Conversations with the Guide

Anxiety Assignment 1 - Batch 5
3/20/2023

“The future's uncertain and the end is always near,” is the headline. From ego's perspective, the many snakes cause worry and fear. From Life's perspective, a wake-up call to be present and live Life instead of wasting time looking for a cure for the never-ending physical ailments. Gassho
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Very good! One minor, okay, major adjustment there: Ego doesn’t believe the snakes cause worry and fear. The snakes of worry and fear are ego. If you’re not going to be afraid of and worry about snakes, ego will come up with something else for you. Sounds as if “never-ending physical ailments” are your “snakes.” That’s critical to realize, isn’t it? If we don’t see that, life will be one of attempting to deal with—give all our attention/life force to—whatever “problem” ego comes up with next. Many, many people live from “emergency,” to “what’s wrong now” to “my really, really big problem” throughout their lives. They think that’s what life is! They live with ego and its constant suffering-making and believe what they’re experiencing is life. It isn’t life. As we lose interest in the manipulative, attention-grabbing, fear-mongering conversations with ego in conditioned mind, we have a growing awareness of what LIFE is. Of what we ARE. Gasshō
 
If I'm sharing on a call or swimming in the ocean and think of sharks the same feelings of anxiety appear. It's fear triggered by thoughts. Tightness of the chest shortness of breath, paralyzing. Facing it in conscious awareness and examining it closely dissipates it. Gassho
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That’s it! Attention is in the head, thinking, thinking of what’s wrong or could go wrong, and it’s terrifying. You shift attention to conscious awareness and through, with, from conscious awareness you examine the process that has been making you suffer. Poof! It’s gone. How can that be possible? All that fear/anxiety is imaginary. It’s not real. There’s nothing to it. It’s the boogey man under the bed. If we’re afraid to look we’ll never see that it’s a fiction, made up. Having the courage to look is our way to freedom. It’s a practice. We don’t look and we suffer. We look and we’re free. Being intelligent beings it doesn’t take us all that long to realize that looking feels great and hiding out is miserable. Choosing looking over here, Boss! Gasshō
 
Create karma, experience karma, start thinking-conditioning fishes for future things to worry about equals anxiety, often going to avoidance or addictive behavior. Preference drop it and return to this here now. Break up into small actionable steps. R/L brings about realization to conditionings trap. Gassho
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Excellent plan! Small actionable steps. Egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate is operating all the time. Sure, we can wait until we see it doing what it does—big shot of adrenalin or misery thinking about the future or going over guilt or remorse about the past—OR, we can just decide when we want to tackle it on our terms. Perhaps I connect checking in with other activities in my day, à la the “make gasshō each time I walk through a door” of the current Yearlong Retreat assignment. Maybe it’s every time I pick up my phone, or have something to eat and drink. Whatever it is doesn’t matter. We’re training. What we’re going to get to see is that the more we do it, the more we’re going to want to do it. Absolutely ego voices will pitch a fit—that’s what we’re getting to see! What’s true is that the more we’re HERE, present in lovingkindness, the more we want to be HERE in lovingkindness. So, we choose what we want to practice with and we make it a party. Every time I remember to make gasshō as I walk through the door, I turn attention to happiness, smile, thank the sincere human being for being so sincere. Every time I remember that I forgot to make gasshō as I walk through the door, I turn attention to happiness, smile, thank the sincere human being for being so sincere. I get us a cup of tea or coffee and we sit together for a few moments, enjoying. Basking in the delight of presence. Grateful to be present. I take out the recorder and talk about how grand it is to be HERE, to be alive, to feel the happiness of being. Like that! Small, actionable steps. Gasshō
 
"Frenetic Activity Masks the Peace" whether it's a speeding heart rate, fast fire uncomfortable thoughts or an explosive sensation in center of the chest, they habitually mean something's wrong. They get labelled as anxiety. On examination it's a coverup to the peace available beyond the habitual interpretation. R/L
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Yes, it is. There’s no place for egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate in Peace. Peace is thisherenow. Peace happens in the space between the thoughts. Peace happens HERE. And, what you’re suggesting is really important. We can have a racing heart, we can even have fast fire thoughts, even an explosive sensation in the center of the chest and it can all be just fine. It can all happen within Peace. Actually, it does, whether we know it or not! It’s all happening in LIFE and LIFE is where Peace is. We don’t need to fix or change anything, do we? We’re just learning to direct attention to what actually is, rather than to a narrative fueling an imaginary “world” of suffering. Gasshō
 
