Living Without Worries

ARE YOU CONSTANTLY WORRIED? ARE YOU UNDULY CONCERNED ABOUT PAYING THE BILLS, MEETING DEADLINES, OR GETTING ALONG WITH YOUR IN-LAWS?

Y Worry is closely related to the manipuraka chakra, which lies in the navel region. Negative thoughts directly attack the manipuraka chakra.

Let us analyze what actually happens inside your mind when you are worrying. Just watch your mind when you are worrying about something. You will see that a continuous stream of thoughts is being generated in your mind - totally disconnected thoughts - and usually negative thoughts. An influx of negative and repetitive words run like a current through your mind.

Worries are nothing but familiar dwelling patterns for our mind. These familiar patterns are called samskaras or engrams in the field of human psychology. Engrams are the engraved memories of the past, which serve as an undesirable resource inside us for all our present and future actions. Because of these stored engrams, we react illogically in the present.

Worry has become a constant inner chatter within us, all the time causing uneasiness. If you look deep inside, you will find that worry is nothing but your response to an event. Whether a situation makes you worry or not depends entirely on how you choose to react to that situation.

To understand worry, we need to have a deep insight into the nature of our minds and how we create worry. You have to look at the knot of worry and see how it has been created, how the knotting has happened. Once you do that, you just have to simply reverse the process of creating

There are two types of planning: chronological planning and psychological planning.

Chronological planning is planning on a timescale. You decide that you will get up at such and such a time, finish your morning routine by a particular time, reach the office at a particular time, and get certain tasks done that day at the office. This is alright. It is a practical way to organize your work in a way that can give the best results. This kind of planning with sincere action will take you from happiness to more happiness!

Psychological planning on the other hand, is planning in your head with no relevance to time or space. It is just constant serious planning going on in your head, over and above the chronological planning. It keeps you thinking that you are serious and dutiful. It is actually nothing but complex negativity being applied to the chronological planning that has already been done. You keep analyzing your plan, and getting into a dull state because all your energy is going into analyzing the plan again and again.

Psychological planning boosts your ego. It makes you feel great and worthy as you are handling things of a great magnitude. The resulting worry gives the ego a reason to survive. When you are free from worry, you are in bliss but you feel insecure as you are a 'nobody' with no identity.

Y Just try this small exercise when you are by yourself: Just sit for a few minutes with your eyes closed. Keep a pen and paper with you. Don't focus your mind on anything. Just witness your mind. Just see what is going on in your mind. Almost as soon as you

close your eyes, you will see that there is a continuous stream of thoughts flowing through your mind. There is continuous activity in your mind.

Write down, honestly, whatever thoughts come. Do this for five minutes. Now, sit down and read what you've written on the paper. You will be shocked! Whatever you have recorded on the paper is your inner chatter. If you read it, you will see how disconnected, how irrelevant your thoughts are! One moment you will be here, the next moment you will be in America, the next moment you will be in your office, the next moment you will be thinking of your children…! This is the state of your mind, this uncontrolled flow of thoughts. This is the mind you have entrusted your life to! This is the mind that generates all your worries. This is the mind that is living your life for you. If you simply understand this much, you have taken a quantum leap towards freedom from worry and inner chatter.

Y Just do this small test. Whenever you feel negative thoughts coming up, look into them and see where they are rising from. Watch. You will find that they always rise up from the navel to the mind. Continue to watch; go deeply into the source of your thoughts. You will merge with the source.

Y The way to worry is through the mind and the way out can also be only through the mind. But we keep searching for answers in all the wrong places; we search outside all the time without looking deeply into the root of worry. The solution cannot be found in outer world. It can be found only inside ourselves.

Just try telling yourself that you should not get worried. What will happen? You will create one more worry of not wanting to worry. Never say, 'Stop worrying'; it is utterly impossible. The only thing, stop worrying about your worries! What do I mean by not worrying about worry? Just see the worries and don't get perturbed by them. It is only when you get caught in repeating your worries to yourself in a worried fashion that the actual worry takes root. This is what I mean when I say, 'Stop worrying about your worries'. Just let them be. Don't start giving them life. Don't feed them with flesh and blood.

