There is Nothing to Worry🔗

We talked of love so far. Love is about our relationship with others. Love is also about our relationship with us. Without loving ourselves we cannot love others. What prevents us from loving our own self is the constant worry or irritation that we generate within us. Whether things go right or wrong we worry. There is nothing more corrosive to our self-esteem than worry. What is this worry?

A small story:

A man walked into a bar looking worried and upset.

The bartender asked him, What's the matter? You look very worried about something.'

The man said, 'My wife and I had a fight and she told me that she wouldn't talk to me for a month.'

The bartender consoled him, 'It's okay. One month isn't that long.'

The man said, 'I know. The month is up today!'

Everyone has his or her own set of worries! If I ask you what you worry about, you will tell me, 'I don't have a job, that's my worry.'Your neighbor will say, 'My job is my main worry!' Someone else will say, 'My children are my worry.' Another person will say, 'I don't have children, that's my worry!' One person's dream is another person's worry! You will not find any logic in it at all.

What is meant by 'worry'? Worry arises whenever things are not happening as you want them to happen. It is the discrepancy between your expectations and reality. For example, you feel your son should stay at home with you, whereas he feels he should be by himself - away from you. You want to finish your project by a certain time. But things are happening too slowly and it seems an impossible task. These are all causes for worry. What you want and expect does not match what others want and expect

Worry takes root from your own thoughts or words. There are two things that continuously happen in you. The first is dialogue, and the second is monologue —what I call 'inner chatter'. You either talk to people outside you or you continuously chatter within you. In any case, words and thoughts are the 'building blocks' that make up worry.

When you speak to others, what you say is strictly governed by societal rules. You automatically don't use prohibited or 'politically incorrect' words. But what you say inside yourself, no one except you knows. The thoughts that you generate inside constitute your real worries.

It is like this: there is a continuous current of chatter happening in you twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. From this current a few spikes rise. These spikes are what you feel and express as worries. Worries are nothing but spikes in the current of thoughts constantly moving within you. These thoughts are mostly negative. That's the problem. If I ask you to write your life story in a few pages, you will write a few incidents highlighting how and when you struggled. You will not highlight the many joyful incidents that happened in between. The mind is trained to record only negative things. Even when something joyful happens, you remember only the moment when it ended, never the moments when you felt joy. Because even when you are at the peak of joy, you are always worrying about when the joy will end! The mind is trained from a very young age to think that life moves from one worry to the other, or from one pain to another, never from one joy to another.

In a classroom, the teacher found that one boy was sitting with a very sad face.

She asked him, 'What happened? Why do you look so worried?'

The boy said, 'It's my parents. My dad works all day to provide good clothes and an excellent education for me. He buys me anything I want. My mother cooks the best food for me and takes care of me from morning until I go to bed.'

The teacher asked, 'Then what is your problem? Why are you worried?'

The boy replied, 'I am afraid they might run away.'

The mind has a clear identity only with pain, never with joy! That is why recalling even joyful moments becomes painful.

Joy never gets recorded as thoughts, but pain does. That's why our internal recordings are always negative thoughts. Joy is like a blank recording! For example, if your entire life is like a time shaft, on that shaft the joyful moments are simply empty spaces! There won't be any recording corresponding to it. But the moments of worry and suffering will be clearly recorded as black impressions.

Buddha', the enlightened master, used the word tathata - seeing what is as it IS. It is seeing what is there as it is without any judgment.

But most of the time we see things only through our worry. There is a common saying, 'We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are.' If you feel there is something wrong with what you are seeing, then you should look back in at yourself because what you see outside is only a reflection of what is inside you. If you feel pure love inside, then you see only pure love outside. It always has to do with you, not with what you are seeing.

How can you keep thoughts away from what truly IS? How can you enjoy each moment all the time?

Try this small technique. When you see something — say a person, or a situation, or a book, or anything — normally old thoughts and familiar reactions immediately rise in you. Bring awareness that these conditioned thoughts and memories cloud your judgment and visualize shattering those thoughts. Next, see the situation, or person, or object now with a fresh eye, as though you are seeing it for the first time! Suddenly you see how much you missed, because of your own worry and thoughts.