The thoughts are noticed initially and the emotion fear follows. Physical sensation only in extreme events. Fear is about the consequences of being wrong, failing, displeasing or not enough. The ultimate self deprecation‚ or, acute embarrassment. Self hate. Anxiety is the constant fear at various levels of intensity.
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Perfectly stated. Let’s picture our life force as electricity. Electricity is just energy. It just is. It comes into the house and is just there. With the flip of a switch it can turn on lights or the coffee maker or the toaster. Nothing on and we believe it’s there, but we actually have no evidence. We trust that it is and we take it hard when it’s not. We rarely think about it until there’s something “wrong” with it. Power goes out and we realize how much our lives revolve around this energy we usually pay no attention to whatsoever. Of course, it’s there in the background, underground, if you will, as we go about the day. It’s running everything we do, but we’re not aware of that or of it. Yes? (Are we still talking about electricity here?) So, what we want is to have just the right amount of electricity (energy) to do what we want to do. Too little. Problem. Too much? Yep, equal problem. We have “surge protectors” to be sure the electricity is modulated, the amount we want/need and no more. I’ve always found it helpful to think of myself as a toaster. I used to think I was hot stuff, able to make that toast as light or as dark as needed, in control of the dial that made it all happen. Then one day the electricity went off. Oops. No control. No toast. Doesn’t matter what the dial is set to. Good to remember one day the electricity is going to go off for all us appliances. Good to be ready. Yes? Back to anxiety. Our lifeforce is like the electricity. We run on energy. Anxiety is to our nervous system what messed up electricity is to the toaster. Not enough energy/life force and we feel depressed. Too much energy/life force and we feel manic. Surges in energy and we feel anxious. We’re “nervous” and we learn to self-medicate through food, alcohol, drugs, exercise, sex. In this country the big business is getting people to feel the way they want to feel, how they think they should feel. All are attempts to manipulate the energy, the lifeforce. A pill for more; a pill for less. I don’t feel the way I want to feel, what do I do??? Enter Awareness Practice. When we’re identified with the appliance, the separate ego self, there is no way NOT to suffer. But, when we’re identified with what we are, with the lifeforce, with the energy that’s animating, when we’re with it rather than being an ego-subject that objectifies it, when we’re with it, when we realize it is us, suffering is not even possible. Gasshō
 
Process: paying attention, identifying snakes of worry, fear, anger, hurt, frustration, exploring through R/Ling, forgetting, and returning. Story I'm not meant to see: have little or no control over people, things, events, time/space. Headline: Embrace the snakes of vulnerability and lack of control: accepting the unacceptable.
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Bingo! Accept the unacceptable and we are no longer in the unacceptable, we are in the acceptable. Like magic, isn’t it? Ego voices shriek that if you accept all that unacceptable stuff you’ll never have/be what you want, what you should be. Horse feathers! Accept the unacceptable and the unacceptable ceases to exist. And, here’s the best part, right? We don’t have to laboriously, painstakingly face and accept every unacceptable ego can throw at us. We can do it in one shot! I ACCEPT. We say YES to Life. Sometimes we can be wildly enthusiastic. Sometimes not so much. Sometimes all we can manage is an “okay.” That’s okay. We say okay often enough and it starts to be funny. That too? Yes? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Pretty soon there’s a little beat to it. The lyrics aren’t much but the beat is danceable. (I think it has a salsa feel to it, but we’re all different in that. Rumba? Hip Hop? Waltz? Life doesn’t seem to have a preference. There’s even twerking, you know?) Gasshō 
 
"It's the Voices!" I can hear them. Starting subtly and get louder and louder! I'm sitting watching a movie and I get the sinking feeling, however just before that, the voice says, "You shouldn't be doing this." And the self hatred starts--big black entity that sucks my breath away
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You got it! Now, stay with it. Is it going to try to scare you off? Absolutely. No doubt. But grab all your courage and keep watching. Keep listening. We have so many supports for this, and one of my favorites remains to write down everything you hear the voices saying. Then make a recording that says, “The voices say XXX, but the voices lie. They only say these things to scare and control me.” Get all the voices down in this way. The voices will say that’s not possible because there are too many voices. Not true. The messages are few and repetitive. Once we start to catch on, as you have, we begin to see the patterns and the whole thing moves from scary to fascinating. Now you’re the watcher. You’re observing rather than being the victim. The ego voices can’t do what they do when they’re being watched so they’ll try to distract you and sneak up again when you’re not looking. It’s a program! You can see it, learn what they do and how they do it, and you will realize that you are the awareness watching the whole thing. At that point you’re in a position to save that human being—the one you think of as you—from all that self-hating suffering misery. Well done! Gasshō
 