Y When you accept your worries, when you enter deeply into them, you will come to a tremendous understanding that all your worries are just your own creations. You will be able to see how your mind plays and causes tension in you. When you are worrying, allow yourself to enter deeply into it, with acceptance and clarity. Don't be afraid to enter into it. Remember that acceptance is not impotence. Acceptance is a great meditation technique. Acceptance releases a great energy and gives you clarity and liberation.

YJust decide not to feel miserable about anything. If any worry or guilt or sad incident comes to your mind, just observe it and smile and say, 'No, I am not going to be affected by you. What will you do?' Simply look at it and say this. Automatically the incident or guilt will not have any effect on you. By allowing it to attack you, are you going to gain anything? No! By looking at it and saying that you will not let it attack you, you are only avoiding misery. I am not asking you to run away from it. I am asking you to look at it and say this. Understand this point clearly. If you try to suppress these thoughts, they will keep lurking at the back of your mind and will threaten to come back at any time. Allow them to surface. Don't run away from your worries. Just don't magnify them by talking about them. Don't expend your energy on them. Just look at them and tell them that they are powerless; you will see that they automatically disappear.

Y Check yourself to find out if you are starting to feel comfortable with your worries. This is the scale to see if worries are controlling you or you are controlling your worries. If you are feeling comfortable talking about them repeatedly without taking any action, then worries are controlling you. If you don't linger on them and address them correctly, then you are controlling them!

Y If you are really interested in dropping your inner chatter and worries, you could try a small exercise: think of all the things that give you joy. Write them down and put your list where you will see it frequently. Make up your mind that you will allow your mind to linger on only these things and nothing else. For anything else, you will give it just enough energy to get it done and then forget about it. Try this exercise and you will see that you conserve a lot of energy. Remember, you are not pushing away anything that does not give you joy, you are simply not giving it any energy, that's all. Let your mind come back again and again to items on your list.

Y Again and again, scan your mind and see what is it that gives you joy. Then start following it. Once something inside you tells you that you are moving towards a sense of permanent joy, once you find conviction in yourself, re-position and adjust the matters concerning your life, orienting them towards this bliss. Every action or thought of yours should be towards feeling this bliss. Energy spent will then be energy gained. You will be always energetic.

Y All you need to do is try to live in the present, in the now and here. When you are in the present, you will feel and enjoy Existence. When you are in the present, you will move in tune with Existence. When you are in the present, Existence itself will teach you. When you have so many moments of the past weighing on you, you feel heavy. But when only the present moment is on you, you will feel light. Any worry is automatically about the future. Regret is about the past. When you notice yourself in the past or the future, bring your awareness gently to the present. Focus your energy on the person in front of you, the task at hand. Let your energy flow into what is around you in the present moment. You will automatically be in the flow of Existence. Your energy will automatically increase.

Y Every moment, Existence is changing. You are a part of Existence. So, you are getting updated every moment. It is a waste of time to dissect the past and feel guilty because you have changed. Guilt is looking at the past with updated intelligence.

Y Understand why you normally control your speaking out to others but do not bother about speaking inside - inner chatter. You don't respect yourself enough. So, you treat others like a plate of food but you treat yourself like a garbage can and dump in all kinds of negative thoughts. Just like poor eating habits cause cholesterol to accumulate in the arteries, constant worrying causes energy blockages in your being.

..........................................Meditation Exercises

Y People say, 'We have our work to do, bills to pay, deadlines to meet; how do we meditate then?' Here is a simple meditation technique: whether you have time to pay your bills or to meet your deadlines or not, you surely have time to breathe?

Otherwise, you would not be alive! Now, simply add awareness to your breathing, that's all. Just watch your breath. That is the simplest and most powerful meditation you can do. Every time you remember this technique, practice it. Soon, it will become a habit. When you infuse awareness into your breath, you will be in the present moment. Living in the present takes you to bliss. Simply add awareness to every inhalation and exhalation. To attain bliss, you don't need any separate time. You need not take time off and go to any retreat or meditation camp. You can continue with your daily activities. With the increased awareness that you will be creating, your deadlines and other targets will get done much more efficiently. You see, when you watch your breath, your awareness is intense and no thought can escape you unconsciously. When every thought starts passing through your awareness, you will automatically not create negative thoughts for yourself.