Even when you see your husband, wife, brother, or anyone, look at them as though you are seeing them for the first time. Suddenly, you realize that not only does worry not arise, but also that you will start seeing everyone alike — whether they are strangers or familiar to you. That is the right way. No one is familiar or unchanging. Even your wife is not known to you. Everyone is constantly changing every moment along with Existence. Only your mind is trying to make them appear to be permanent.

Once you start seeing what is as it is, all your energy will integrate within you. There is no more worry, no more conflict.

Someone asked J. Krishnamurti, the famous Indian philosopher, how to fall in tune with what IS. He beautifully says, 'Just don't name it, you will find you are in tune with it!'

Usually, when we see something, we either try to identify with it or we try to condemn it. For example, if you are told you are arrogant, you either accept it or you try not to be arrogant! You never understand or go beyond arrogance. You can only understand within your frame of reference, what you are familiar with. Because of this, you are caught in a limited view of possibilities. To really understand, you need to go beyond this limited point-of-view. To do that, you have to stop naming it arrogance , that's all! There will be no more arrogance. Only by naming it, you start the conflict. That is how you see what IS— by not naming it.

When you see what is as it is, you are in heaven. When you want to see what you want to see, you are in hell. If you understand that everything is auspiciousness, you will drop expectation and see things as they are, because everything is auspiciousness.

A small story:

One disciple kept asking the master 'Master where is paradise?'

Finally one day, the master asked him, 'Do you really want to know?'

The disciple sat up and said, 'Yes!'

The master said, 'Alright, my first disciple Hemachandra is in paradise.' After saying these words the master closed his eyes and went into meditation.

The disciple knew it would be a long time before the master opened his eyes. So, he went and asked some of the disciples ifthey knew where Hemachandra lived. No one seemed to know.

Finally one disciple said, 'I know how to guide you there, but I have never been there myself. It is in a deep valley beyond a range of ice covered mountains. '

The disciple wrote down the directions carefully and went back to the master. He told him, 'Master, I wish to pay a visit to Hemachandra!' The master was absorbed deeply in some work. Without even looking up he said, 'Go ahead.' The disciple started on his journey. He walked for many days, passing through sun, rain, snow, and what not. He became exhausted, on the verge ofdeath. It took him one hundred days to reach the valley. When he finally reached it he looked at the valley and thought, 'This valley doesn't look all that great. I have seen many more beautiful valleys. Why did the master call this paradise?'

He looked around and walked further and fin ally fo und He mac handra 's hut. Hemachandra was very pleased to see him. He served him food and asked how the master and other disciples were doing.

All along, the disciple was thinking to himself, 'Master called this place paradise? I can't believe it.'

After a week-long stay he left and returned to his master. It took him another one hundred days to return home.

He went straight to the master and stated, 'You said that the place is paradise. But what I saw was the most ordinary place ever!'

The master said, 'Oh god! At the time of your enquiry, had you been more explicit about your intention, I would have told you the truth.'

The disciple asked, 'What is the truth?'

The master replied, 'Hemachandra is not in paradise. Paradise is in him!'

When you live close to Existence, without any expectation, seeing what is as it is and finding the blessings in it, you will carry heaven in you! Heaven is not geographical, it is psychological. It is not physical, it is mental. If you decide, you can be in heaven right now.

Worry is an unwanted legacy passed down from grandparents to parents to children. Children are like sponges. They simply absorb the body language and attitude of the parents. The parents are not even aware this is happening. For example, if a child hears the mother repeating a certain worry four or five times, the child simply internalizes the habit. He grows up repeating statements unnecessarily, which is one attribute of worry.

Ultimately he carries the worry with him into marriage and then both he and his new wife must deal with it, even though it was originally his mother's concern. They will then hand it down to their children, unless they stop naming it and learn to live with what IS.

One man was pushing his baby in a pram. The baby was screaming at the top of his voice. All the while the man kept repeating quietly, 'Keep calm George. Don't scream. It will be okay.'

His wife told him to keep quiet.

A woman who was watching this said to the wife, 'Why are you so rude to him? He is really doing his best to pacify your son!' The wife looked at her with resentment, pointed to her husband and told her 'He is George.'

When parents express constant worry, children grow up thinking life goes on only because of worry! Understand that life goes on not because of us, but in spite of us!

The problem is that parents expect their children to worry! If they don't worry, they brand them as uncaring. It is possible to care without worrying. Care is doing, worry is chattering. There is no use chattering. Chattering is like trying to cross a bridge before it comes.

