Why do we feel anxious, disempowered and overwhelmed and how can we remain anchored in peace, joy and certainty?
The short and complete answer is that we are not anchored in truth, in the essence of our Being, in Love and we must spend time in this truth, in our essential nature.
But let me explain a little.
Our beliefs, personal and collective, have a powerful influence on us. As Henry Ford so rightly said:
Whether you believe you can or you believe you can’t, you are right.
What are some of the beliefs that prevent us from experiencing our natural state of peace and happiness? Here are just a few:
My happiness is contingent upon other people and other things.
This belief is often expressed in our insistence on people and things being a certain way and when they aren’t, we are unhappy.
I have to work hard to achieve the things that I want.
This belief is expressed in effortful behaviors and choices that we make involving struggling, pushing upstream instead of literally aligning with the flow of Universal energy or Love.
The world is an unsafe place and I have to protect myself against it.
This belief is expressed in measures we take to separate ourselves from others and to invest our resources including our time and energy into a select few while ignoring others or even attacking them personally or collectively (eg by supporting wars).
We can’t have everything we want. We must make compromises.
This belief is expressed in the way we make willful, fear-driven choices rather than intuitive, love-inspired choices.
There is not enough in this world/universe for everything and everyone.
This belief is expressed in our unwillingness to fully enjoy the moment since so much of our conditioned, fearful mindspace is preoccupied by fearful thoughts of lack and limitation.
Not all things are possible. In fact most things aren’t.
This belief is expressed in our reluctance to go fully and unreservedly in the direction of our dreams. Instead, we scale down our dreams or even give up on them.
So that’s just a small sample of our limiting, disempowering beliefs. They hold us in their grip of lack, limitation and impossibility, their programs running unnoticed in our subconscious mind. When we are challenged about the validity of these beliefs, we either disclaim them and claim/espouse their opposites or we stubbornly try to defend them.
In the meantime, we remain in their grip and for as long as we are, we do not allow ourselves to experience the truths of life. We do not give ourselves permission to encounter these truths in the stillness and quietude of our natural mind. And we do not anchor our thinking in these truths.
Spiritual masters of all traditions have always given priority to spending time in their natural, unconditioned, unlearned mind or state of consciousness. For them, this is as essential as breathing. Yet, many of us who are trying to become more ‘spiritual’, who are seeking lasting and unconditional happiness and peace feel that this is something that we can negotiate.
‘I’ll do it if I feel like it or if I have the time’.
You cannot possibly be serious if that is your attitude.
Or perhaps you give up after a few attempts.
‘This is not for me’ or ‘It is too scary’ or ‘I’m not making any progress’.
If you saw it as a matter of life and death, (which it is since you can either live fully and effortlessly in love or die a slow death of struggle and fear), you would persevere. You would not bail out at the slightest discomfort. You would pay attention to those more experienced who advice that discomfort, fear and judgement are all long-standing habits of a fear-conditioned mind.
If you are not prepared to encounter, to observe the nature of this fear-conditioned mind in a relatively safe environment such as in the practice of meditation, how can you expect to manage this mind when it is caught up in the tornado of reactive, habitual behavior in your day to day interactions and experiences?
How can you expect to fall into your natural mind, your unconditioned, power/love consciousness if you are not familiar with it? If you have not already trained your conditioned mind to go there easily and quickly?
It’s crazy but true that people will see the sense in spending oodles of time immersing themselves in a new skill or hobby they are trying to acquire or perfect. Yet, when it comes to immersing themselves in the natural skill of being present, of being in love consciousness, of being in their natural, unconditioned state of consciousness, of practising meditation, such sense goes out the window.
As one client once said to me, ‘Well, since it’s natural, it should happen naturally’
What he meant was that it should happen without him having to do anything.
Ironically, he’s not wrong. You see, if he did absolutely nothing, he would be spontaneously reconnected with his unconditioned, natural mind as happened to the Buddha!
What he, and many like him who unconsciously hold similar beliefs, don’t realize is that contrary to doing ‘nothing’, they are doing something and often the things that don’t help!
They are constantly engaged in fearful thinking and behavior! They are constantly engaged in reactive, mindless thinking and behavior!
So, if you seriously want to liberate yourself from the constant assault of fear, uncertainty and powerlessness, all of which keep you from your natural, unconditioned and unconditional state of happiness and peace, you must make the decision to spend more time in this natural state.
Meditation is the most widely practised (though equally widely misunderstood) way of doing this. Learn how to do it from someone who really understands its principles and philosophy and is a dedicated practitioner her/himself.
Don’t make the mistake of treating it as a technique you can use to help you in tricky situations or in a current crisis. It’s not that it can’t but to approach it and use it in this limited and poorly understood way is to deny yourself the ability to remain anchored ALL THE TIME in your natural, peaceful, joyous and powerful state of being. Importantly, by the time you’ve reached crisis point, it can feel too difficult because reactive habits would have automatically taken control.
You deny yourself the experience and the certainty of knowing that your happiness and your peace is NOT contingent upon anyone or anything.
You deny yourself the experience and certainty of knowing that all things are possible.
You deny yourself the experience and certainty of knowing that the world is as you perceive it, for better or for worse, and that it is by nature, peaceful and safe.
You deny yourself the experience and certainty of knowing that life is an effortless unfolding of consciousness and you are part of this effortless unfolding, not separate from it.
You deny yourself the experience and certainty of knowing that the Universe is infinite and abundant and that there is always enough for all.
So, make it your priority to practice being anchored in your natural, unconditioned, limitless, powerful, peaceful and joyous mind. Make it a priority today. Now.
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