Take a Breath

 1. Press the play button.

2. Take a breath.

3. Repeat steps 1 & 2 as needed.

A Cure for Anxiety - Part 1

Inner peace is a purely physical phenomenon. Your soul is deep and unaffected by the tempests your ego tosses, but your body is not.

Without doubt, anxiety has its roots in attitudes that you hold, but lots of people have those same attitudes without also engaging in anxiety. So it's wise to focus first on the physical dimension.

Once you learn this simple technique to ratchet down the negative energy you're constantly spewing into your physical being, you will then be free to evaluate the spiritual and emotional bases for this behavior as you desire and at you leisure.

Feel Good First: The New Hedonism

The Hedonists Had it Right . . . Almost

Owing mainly to the swinger resorts of the same name, the word "Hedonism" conjures up visions of freewheeling sexuality. . . not that there's anything wrong with that. But that isn't really what hedonism was originally all about. Shall we say that this is a perversion of the original school of philosophical thought?

Moving Refrigerators with Marcus Aurelius and Eckhart Tolle

What is evil to thee does not subsist in the ruling principle of another; nor yet in any turning and mutation of thy corporeal covering. Where is it then? It is in that part of thee in which subsists the power of forming opinions about evils. Let this power then not form opinions, and all is well. And if that which is nearest to it, the poor body, is cut, burnt, filled with matter and rottenness, nevertheless let the part which forms opinions about these things be quiet, that is, let it judge that nothing is either bad or good which can happen equally to the bad man and the good. For that which happens equally to him who lives contrary to nature and to him who lives according to nature, is neither according to nature nor contrary to nature.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book IV No. 39

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There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Shakespeare, Hamlet Act 2, scene 2, 239–251

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In Zen they say: "Don't seek the truth. Just cease to cherish opinions."

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 121

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Judge not, lest you be judged.

Jesus, The Holy Bible, Matthew 7: 1

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Whenever one is called upon to move refrigerators for a friend (that isn't us in the picture), it is likely in that mode of awakened doing our good friend Eckhart Tolle calls "Acceptance." The other two are "Enjoyment" and "Enthusiasm" (see Monetize Your Life for a complete discussion.)

"Whatever you cannot enjoy doing," he writes in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61), "you can at least accept that this is what you have to do. Acceptance means: For now, this is what this situation, this moment, requires me to do, and so I do it willingly."

Dreamcatcher

Let's look at it this way: we take care of our inner state and God takes care of all the rest.

If we focus on inner peace, sweeping our inner vision clean every day, allowing the joy that is our natural state to arise within us at all times, the rest of what happens takes on a dream-like aspect.

Sometimes a nightmare, we remind ourselves, "It's only a dream, it's only a dream." Sometimes a fantasy, to which we respond, "No need to wake me just yet."

Awakened Consciousness Not a Backseat Driver

Let's put it this way: the job of your consciousness--the consciousness that you are--is to sit back and enjoy the ride. Don't interfere, don't be a backseat driver. Just relax and watch the scenery.

Jiddu Krishnamurti put it a slightly different way, but he meant the same thing. In A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, Eckhart Tolle tells the story of Krishnamurti's revelation of his "secret." It was simple. He said, "I don't mind what happens."

Who is "I" in this statement? Krishnamurti's consciousness. Consciousness that does not mind what's going on is free to sit back relax--inner peace--without interfering with The Good that runs the universe, all that is, including us.

Another Swing at Inner Peace

I have said that inner peace is a physical phenomenon. Start with the physical sensations inside your body and hold your focus there because that's literally what inner peace is (see The Pain-Body label for more articles). And that's good advice.

But we can also look at it another way. As our good friend Eckhart Tolle puts it in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61),"Being at peace and being who you are, that is, being yourself, are one." (p. 114-115)

What we are trying to get to is feeling like ourselves again, uncluttered by ego and pain-body and any kind of background unhappiness that is common to most of us."

A recent experience brought this home to me in a personal way. I received word that an old girlfriend of mine got married, and when I found out about it I could sense that it had ignited my pain-body.

A Cure for Anxiety - Part 3

If anxiety is a purely physical phenomenon (see Part 1), so is joy. Joy displaces anxiety.

Your soul already knows joy. Your soul is joy because your soul is one with the unmanifested. It's one with God. To experience that oneness in our physical bodies is joy.

So how do we do that?

By taking our awareness more deeply into our physical bodies and thereby sensing our inner bodies, which is the "life that animates" us.

A Cure for Anxiety - Part 2

Remember, anxiety is the hook but enlightenment is the goal. If we deal with the symptoms of anxiety by simply practicing certain techniques or by taking a pill, we're dealing with the problem on a purely physical level.

If we go to a psychologist or psychiatrist, we begin to include the mind in the solution.

But there's also a third level. That's the level of the spirit or soul. If we don't tap into this aspect of our being, we lack the leverage necessary to make lasting change. It's like trying to lift something that you're standing on.

Let me try to show you what I mean with a little experiment. At the end of this paragraph, stop reading and listen to the voice in your head. Almost everyone has an internal monologue going in their head all the time. Take a moment and listen to it.