Y Become the watcher of your mind. If you bring your awareness acutely to this point and watch yourself for just a few hours, you will understand how your whole mind works. Just decide to be a watcher of your mind and the people around you. You will see how subtly your mind is continuously creating expectations in every small thing you see. When you look inwards with awareness you can observe how your mind works, how your worries take root. We all keep collecting words, creating opinions and going over them in a repeated fashion. This is how worry takes root and reinforces itself. The very watching will dissolve the mind and its worries.

When you suppress an emotion or thought, the memories of these suppressions go directly to your manipuraka chakra. When the manipuraka is poisoned, your actions will have an unconscious violence like plucking at something, destroying things,

misbehaving with your body, fighting with yourself and with others. The clinical name for this negative attitude is depression.

Some people are less depressed, some people are more depressed, that's all. The more you allow this chatter to consume you, the more depressed you become. The people who are less depressed feel it only at times and that too to a lower degree whereas the people who are more depressed feel it most of the time in a severe fashion. But the current is always there for both.

So depression or negativity is nothing but a collection of negative thoughts, which you speak to yourself. And once you allow such thoughts to enter into your mind, the same thoughts will keep playing back every time you suffer a small failure. It will keep reinforcing this attitude. After all, worrying is only a highly reinforced habit. But it is a mere habit and so you can kick it like any other habit! But you don't think that it is only a habit. You think that it is a solid and serious reality. That is the problem. That is why you are not able to kick it.

When I tell you, you can understand it only intellectually. When it becomes your own experience, when you have that clarity, you will go beyond worries. Then depression cannot touch you. You will go beyond misery. By thinking of worries all the time, what is going to happen? Nothing! With your ten worries, an eleventh worry called depression will happen, that's all.

By worrying, you totally miss the beauty of the present. When you are in tune with the present, every moment will become a celebration and you will not be searching for past incidents to celebrate. When every moment is a celebration, you will continue to be in the present because

you are celebrating every moment. You will never go to the past for celebrating. Then every moment will be golden, not just the past!

......................................................... Becoming the Watcher

You can never stop your thinking. The thought that you have to stop your thinking is itself another thought! If you forcibly try to be silent for a while, that silence is not the silence we want to achieve, it is just a forced and dead silence. The silence that we want to achieve is a vibrating and blissful silence, the silence of Existence.

So what is it that needs to be done? Simply watch the mind, that's all. Be an observer. Don't pass any judgments, don't resist any thoughts, watch it with the deep gratitude that it is God's gift to you. This is the first step towards inner silence.

Your awareness will slowly grow and make you centered in yourself and increase the silence in you. When I say increase the silence, I mean, your inner chatter will reduce and you will be more of a watcher. With that increased silence, there will be more awareness in you and this will become a cyclic process in you.

Daily Awareness Practices

Emotions:

Y Understand, you can never drop any emotion by consciously trying to drop it. The more you try to drop it the more attached you will become to it and it will

become a torture for you. The emotion will haunt you.

The only way is to watch your emotions. As you watch your emotions, the distance between your emotions and you will start increasing. Right now, you are so entangled with your emotions that you simply cannot see yourself apart from them. When you start watching, you will start creating a distance between you and your emotions. Slowly, the distance will increase and one day, the watcher will disappear from the scene. Then, you need not put any effort to drop your emotions. They will simply drop of their own accord and you will feel disconnected from it. You will no more be able to relate with it. They will simply disappear from your being. A shift in consciousness happens in you. You then become a new person.

A simple yet powerful technique is to visualize scattering the negative thoughts and see them

YWatch how subtly your mind is continuously creating expectations in everything you see and do and how reality sometimes matches and sometimes misses your expectations and how feelings of tension and worry arise within you when this happens. When you learn to be in awareness, you can use your mind at your discretion. It becomes a vital tool at your disposal. You can use it just when you want to. From being a dangerous enemy, it becomes a reliable friend. Just by flooding awareness into this whole thing, you can see how your mind plays and creates tension for you. Once you learn to become the watcher, your worries will drop and you will also not internalize any of the outer world incidents. When you internalize the outer world incidents, you are just creating a larger database of words inside you, out of which new worries will arise.

Y Understand: the first step to bliss is to become a watcher. Simply watch life as if it were a drama. When you watch, your mind will become still. When it becomes still, you have caught the thread. When you experience that stillness at least once, you have caught the thread.