A young boy was driving his mother to the neighboring village. They were nearing the village when they remembered a particular bridge th at used to be very old and unusable.

The mother got very anxious and said, 'I will never cross that bridge by car.'

The son said, 'Let's see how it looks when we come to it.'

The mother said, 'I'm sure the bridge will break if we attempt to cross it.'

The son replied, 'Let's see how strong it is. We won't cross it without checking it carefully.'

The mother said, 'If something happens to you or me, your father will never forgive me.' She kept going on like this, becoming more and more upset.

Soon they reached the spot where the bridge stood. The bridge had been replaced with a new one! There are two things to understand: chronological planning and psychological worry. Chronological planning is needed to set up a schedule for tasks or projects to be completed. For example, you decide, 'I will wake up at six a.m., do my meditation, then take a shower at seven a.m., and leave for the office by eight a.m. I'll finish work by five p.m. and return home by six p.m.'

This type of planning is perfectly alright. But before you come to each task on your list, you start creating anxiety about it. You think of the pros and cons of each, etc. This is called psychological worry! This is not needed. Chronological planning is fine, but psychological worry is not needed. It is like trying to cross a bridge before it comes.

So much energy is spent worrying and it is all of no use. In the story I just narrated, it does not mean that the son does not care. He cares without worry, that's all. Why contemplate over the bridge even before it comes?

You can clean the physical parts of your house, your carpets and floors, but what about the space inside your house? This space is the energy that circulates throughout your house. It captures all the thoughts you radiate. It sets the very mood of the house. Your worries rest like cobwebs in the space of your house. That is why when you enter your house, you experience a familiar pattern of worry. The patterns remaining in the space of your house grip you when you return to it. Understand that your mental setup settles into the space of your house. The big problem is that you become so used to your patterns of worries that you end up like an island that is cut off from the fragrance of the mainland. You are cut off from the fragrance of Existence because of your worries. You miss the miracles of Existence that are continuously happening around you. You forget to appreciate and remember only to complain. You forget laughter and remember only anxiety. You forget bliss and remember only stress. Remembering these negative things becomes a mere habit.

What is the solution to this distorted software of the mind?

Deep awareness is the solution. Deep awareness is like a benign virus, if such a thing exists! Once awareness enters your system, the more you work with the mind, the more the awareness gets into the worry software and destroys it!

Awareness is nothing but bringing our focus to exactly what is happening in and around us. It is witnessing. Anything that we watch with awareness will dissolve. That is the power of awareness; whether it is physical pain, mental pain, worry, or something else. When we watch with awareness, we stop the conflict somewhere within us. We start moving with the natural flow of things.

When we watch worry with awareness, we focus light on exactly how worry is created, how it exists. Once this happens, the worry starts to dissolve and clarity starts happening.

There is a small story about Buddha and his disciples:

One day Buddha arrived for his usual morning discourse with his disciples. He had a knotted handkerchief in his hand. He showed the handkerchief to the disciples and asked if any of them could come up and untie the knot.

One disciple went up and tried to untie it. He pulled and pulled and the knot tightened. Another disciple went up, he looked at the knot for a few seconds and easily untied it.

All he did was look at the knot and immediately he knew how the knot was made in the first place. So, he just reversed the whole thing and untied it! The knot itself taught him how to untie it.

In life worries are the knots in the handkerchief. If we look at them with awareness, we will know how to dissolve them. We will see exactly how the worry was created and then know how to ‘untie’ it. The worry itself will teach us how to release it.

If you observe closely, you will see that goals always create worry in us. When we move toward any goal, we move only with the worry about the results.

Krishna, an enlightened master from ancient India, beautifully says in the ancient Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita’, ‘The person who does not expect gain or loss from anything works happily with no need even for motivation.’

When you are worried about the results, the very worry affects the results. Because when you worry, your doing is affected. Work should always be done out of inspiration, never out of worry. The motivation for any work should be inspiration, not worry. Inspiration is an overflowing energy that expands your capacity to do things. It is completely energizing. Worry, on the other hand, is something that shrinks your capacity. It limits what you are capable of really doing because it takes away your energy. When you work out of worry, you are always bothered about the results. When you work out of inspiration, you are not bothered about the results. You are bothered only about doing the task to the fullest. Any task done with the energy of inspiration always turns out good results. Even if it doesn’t give the expected results, you won’t feel bad about it because you have received fulfillment simply by doing it. The ‘doing’ itself will fulfill you.

