Three in the morning. You're awake. The thoughts are about a meeting that's happening in five hours. The slide that won't load. The question someone might ask. The face your boss will make if the answer is wrong. None of this is happening. You're in a dark room with a pillow. The room is silent. Your body is safe. The fear is doing what fear does.
K traced fear to its mechanism. Fear isn't a response to what's happening now. Fear is a response to what thought is projecting will happen, or what thought is remembering happened, or what thought is imagining might happen. The mechanism is thought, moving in time — forward or backward — and the body responding to the projection as if it were the present.
Strip away the time-projection and fear has no fuel. In the actual present moment — not the imagined one — there's no fear. There's only what's happening. The body breathing. The pillow under your head. The room. None of these are scary. The scary thing is in the future, which doesn't exist yet, or the past, which doesn't exist anymore. Thought makes both of them seem present. The body responds. Fear runs.
Notice the difference between actual present-moment threat and thought-projected fear. Actual threat tightens you instantly and resolves when the threat is gone. Thought-projected fear has no resolution. It keeps running because thought keeps running. You can be in a perfectly safe room and your nervous system can be in war mode for hours. The body is responding to something thought is imagining.
Fear needs time to exist. Take time away and the fuel is gone. The seeing K pointed to is the seeing that catches thought projecting and lets the projection collapse. Then there's just what's happening. The room. The pillow. The breath. No fear left.