.................................................................Prayer

When you move on with complete trust, you cannot worry. This is real prayer. Prayer is not pouring out all your worries and asking for a solution. Prayer is placing complete trust upon Existence and feeling it work for you.

Every moment is going past; then what is there to cling to? Clinging will bring misery upon

misery. There is no point in thinking about the future also. It is yet to come. What are you thinking about? The future will also come in the form of the present only. So focus on the present.

Y Just know how to listen. Don't listen with your head. Open your being to the Master. Listen with deep trust, with total surrender. Don't scramble to carry the words; carry Him in your being. That is more than enough. The Master's presence

in you will make the alchemy happen. Listen with your heart. Allow the words to move past as the ripples in a stream. Take them in.

Y Simply shift the responsibility to a higher authority and relax. You will then live like a king! You will then start listening to the synchronous music of the flowing river of Existence taking care of you, of the harmony between you and Existence. This harmony is what you need to tune into. And then all your worries will disappear!

................................................. Understanding Addiction

Y Addiction to anything is an unconscious or mechanical process. It is not just addiction to drinks or tobacco. It is addiction to even religion. People who pray unconsciously and mechanically, following a routine, will find it very hard if they miss even one day's prayer. For them it is an addiction and so it causes anxiety when missed. Just as an alcoholic who misses his evening drink starts trembling in insecurity, the mechanically religious person will feel a big void if he misses his routine prayer.

The key is to understand the difference between doing things with awareness and doing things mechanically and out of fear or greed. When you do things with awareness, it will never put you under any sort of bondage. It will not bind you in space and time. You will be a master. Doing things mechanically and out of fear or greed will bind you and cause misery to you. You will be a slave.

Daily Awareness Practice

This technique should be done on an empty stomach, or at least 2 hours after a major meal; otherwise you might throw up.

a. Stand with your eyes closed. Go deep into your manipuraka and feel how heavy the area feels. It is filled with all your worries. Focus on your manipuraka chakra for a minute. Just try to feel all the pent up anger and worry inside you due to various reasons.

b. Now, just start making nonsensical sounds from the navel area, as loudly as you can. Do not use words to shout. If you use words, only familiar and recent emotions will surface and also words will give rise to only more words without actually working on the emotions behind them.

c. Shout absolute gibberish. Only this will open out the unconscious in you. Only this will open out the deeply hidden emotions. Wave your hands, shout, scream. If tears flow, let them flow.

d. Do it with all your might, to vomit out all your negative feelings. Recall the painful incidents. Visualize the persons involved and feel the emotions involved in those incidents. Bring out all the emotions. Become completely immersed in them. Be aware of nothing else.

With your eyes closed, sit down in silence. Just be a witness to your thoughts. Feel the lightness in your manipuraka area. You will find that it is so light and blissful. Your whole being will be so light and free.

The manipuraka chakra is located at the navel. It is the seat of worries and is blocked by constant worrying. It flowers when we stop worrying about our worries!

The diagram alongside shows a man who is 'tied up' with his worries. This is depicted as a rope tied around the manipuraka chakra. The worries become 'food for the mind', shown as bits of garbage on a spoon. The worries are magnified by the mind (shown as a magnifying glass) and become constant negative chatter in the mind. Worries are always about the future and as we are creative by nature, the worries ensure that we will create a future which will not be fulfilling for us.

We have become so wedded to our worries that if we have nothing to worry about, we become agitated and even feel that life has no purpose or value. We feel that we have nothing to live for. This is what is meant by 'worrying about the worries'.

How can we stop worrying about the worries? The key lies in becoming aware of our inner chatter and the illogical workings of the mind. Meditation is the key to developing this awareness. As we start to create a distance from the inner chatter, by becoming 'the watcher', we can merely observe. As we observe the chatter we will stop taking it seriously, and begin to become aware of the flow of existence, and the possibility of living with intuition as our guide, instead of the logic of the mind. In this way, we will begin to live in peace, instead of constant anxiety. Life will begin to flow instead of being a struggle.

In the second diagram alongside, the man at the top of the picture is 'the watcher'. Through meditation and developing awareness, he has started to merely observe the play of thoughts and emotions running through his mind. He is no longer under the control of the mind and its illogical decision-making processes. He is free from his worries because he is no longer worrying about them. He knows that it is futile to try to control the mind or to resist worries and that the key is to merely stand back and become the observer.