Anxiety might arise in relation to a worry or concern about something happening in our life. Maybe an upcoming house move or a job interview.

It might also arise because we have a strong habit of anxiety, which we have cultivated over many years, so that we become concerned when we don’t have something to be anxious about. Worry thoughts just pop into the mind randomly, we engage them and get caught up in catastrophising thinking loops which feed our anxiety.

We might also experience existential anxiety when our meditation practice is about to generate a significant insight. Such insights can change the way we think about ourselves, what we think we are and how we think the mind works. Or they can change the way we think about the world, what it is and its true nature. We might think, if my perspective changes, who would I be? How would I live in the world? What would the consequences for my life be? I wouldn’t be who I think I am!

I remember once being on retreat when I had an insight about how mean I had been to someone. This contradicted my idea of myself as a kind person and so was very threatening. I remember being very upset and overwhelmed. Not because I had been mean to this person, but because my image of who I thought I was had been challenged. This insight threatened my sense of self.

Transformative insights are very valuable in enabling us to see and come to terms with deeply ingrained habits. They are the basis of deep personal growth which over time reduces our levels of day to day suffering (and that of those around us) and increases our overall happiness. If we can unconditionally accept these old habitual patterns they tend to transform themselves by a process which Krishnamurti called ‘The seeing is the doing’. When we see clearly and in a felt sense way how our habitual patterns cause harm, then they tend to transform themselves. But after such transformation, who would I be?

So, this kind of existential anxiety can be a significant block to our progress of meditation practice. So how do we proceed?

First, we familiarise ourselves with the components that make up anxiety, the thoughts we buy into, how anxiety feels, and any emotions that accompany the anxiety. Then we can hold these components in a wider space and see them for what they really are,  habitual happenings within the mind and learn that we don’t have to buy into them and make them real.

Second, we cultivate courage. There is no courage without fear. The deeper the fear the stronger the courage. Compassionate imagery can help us here to cultivate an ally that has absolute courage and strength to support us in facing anxiety when it arises.

If this is something you are interested in exploring, then why not try our Managing Anxiety Course starting in September. You can find more information here.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

by Naomi Shihab Nye

I found such a spaciousness in this beautiful poem this evening. The buttonhole, just there, doing its thing. No big deal.

In all our business and relationships and thinking, and to-ing and fro-ing, it is easy to forget just who we are. We are continually being told things, and maybe being expected to do things, and maybe thinking we are not doing things quite right, or saying things quite right, or maybe we should be doing this instead of that, and that we might be all wrong, that we are  just wrong. And we find ways to confirm our suspicions of our wrongness, and we try harder to just manage to be OK. Maybe we don’t feel OK but we just make out we are OK because that is easier.

Maybe then we can find some peace by sensing the freedom and non-doing of the buttonhole just being itself. Maybe then we can be famous to the dog. Or to the cup of tea for holding it just like that. Famous to the butterfly we help find its way back outside.

Lisa Hellier.

Let go of self-judgment, the old,
learned ways of beating yourself up
for each imagined inadequacy.

Allow the dialogue within the mind
to grow friendlier, and quiet. Shift
out of inner criticism and life
suddenly looks very different.

i can say this only because I make
the choice a hundred times a day to release the voice that refuses to
acknowledge the real me.

What’s needed here isn’t more prodding toward perfection, but
intimacy – seeing clearly, and
embracing what I see.

Love, not judgment, sows the
seeds of tranquility and change.

I love this poem by Danna Faulds.  It encompasses our mindfulness and compassion training.  By cultivating an attitude of being kind to ourselves, despite the mind and our self critics telling us otherwise,  we are slowly, gently, beginning to sow the seeds of tranquility and change.

Come join us for a free mindfulness meditation and begins sowing the seeds of change.

With warmest wishes

Jacky

This week we have a wonderful poem by Danna Faulds.  This was introduced to me at my very first Mindfulness session in London with by Mindfulness Association tutor Dave Oldham. It resonated with me then, and continues to reinforce the very essence of my practice.

Go in and in.
Be the space between two cells,
the vast, resounding
silence in which 
spirit dwells.
Be sugar dissolving 
on the tongue of life.
Dive in and in,
as deep as you can dive.
Be infinite, ecstatic truth.
Be love conceived and born in union.
Be exactly what you seek,
the Beloved, singing Yes,
tasting Yes, embracing Yes,
until there is only essence;
the All of Everything
expressing through you
as you. Go in and in
and turn away from
nothing that you find. 

We would love you to share your favourite poem and thoughts around it with us.  Please send your poetic contribution to membership@mindfulnessassociation.net

We’d love to hear from you.

Jacky and Duncan

References

Faulds, D., 2002. Go in and in: Poems from the heart of yoga. Peaceable Kingdom Books.

Photo by Mostafa Ashraf Mostafa on Unsplash