Note: I had some problems publishing this post. If you’d like to join the conversation by commenting, please do so here. Thank you!
“As long as you make an identity for yourself out of pain, you cannot be free of it.”
~Eckhart Tolle
“Anxiety is loves greatest killer.”
~Anais Nin
If it happens to you, you’re not alone. It’s an experience I hear about often and used to color every day of my life. It’s that subtle undercurrent of anxiety that makes you feel ill-at-ease, restless, and on edge.
Do you know this feeling? Maybe you experience it as fear, dread, or just plain discomfort. It causes your mind to spin and fills you with doubt. Left unexamined, it governs your life, making peace seem like an unattainable fantasy.
We are speaking about the primary dis-ease of our modern life.
Have you noticed that we are constantly given messages that lead us to conclude that we need to do more, have more, be more? We live in a culture of lack that reinforces the sense of the inadequate personal self and has us looking to the past and future for fulfillment.
It breeds the toxic “if only” story: if only I were thinner, happier, in a better relationship with a more satisfying job… Taking this on, you believe that:
- Things are not OK as they are are,and
- You are a person who is not good enough.
These identities sit in you like an annoying guest who refuses to leave. No wonder you’re anxious.
What to Do?
What to do with this intense feeling of discomfort?
Analyzing why it’s there will not get to the root of it.
The desire to run from it is understandable, but creates unconscious behavior patterns that don’t serve and leaves you scrambling to fix everything about yourself that appears to be broken.
Just tolerating the feeling leaves you hopelessly anxious, out of sorts, and overrun by obsessive thinking.
What is needed is a radical solution. Because you can’t think your way out of this endless cycle of anxiety and worry.
The Radical Solution
Finding your way out of the discomfort of anxiety asks you to question your assumptions about everything you take to be true.
- What exactly is anxiety?
- What are you doing that sustains it?
- Who is the you who is anxious?
- What needs to happen for you to be peaceful?
Let’s start by establishing that peace is possible; in fact, peace is more available than you could ever imagine. Anxiety? A ship passing through the ocean of you. Realize this by following the trail of breadcrumbs from anxiety to peace.
Pick up the first one by investigating the actual nature of the experience of anxiety, which requires moving your attention away from it so you can take a closer look.
Notice that this is possible – you can be aware of this experience of anxiety and discomfort. Recognize that just with this simple shift of attention from being caught in the web of anxiety to witnessing it, you already feel more spacious.
Interesting.
Now, from this place of being aware, what do you notice? If you are like me, there are swirls of thought forms and various physical sensations in the body. And that is all.
I can get caught up in these thoughts, spending my time analyzing, worrying, and sifting through possibilities and what if’s. But if, just for a second, I stop being consumed in the content of the thinking, I notice two things:
I am aware, and sensations and thoughts are temporarily present in awareness.
Let’s explore further by experimenting.
Experiment #1:
Engage intently with anxious thoughts. Think them, make them real, and see how more anxious stories immediately spring to life. How do you feel? Probably tense, contracted, worried, and stressed.
Experiment #2:
Notice physical sensations without paying attention to thoughts. If you don’t create thoughts about the sensations, even by labeling them, there is just the direct experience of the sensation. Is there a problem?
Experiment #3:
Shift your attention away from thoughts and physical sensations, and just be aware. Is awareness spacious or contracted? Does it have a name, a gender, or an identity? Is it troubled or at peace?
What do we conclude from these experiments? When you unravel what you call anxiety, it loses its power. Anxiety thrives when your attention gets lost in thinking. When you rest as aware presence, you are at peace.
Return to Peace
When you are consumed by anxiety, how to return to yourself?
- Disengage from anxious thoughts
- Let physical sensations be without weaving a story about them
- Notice that you are aware, still, alive, and full, and live here.
Rinse and repeat a thousand times a day, if necessary, as each moment is a moment of peace.
Next time you feel anxious, know that thinking won’t help you. Instead, simplify. Notice you are here, present and aware. Already at peace.
Anxious? Have you found your way to peace? I’d love to hear…
Note: I had some problems publishing this post. If you’d like to join the conversation by commenting, please do so here. Thank you!
Kay Latona says
This is all just to vague for me. I don’t know what it means. But I will tell you the most important thing my therapist taught in 8 years of therapy:
You don’t have to keep replaying the tapes. Be aware of it when you are doing it, and deliberately guide your thoughts to something else. If it helps, pick the “something else” in advance, so when the tape is replaying in your mind, you have a specific place to go with your thoughts. Even if it’s just a pink elephant, it will stop the tape for you.
Gail Brenner says
This is great advice, Kay, and I’m glad that you have found a way to stop the suffering that comes from thoughts replaying. Thanks so much for stopping by.
Cindy Aguilera says
Dearest Gail- I`ve been wondering what Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra mean when they say that consciousness is the seer that itself cannot be seen?
Gail Brenner says
Hi Cindy,
What a great question – please take time with the answer and let it sink in. Here’s the statement you are asking about: consciousness is the seer that itself cannot be seen.
Let’s break it down, starting with consciousness being the seer. What this refers to is knowing the truth of who you are. Are you a separate body-mind with a gender, name, history, age, personality characteristics, etc.? When this belief or assumption is examined with great discrimination, what we find is that there is no separate self. What we call the body is an array of physical sensations, and thoughts are merely wisps of energy that appear and disappear. There is nothing solid there that is stable and unchanging. So if you are not a separate self, who are you?
You will find that what is stable and unchanging is the awareness that thoughts, sensations, all objects arise in. Awareness, or consciousness, is alive. It is aware and always has been. It is empty of all forms but the source of everything. It has no conflict with anything that arises in it so it is totally at peace. It is reality itself.
