On a fine sunny day after a week of constant rain, I started cooking my meal with the satisfaction of accomplishing many house chores. A veil of clouds from the distant sky gradually darkened the bright spot, where my cat was lying chill. Hours before the clouds could outpour, my mind had started pouring worries. What if my hanged clothes get wet? Should I stop cooking and buy the fruits before it rains again? I think I have run out of pet food, I should rush to get it. How to overcome worry and anxiety? This article helps to understand the inner workings of worry and the practical/spiritual approaches to dealing with it.
Worrying is a habit shaped by our external conditions
Just like the fire being fed keeps burning, the thoughts being fed to a worried mind keep churning. Thoughts after thoughts emerge and hijack the mind from its present actions. Restlessness, confusion, fear, and distress resulting from these thoughts steal the joy of the present moment. You might be eating the tastiest food but don’t feel anything as you are impatient to submit the work before its deadline. Even if you are in a garden full of roses, if you are worried about catching the train on time you miss the point of being there. Being with your loved ones but constantly alert for email feedback from your boss takes away the meaning of spending time with them.
Worrying is a habit that every one of us has cultivated through constant feeding and training of our minds. It has become our default reaction. The entire ecosystem of education, socio-economics, and evolving modern culture has been instrumental in pushing humanity towards this. We observe our parents and elders fall prey to this seemingly inescapable habit and learn from them. Trapped in the dynamics of instant gratification and constantly being taught to be productive all the time, we live in a time where the sole criteria of buying or selling shapes our existence. Under such circumstances, how are poor humans not supposed to be captivated by their worrying minds?
The real culprit is our own fear
The fun of the fast-paced world filled with rampant consumption is so alluring that we have become oblivious to its effects on our well-being. We have become like those insects that fly to taste honey but get stuck to it till our death. Although these external conditions have been detrimental to our mental health and could have been otherwise more nurturing and supportive to help us lead a satisfied life, the primary reason for our agonies lies deep inside us. We encounter several people around us who are calm and content with their lives despite these same external conditions. The change in the outside factors would happen in due course but at first, the real change has to happen within us.
If we spend some time introspecting the reasons for our worry, it won’t be that hard to trace them back to our own fear and insecurities. Fear is deeply ingrained in our psyche and has been transmitted from past lives if not from childhood and present life traumas. The mind is an extraordinary instrument that needs to be understood properly for a healthy life, otherwise, you would never cease to be played by it. You would be baffled to discover how the constant worrying about your partner coming back late from work is deeply rooted in your fear of death. If we could spend some alone time to understand our inner workings, it would all seem evident and we would strive for self-improvement rather than blaming others for our miseries.
A pure form of our minds is like silent pools of water, fear acts as a disturbing agent that sends across the waves. Just like the waves on the water’s surface interact thus giving rise to new waves, the fear gives rise to worrying thoughts that again result in more worrisome thoughts. This is an ad infinitum process that continues until the awareness is aroused and intellect is engaged to distinguish them as unreal thoughts. The deep-rooted fear never gets erased completely but rather subsides for the time being and surfaces time and again to bring distress along with it.
Knowledge of the inner workings ideally ends our worries
Fear is a derivative impurity of the mind that originates from desire. All the major religious scriptures including Hinduism and Buddhism have also pointed to desire as the root cause of all suffering. The desire for a certain situation or object brings fear upon its non-fulfillment as per expectations in time and space. If your child has not arrived back from school by the expected time then there is fear. If there is an unexpected object at the corner of your kitchen then there is fear. An onset of fear immediately triggers the worrisome thoughts. Is my child safe? Has she met with an accident? Is that a snake in my kitchen? It’s a horror show that your mind shows you because you expected something else.
Having this knowledge of our inner workings forms a basis for self-correction. The intellect has to assimilate that no one else is responsible for our sufferings apart from my desire. Logical self-analysis is the best possible way to make our mind understand itself. The unadulterated nature of our spirit/ mind/ soul/ atman/ brahman/ self/ consciousness, whatever you may call it, is all-wise and illuminating. The impurities act as a mask to realize its own omniscience. Wisdom gained through spiritual introspection and analysis strips off the veil and the knower understands the true essence of the known.
Desire and expectations lead to all suffering. This has already become a rhetoric and most probably you have read about them in different books, articles, magazines, etc. As far as intellectual understanding is concerned, your minds acknowledge it. But when it comes to practical application to overcome worry and anxiety, this knowledge has no role at all. On a Sunday morning, you read a beautiful article on how expectation results in severe anxiety, and by Monday morning you are already worried about the results of your exam papers. You have to accept that simple intellectual knowing of this fact is useless. The sooner you accept it the better it is for your growth.
Knowing happens at two levels. The superficial level is that of the intellect where it is still a thought just like the other worrisome thoughts. When there is fear your mind starts to think of different scenarios that could make it restless. When you read/know about the self-workings of the mind you still are thinking, although positively to send a signal of relaxation to yourself. True knowledge happens at the deeper level usually called the heart, not the usual blood-pumping organ, but the subtle faculty of our mind that is responsible for intuition and assimilation of knowledge. When you read a book about swimming you know it intellectually but when you plunge into the water and begin to swim, you know it from the heart.
Between these two layers of knowing there is a thick layer of impurity that we have accumulated over our lives. The layer comprising fear, anger, lust, ego, jealousy, attachment, and greed hinders the percolation of knowledge. Illumination can happen only when the layer has been dissolved. It’s quite a task and maybe the effort of an entire lifetime to purge these impurities. This daunting task should in no way discourage us from attempting the journey. When you are at the juncture of sitting idle to accept suffering or walking a slow yet verified road of getting over your agonies, which one would you choose?
Practical methods to overcome Worry and Anxiety
How should one rectify these impending factors from within to merge the thinking and knowing? There are multiple ways known to humanity to approach spirituality. You can read more about this here. The most pleasant method is through bhakti or devotion. Surrendering your worries, thoughts, actions, and ultimately yourself to a higher being in whatever form you recognize takes the suffering away from you. The agency within you that strongly grasps the impurities slowly starts to release its hold as it merges itself with the higher consciousness. The usual form of devotion that acts as only a transactional means of getting something in return is conditional love and is not of much use for liberation.
Bhakti, although an extremely powerful tool is not universally applicable to all. The pre-requisite is faith, only a few are born with this beautiful quality, yet even fewer can prevent themselves from being corrupted by blind faith.
Another important widely known tool is Raja Yoga. It works by controlling the subtle layer of our mind, called prana or vital energy. The uncontrolled vital energy keeps powering the fear without our conscious knowledge or effort. The dormant seed of fear can only become a worrisome thought when prana rushes to it. Through Asanas(physical exercises) and Pranayama(Breathing practices), we learn to control the flow of vital energy by practicing over a considerable period. Tai-Chi, Qi-Gong, and the techniques alike also work on these principles. In the beginning, these inner workings won’t be accessible to you directly and all these facts may sound bizarre. Take advice from experienced teachers and proceed with your practice dedicatedly.
Yet, the path of Raja yoga also requires a certain degree of faith in the methods and teachers to even try it out. However, the proof of its working is readily available in the form of testimonials from advanced practitioners. Take help from them and be a part of the community or circle that arouses the enthusiasm to take control of your life and not get swayed by the hapless beatings of your mind.
Arise and awake from the slumber and work hard on yourself to get over your suffering. You alone are responsible for your miseries and you have to work to get over it. Spiritual growth is the answer to ultimate freedom and your habit of worrying is holding you back from making progress. Take charge and throw away this unnecessary baggage of worrisome thoughts through any of the paths suitable for you.
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