I am a social activist who has had a lifetime struggle with anxiety. This struggle is now coming to an end, thankfully. iJourney asks two big questions here - how to break the molds of the past and experience the uncertainty of the future without anxiety. What to say in a short space about these two subjects? I’m going to focus on anxiety, fear and uncertainty.
In recent years, I’ve dug deeply into my own experiences of anxiety. I’ve done this through intellectual, physical, emotional and spiritual work. I have found that a key gateway to being able to live peacefully with the uncertainty intrinsic to life is to believe in my on intrinsic state of wholeness. That is, I now believe that when it comes right down to it, I lack nothing fundamental.
Rudolph Steiner seems to be saying that we undermine ourselves by because we respond to uncertainty with fear. I’ve come to think that a key cause of anxiety is fear tied specifically to lack and loss. That is, we fear we will lose something we currently have and/ or that we will never get something we want. The anxiety I’ve experienced in life has often be triggered by having a decision about something, e.g., do I take a job or don’t I. I could easily weave a narrative about which and decisions have made me anxious, focusing on the details of the choice at hand and aspects of fear tied to lack and loss in relation to material and mundane aspects of life.
However, that would be a superficial perspective. When I look beneath the mundane details of any of the times I’ve had serious anxiety, I see that somewhere in my sub-conscious I was equating my decisions to self-worth, love and acceptance. Uncertainty generated fear because I was carrying a belief that if I make X choice and Y happened then perhaps I would either (a) not get love or (b) lose the love I have. When I say love I don’t mean romantic love and I don’t mean love from a particular person. Perhaps, the better way to put it is that I would be unloveable if I got the decision wrong – I would be lacking something that would in turn pull love away from me or prevent me from getting it in the future. It would also pull life (not literally) away from me. That is, in some instances, I think my sub-conscious was processing decision-making as a matter of life and death – not physical death, but death of my spirit. If I got the decision wrong, my spirit would be suffocated.
What I have done to be able to live with uncertainty is to let go of the belief that effectively says love is conditional and that unless I conditions right, I will not only be unloved but I will be unsafe, unprotected. I let go of this belief and replaced it with the belief that not only does unconditional love exist, but that I embody it – it is me, I am it. I am love. In this way, I am whole and I am safe. In this I am certain. And this sense of certainty that I now carry within me allows me to move through the world and embrace the uncertainties of life. It enables me to separate out events and happenings around me from my sense of self-worth, value and from my capacity to be loveable, spirited and alive.
A number of years ago, I had the epiphany that life is like swimming in water. We can choose to flail about and struggle in it or we can surrender to it, trust that it is holding us and not trying to pull us down. What Rudolph Steiner is describing as humbleness, I think of as a state of surrender. Recently, I was swimming in the Pacific Ocean. I experienced for the first time what it is to float in the ocean without fear – to let the water hold and support me, to trust the water.
To experience the uncertainty of the future without fear and anxiety, is to surrender to the belief that I am unconditionally whole, and with that unconditionally loved.
On May 14, 2012 Veena Vasista wrote :
In recent years, I’ve dug deeply into my own experiences of anxiety. I’ve done this through intellectual, physical, emotional and spiritual work. I have found that a key gateway to being able to live peacefully with the uncertainty intrinsic to life is to believe in my on intrinsic state of wholeness. That is, I now believe that when it comes right down to it, I lack nothing fundamental.
Rudolph Steiner seems to be saying that we undermine ourselves by because we respond to uncertainty with fear. I’ve come to think that a key cause of anxiety is fear tied specifically to lack and loss. That is, we fear we will lose something we currently have and/ or that we will never get something we want. The anxiety I’ve experienced in life has often be triggered by having a decision about something, e.g., do I take a job or don’t I. I could easily weave a narrative about which and decisions have made me anxious, focusing on the details of the choice at hand and aspects of fear tied to lack and loss in relation to material and mundane aspects of life.
However, that would be a superficial perspective. When I look beneath the mundane details of any of the times I’ve had serious anxiety, I see that somewhere in my sub-conscious I was equating my decisions to self-worth, love and acceptance. Uncertainty generated fear because I was carrying a belief that if I make X choice and Y happened then perhaps I would either (a) not get love or (b) lose the love I have. When I say love I don’t mean romantic love and I don’t mean love from a particular person. Perhaps, the better way to put it is that I would be unloveable if I got the decision wrong – I would be lacking something that would in turn pull love away from me or prevent me from getting it in the future. It would also pull life (not literally) away from me. That is, in some instances, I think my sub-conscious was processing decision-making as a matter of life and death – not physical death, but death of my spirit. If I got the decision wrong, my spirit would be suffocated.
What I have done to be able to live with uncertainty is to let go of the belief that effectively says love is conditional and that unless I conditions right, I will not only be unloved but I will be unsafe, unprotected. I let go of this belief and replaced it with the belief that not only does unconditional love exist, but that I embody it – it is me, I am it. I am love. In this way, I am whole and I am safe. In this I am certain. And this sense of certainty that I now carry within me allows me to move through the world and embrace the uncertainties of life. It enables me to separate out events and happenings around me from my sense of self-worth, value and from my capacity to be loveable, spirited and alive.
A number of years ago, I had the epiphany that life is like swimming in water. We can choose to flail about and struggle in it or we can surrender to it, trust that it is holding us and not trying to pull us down. What Rudolph Steiner is describing as humbleness, I think of as a state of surrender. Recently, I was swimming in the Pacific Ocean. I experienced for the first time what it is to float in the ocean without fear – to let the water hold and support me, to trust the water.
To experience the uncertainty of the future without fear and anxiety, is to surrender to the belief that I am unconditionally whole, and with that unconditionally loved.