I do not know about you but I am a naturally anxious person. My anxiety is the aspect of myself that I would most like to get rid of. Attempting to rid myself of anxiety, however, has only caused me greater suffering.
We don’t heal from our complexes or addictions or neurosis by banishing them but by approaching them and listening to them for the messages they bring forth from the depths of our soul. If we can love the parts of ourselves we hate, then strange miracles of healing begin to unfold.
For me, whenever anxiety comes on strong, as it has recently, I find that I must welcome it as I would a friend. It has not come to hurt me but to speak to me. So I make it tea in the home of my heart and ask, “For what purpose have you come? What is it I need to know? I trust your motives are good.”
The only way to do this is to be radically present. We can not learn from anxiety if we are thinking of the past or the future. The messages do no reside there, but in this present moment—which is also the place where the bird is singing, the sun is shining, and your heart is beating.
Be here now, as Ram Dass used to say, and perhaps you’ll find your now to be the one place you actually want to be.
Wishing you peace.