Breathe. Relax. Focus. Ask questions. Answers come. What am I thinking? Are my thoughts creating anxiety? Can I choose new thoughts? Change focus from fear of future to what's here now. Can't control what hasn't happened yet. Can control my thoughts; how I feel. Can create pleasantness. Banish fear. 
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We can choose where we focus attention. Absolutely true. We want to be careful about letting that word/idea of control enter the picture. “Control” is one of the main ways egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate introduces a “comparison contest” into our lives. “You can control XXX,” in this case your thoughts. “You should control XXX.” “You didn’t control XXX.” “You failed to control XXX.” “You’re not controlling XXX.” “What’s wrong with you that you’re not controlling XXX?” Soon we’ve lost sight of the original point—we canpractice directing the attention—and we’re in a losing battle with ego in which it has all the attention. Yes? It’s enough to practice choosing what we focus attention on. And, yes, you are absolutely correct that we can choose love rather than fear. Life rather than ego. Gasshō
 
Loved looking for anxiety - tried to run life. Seemed less scary when I called it out. Most noticeable was that almost all anxiety stemmed from ping-ponging between past and future, and believing it was true. Attention there meant me feeling miserable on some level. Noticing/freedom. Gassho, R/L
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Nailed it! In practice we often hear that “nothing stands up under scrutiny.” Look for anxiety, call it out, focus all the attention on it, and it’s nowhere to be found. Doesn’t exist. Get caught up in an ego-based story of what’s wrong/not enough in an imaginary past or an imaginary future, and the story produces the sensations that get labeled anxiety. Or, as we like to say, “There’s no such thing as anxiety.” Now, a word of caution: When we say things like “It seemed less scary when I called it out,” we’re inviting egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate into our life. Your actual experience wasn’t that it “seemed less scary.” It wasn’t scary at all. You saw it for what it is and felt free of it. Language is beyond important. Our choices are critical. All this suffering has happened to us since we “got” language/meaning. Words/meaning and the attending beliefs/assumptions are how ego controls a human being. We don’t pay attention to what we’re actually saying because we’ve been brainwashed into believing we know. We don’t. Takes a lot of awareness practice to realize the brainwashing didn’t happen, it’s happening. We are moving from “trusting the mind to give us the information we need” to observing the mind closely, expanding awareness to include the mind, in order to see how suffering is being done to us. Gasshō
 
For me, anxiety is a suffocating, embarrassing, fear of inadequacy. What is behind it? Nothing. It is a glimpse of a universe moment in which a me has anxiety. Moving on now to another. On repeat-listen as the mentor says one at each exhale. R/L
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Perfectly articulated! There’s identification with an experience of paralysis. The moving pictures suddenly stop and there’s a still frame. Embarrassment, fear, can’t breathe. That becomes the whole of reality. Is it? Absolutely not. In fact, it’s not even “real.” It’s an imaginary picture projected on an imaginary screen (the mind), seen by an imaginary person (the ego). If we get stopped there, the paralysis continues. However, if, as you suggest, we drag attention away from that very compelling, believable story, if we redirect attention to thisherenow, the pictures once again move. Are the pictures any more “real”? You’ll find out because now attention is HERE, in the moment, where you are. You’re relaxed, happy, eager to be present for this moment. That’s a great “place” from which to see it all! Gasshō
 
The assignment reminds me of something the guide once said that no thing can stand up under scrutiny. As I placed all my attention on the anxiety, the sensations, and the story that made meaning about it, it dissipated into thin air. Gassho R/L
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Ah, ha! I was just discussing that with one of your neighbors. Exactly so. Nothing can stand up under scrutiny. We can test out that theory with any number of content, can’t we? We hear voices in the head use words like “always” and “never” and “can’t” and “they.” If we give attention to any of those—and innumerable others—with an “Is that so?” attitude, we will see entire belief systems evaporate, as you describe. We hold imaginary “realities” in place, often ones over which we suffer mightily, because we’ve simply never examined them. Never questioned. The orientation got put in place at some point, we accepted it, and we’ve never returned to the scene of the crime. We suffer in large part because we have never returned to the original premise to see if it has validity. Is this going to take all day every day for the rest of our lives? Isn’t this going to be an overwhelming task, figuring all this out? Not a bit. No thinking required. All we need do is look into each moment with fresh eyes. It’s simply a matter of being here for what is rather than off attending to the brainwashing program in conditioned mind. It’s what practicing awareness is. Gasshō
 
Unscrambling egos system. Experience dread/anxiety writing the assignment. Practicing "don't mind being anxious" seeing that with total acceptance no longer gives fuel and I if I don't go with egos labeling system it is just energy. Now I am in the flow of Life plenty energy to write the assignment R/L
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What an excellent point! People go see films, horror films, for entertainment. People do all sorts of things for laughs, fun, a good time, that other people wouldn’t do unless threatened with immediate extinction. There’s no one definition for anything, is there? What people free climbing up a sheer rock face are feeling is the same energy all humans are animated with, but their labels are no doubt very different from the person with acrophobia. We get out of the head, out of conditioned mind’s labeling system, and what do we have? Energy we can use for whatever we choose? Yes, indeed. Gasshō