Imagine a life without suffering.
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Until the summer of her fiftieth year, Jan Frazier lived a life typical for a well-educated, middle-class American woman. A divorced mother of two teenagers, she was making a modest living writing and teaching writing. Following a Catholic childhood in Miami in the 1960s, she had studied English in college and graduate school. In her late twenties, longing for hills and snow, she moved to New England, where she was active in the peace movement. But the inner peace she sought always eluded her. Then, in August 2003, she experienced a radical transformation of consciousness. Fear fell away from her, and she was immersed in a state of causeless joy that has never left her. While she has continued her life as writer, teacher, and mother, she has discovered it is possible to live a richly human life free of suffering. Her wish now is to communicate the truth that within every person is a pool of calm well-being that waits patiently to be stirred to life. When Fear Falls Away: The Story of a Sudden Awakening (Weiser Books, 2007) is Jan's day-by-day account of the shift in consciousness and its alteration of her life. Her poetry and prose have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies. Her poetry collection, Greatest Hits, was published by Pudding House, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has been inspired by Gurumayi, Krishnamurti, and Eckhart Tolle, but the joy she lives in belongs to no particular tradition, and is available to all.
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The source of ultimate fulfillment is to be found nowhere in outer life, but only within. There lies the answer to every lifelong question: What makes life worthwhile? Who am I? Why was I born? Within the quiet of human consciousness lies a joy without cause, without content. It needs nothing to sustain it. It is its own sustenance. It can be neither destroyed nor harmed. It is consciousness itself.
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"Fear limits our choices and our selves. One day Jan Frazier, self-identified 'ordinary woman, poet, mother, and writing teacher,' asked to be free from fear as she went through a scary medical test. When Fear Falls Away is the moving and inspiring account of what happened next, written at the time as a journal, as she discovered that not only had she lost her specific fear, fear had virtually disappeared from her life. Through her we discover the different world that's possible when our negative emotions aren't front and center. I have been in book publishing for more than 30 years. Every season I find books to teach me and nourish me. When Fear Falls Away is one of the most profound I've ever been privileged to encounter." - Jan Johnson, Publisher, Red Wheel/Weiser
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Contact Jan Frazier at jan@whenfearfallsaway.com.
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