When you live without expectation, you are already fulfilled. There is no space for worry or discontent to thrive. When you don’t have worry, you see things as they are. You don’t worry about what might be or might not be. Worry exists only if you give it space. The space for worry is the past or future. The present doesn’t hold any space for it.

A small story:

A mother was preparing a meal for her young son. She emptied a tin of beans into a saucepan and put them on the stove to cook. Just then the phone rang. She was expecting the call and wanted to take it, but she was concerned that her son would be left alone for those few minutes while she was out of the room.

She told him, ‘Stay here while I answer the phone. I’ll be back soon. Don’t misbehave, and whatever you do, don’t put those beans up your nose... ’ We always worry about what is happening and what might happen, also! The boy might not have even thought about putting beans up his nose! Now his mother has planted the idea in him. Worry infuses life into many

things that never existed in the first place. Now, when the boy puts the beans in his nose, her worry turns out to be true! She concludes that her worries are always right.

If you look into worries, you will observe that they arise out of deep ignorance of the truth that Existence is running the whole show. If you look, you will see that all worries are mere illusion. You can understand this by observing what happens at the time of death. When you are alive, you may have one hundred worries, but suppose you are dying. At that moment, how many worries do you think will dominate you the way they did earlier? Surely only one worry will be foremost — that you are going to die. None of the earlier worries will exert any great influence. All the outer world situations remain the same, but still the worries disappear! Only loving thoughts remain for the people around you who are dear to you.

How is this possible? It is possible only because your worries were never a part of you in the first place. They were merely a part of your mind. They were nothing solid. If they were solid, they would definitely exert some amount of influence over you at the time of your death as well. The nature of worry is such that it always goes behind something that is not present. If you have wealth, it will go after relationships, if you have relationships, it will go after education, if you have education it will go after good looks. If everything is present, it will suspect what is present!

When you clearly understand that you are part of the grand plan of Existence, no worry can take root in you. Existence is a live energy being. It has tremendous intelligence with which it runs the whole show. We are all part of it. The same intelligence that conducts Existence is available to us too. If we tune in to it, our actions will be fluid and spontaneous like the happenings of Existence. If we don’t tune into 1t, we will harbor worry and fear and remain closed.

There is so much to learn from Existence! Take animals for example. Have you ever heard of worried sheep or cows? No! They conduct their lives like you; they are born, they reproduce, they find food, and they face death - just like human beings. You may say, ‘They don’t have to face the challenges that we have to face.’ What about their other activities like reproduction, facing death, etc? Are they worried about all that? No! But these things happen to them too. So understand that Existence is running this whole macrocosm. It can surely take care of you as well!

Surrendering to the laws of Existence is the greatest relaxation from worry.

If you seriously analyze every worry that arises in you, you will see that ninety nine percent of your worries are baseless. But the problem is that the ego is not willing to accept that. The ego has invested too much in worry. Worry can’t be discarded just like that! Just try telling someone that his or her worries are not worth anything. They will get very offended. You would expect that a person would feel happy if you tell him his worries are not true. But it won’t be so! He will feel offended. The ego feels offended whenever its worries are not acknowledged with due respect.

The ego is what sustains the worry. The worry is created out of ignorance, but sustained by ego. Worry becomes an axis around which the ego revolves. If worry is taken away, the ego suffers. The worry of work and the worry of responsibility are classic examples of this.

If you watch some people, they simply magnify their situation to prove that they have the greatest worries on planet earth! If you try to oppose them, they feel very hurt.

Even worrying about what others will say about us is a problem of the ego. The ego is constantly worried that its self-image might be spoiled by someone. It is because of the ego that we feel we want to be somebody special all the time. We spend considerable time just worrying about our self-image. Understand that the greatest blessing is being a nobody and yet being blissful. That is the greatest specialty. It is said that the most extraordinary thing about an enlightened being is that he thinks he is ordinary! So, understand that enlightenment itself is a journey to relax into yourself. You are someone special all the time, only when you drop worry and ego.

If you really want to come out of your worries, you will come out right now, without trying tojustify any of your worries.

The thing is, our very worries become our comfort zone. We hide in them. Hiding and merely talking about them helps us to remain lazy.

Someone asks Mahavira', an enlightened Jain master from India, ‘Who is the one who has worries?’