Now, even though you are not the separate self, there is still seeing, acting, hearing, sensing, thinking. These functions occur, but they are not the product of the separate self, that doesn’t actually exist. It is consciousness, your true identity, that sees, acts, hears, senses and thinks. There is no separate doer, but there is doing. There is no separate seer, but there is seeing. It is consciousness that is the source of these functions (the seer), and no separate self is needed for these to occur perfectly.
Since consciousness is the source of all, it can’t be seen as a separate object. Only objects can be seen – a table or your hand or a thought or image. And all objects, in the absolute truth, are illusions. The only thing that exists, which is not a thing, is consciousness. It can’t be seen because it is the ultimate seer and everywhere it looks it sees itself. It’s like asking a tree to look outside itself to find its tree essence. It can’t be separate from it. Likewise, consciousness cannot be separate from itself, so it cannot be seen.
But consciousness can be known, in fact, that is all we know – whether we realize it or not. And when we realize that consciousness is all there is, there is the realization of nonseparation, with no mind-made limitations in the way. When the illusion of all objects collapses, including the illusion of the separate self, reality is revealed – formless, empty, and totally at peace. And in this realization is the overflow of love, gratitude, and the deepest contentment beyond imagination.
Nathan says
Hi Gail, thanks for sharing your understanding and perspective. I have only just discovered your website, and it seems to be densly packed with wisdom and practical advice.
I have a question about this: “since consciousness is the source of all, it can’t be seen as a separate object…all objects, in the absolute truth, are illusions. The only thing that exists, which is not a thing, is consciousness”
Existence in this case seems to be defined in terms of perceived reality, rather than physical reality. Physical reality exists independently of perception. Physical objects exist independently of perception. The notion of a physical object in the mind is an illusion, but the nature of the object within physical reality is not dependent on perception (except for human interpretation and understanding).
In what ways am I incorrect in this analsysis?
Gail Brenner says
Welcome to you, Nathan. Thank you so much for your question, and I’m happy to discuss it with you.
What is your evidence that objects exist independently of perception?
Let’s do some experiments. Look at a chair. Now, does/can the chair exist without your seeing it? Can a sound exist without your hearing it? If you say, yes, it does exist, it does have an independent reality, what is your evidence? How do you know?
What we talk about here is not “spiritual” or airy fairy. Reality is about the facts – what is actually true and what is true always, not just temporarily. If something changes or is here sometimes and gone others, it is not absolutely real.
My direct experience is that objects do not exist independent of perception. I look at a chair and I close my eyes. Where did the chair go? You open your eyes and see it again, so it is one with the perception of it. Then you might say, “My eyes are closed, I know if I open them the chair will be there.” This is an assumption the mind makes, and it is the mind that makes us believe the illusion that objects are real and continuous across time. The mind is even concluding that what is being looked at is a chair, as language does not directly represent reality. I have come to not trust the mind at all – especially when it is making judgments of others and myself!
Go to your direct experience to understand the nature of reality, as this is the only “place” to find reality. What is absolutely true? And here is a hint: the mind will only help so much with this investigation. Because reality exists beyond thoughts, beyond the mind. If you are not thinking, do you still exist? So if we use the mind to understand reality, we will necessarily hit a limit, a limit of the mind, not of reality.
Wonderful food for “thought,” for piercing investigation. Enjoy experimenting!
Ephraim says
Thank you for a very inspiring topic. How do I fight fear and doubts?
Gail Brenner says
Welcome to you, Ephraim.
Please take a look at the archives – I have written a lot about fear. Anxiety is a form of fear, so this post definitely applies. Doubts are in the mind – they spin like crazy as you probably know. Rather than going around in all these thoughts, instead bring your attention into your body and allow the physical sensations. The key to freedom from fear is to get to know how fear shows up in your body and to make the space for these sensations rather than running from them by feeding the thoughts.
This may take some time – and diligent attention – but freedom from doubt and fear is possible – I know from my own experience.
Wishing you well…
Sandra Pawula says
How synchronous. I was just noticing today. as I was watering, the sensations of subtle anxiety in my body. It can be so quiet and so quick! I appreciate your method and I also feel it takes practice: rinse and repeat 1,000 times! Peace is available.
Gail Brenner says
Hi Sandra,
The more aware you are, the more you will notice that subtle sensations creep in, as you know. If your goal is not to get rid of anything, then it doesn’t matter that anxiety is revisiting. Each moment is fresh. If the freshness of this moment expresses tingling sensations that you label as anxiety, is there a problem?
Welcome each moment just as it is, without any expectations about what should or shouldn’t be there, and what appears is just another arising.
Love to you…
monky says
what is relation between fear and anger
Gail Brenner says
Hi Monky,
I’m not sure about the relation between fear and anger – it is different for different people. But I’m not sure the answer to this question will help you. An alternative approach is to feel fear and feel anger as you experience it – directly – to be present with what you are experiencing in the moment. This is the path to freedom that I know to be true.
Liam says
Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering
-yoda
Jessica says
Thanks for sharing. Very insightful post. For me it was all about diversion. When you’re consumed by anxious feelings it is often difficult to breakout of that self imposed prison, so whatever you can do to distract your mind is helpful. Listening to loud music (not too loud of course), going for a walk/run, check out a podcast, anything that takes your mind off your anxious feelings even for just a short amount of time can be so helpful. And like you said, rinse and repeat a thousand times if necessary. The more your mind remembers what life is life without anxious feelings, the easier it is to get things back on track and start living life again.
Gail Brenner says
Great suggestions, Jessica! I’m glad that they have worked for you and that you are living life again.
Retirement planner says
Great insight.. Thank you for sharing with us.
Gail Brenner says
My pleasure. Thanks for stopping by.