He beautifully replies, ‘The person who is worried.’

They ask him, ‘What is the cause of worry?’ He replies, ‘Laziness.’

Then they ask him, ‘Who ends worries?’ He replies, ‘Man himself.’

They ask him, ‘How can worry be ended?’ He replies, ‘By dropping laziness.’ If you drop laziness, you fall into right action. And when you fall into right action, you drop worry. Your comfort with worry can be understood even from the way you react to other people’s worries. If you keenly watch, you will observe that whenever a person talks to you about his worries, you first tell them, ‘What can you do... That’s just the way it happens...’ You never straightaway give a solution to them. When you do this, be very clear, you are not only encouraging them, but you are also encouraging yourself to remain comfortably in the worry zone.

If you really observe, we love to worry and talk about it. It makes us feel that we are shouldering a lot of problems. It makes us feel important, like the world can’t make it without us to take care of it.

When you see a problem, if you want a solution, you never dwell upon the problem even for a second. You simply switch to the solution, that’s all! In the same way, for every worry there is an instant solution. You have to want it; that is the key. Most of the time, you prefer to stay in the comfort zone of your worry. It keeps you settled. For example, let’s say you are visiting your child at college. You see a few students keeping their rooms all messy, or exchanging clothes and wearing them. You record the whole scene in your mind and assume that is the way of life in the dorm itself. You advise your child to keep her things neat and not to wear others’ clothes. Even if she tells you her things are in order and that she doesn’t wear others’ clothes, you will not readily erase or reprogram your recording. You stick with the earlier recording of what you observed.

There probably were many other beautiful things to record in the dorm — like the joy of the students, the campus itself, etc., but every time you think of your daughter, only this one recording comes up and you worry about her. Not only that, anyone you meet, you talk about how things are a mess in her dorm and how everyone exchanges clothes and wears them! The recording itself is not the truth. But you choose to have it as your comfort zone. You reinforce it.

Even your worry related to wealth is like this. If making money is the worry, then it clearly means, somewhere laziness is pulling you back into the comfort of worry. If you discard laziness and move, you make money. There are a million opportunities in today’s world to make money.

When you create more thoughts inside you through worry, the load on the navel region increases. It is from the navel region that thoughts or worries arise. When you create more and more thoughts, you feel the heaviness in your stomach. There is an energy center in the navel area called the manipuraka chakra'. This energy center starts shrinking with the heaviness of worry. This energy centre responds directly to worry, and affects the stomach. That is why when you worry about something your stomach starts becoming uneasy. Or when you hear shocking news you say, ‘I can’t digest it...’Any disturbing news causes your stomach to churn. The stomach is very sensitive to thoughts.

There was a doctor famous for his extraordinary and effective treatment of arthritis. He always had a waiting room full of people.

There was a doctor famous for his extraordinary and effective treatment of arthritis. He always had a waiting room full of people.

One day an old lady with her back badly bent walking entered the office with the aid of a stick. When her turn came, she went into the doctor’s room and amazingly, came out within five minutes, walking completely erect with her head high.

A woman in the waiting room ran to her and said, ’It’s a miracle! You walked in bent in half and now you are walking erect! What did that doctor do?’

The old lady replied, ’He gave me a longer cane.’

Sometimes we are so used to living a certain way that we can’t see a better way to live. Worry is that habit that keeps us from living to our full potential and invites disease into the body. Disease starts in the mind.

There are extreme forms of worry that may become habitual and slow down the functioning of the individual. This form of worry is diagnosed as Generalized Anxiety Disorder, called GAD. It is much more than the normal anxiety people experience day to day. According to research done by the National Institute of Mental Health in the USA, GAD affects about 6.8 million adult Americans and about twice as many women as men.

Once worry happens, we visit psychiatrists. The cause of worry is in the mind, not outside. Then how will medicine alone help?

A large number of the people in the world visit psychiatrists for the treatment of worry. Medication is all right, but for psychosomatic conditions like worry, meditation is also needed.

Meditation softens you. When you soften, love and gratitude start happening in you. Then slowly, there is no room for worry. Worry is also a form of violence. It is a subtle form of violence. It is a disguised agitation in the system.

Meditation also tremendously increases awareness. When awareness increases, outwardly you might be completely involved in the outer world, but inwardly you will be untouched by anything that happens. That is the real worry-free life.