Overcoming Anxiety with Knowledge of your True Self

by Shree (Sherrie Wade) MA
Certified Advanced Meditation Instructor and Licensed Psychotherapist, Director of Transformation Meditation Online Institute

The modern world can seem like a very stressful place. There is so much to do on a daily basis, just to keep yourself and your family healthy, happy and secure. All the modern technologies, meant to make life easier, often overcomplicate our lives. Every time you get a new gadget - smart phone, tablet, ultrabook... - it requires learning new systems just to get it going and even more knowledge to maintain it. When you watch the news you hear disturbing stories, creating fear and worry in your nervous system. The news media never tell you that 99% of people are safe and sound, neither victim of crime nor natural disaster. Rather, they focus their attention solely on rare, random tragedy that sadly visits the few. Politicians harp on horrors to be if their opposition prevails and all the great and wonderful things to come, if you but give them your vote...

All of these situations create anxiety as your mind becomes filled with the awareness of human suffering. Even everyday communications with co-workers, family and friends can turn unpleasant and stressful and cause your mind to needlessly ruminate - endlessly replaying the interaction - even though it's over and cannot be undone.

Many people experience anxiety just before or after they wake up. This is very common. What you can do when you wake up with anxious or disturbing thoughts is to repeat a mantra. That breaks the habit of the ruminating thoughts. You just have to keep repeating a positive thought and taking deep breaths until the anxious, disturbing thoughts pass. The mantra I use is amaram hum, madhuram hum [ah-mah-rahm hum mah-dhoo-rahm hum] which means I am immortal, I am blissful. You could also repeat: I am pure, free, and forever, or any thought that you feel good saying.

It may seem like you are repeating something you do not really believe but that is not the point. The point is to free your mind from the ruminating negative thoughts. These thoughts keep occurring without your invitation, but you can replace them with more constructive thoughts. Just continue repeating the mantra. Whether you feel it's working or not, by repeating mantra these unhelpful thoughts eventually desist and disappear, as you are not giving them any attention.

It is strange how the mind works. Even though you don't want to think a certain thought, your mind somehow decides that you need to keep thinking it. So don't believe the mind and focus the one who is watching or knowing the mind. The Knower is not affected by the mind and that Knower you are. You have the ability to change your thought, so you are not confined to nor limited by the mind's thought patterns.

When you focus on the Knower you realize that its true nature and core essense is pure, free, and forever. In deep sleep, when the mind is not active, you are fine, even if you were troubled or pained in the waking state. Problematic thought patterns only seem to occur when the mind is active and you become their victim and not their Knower. When you are Knower you can watch the mind and watch the one who is watching the mind. Then you are not affected by whatever thoughts are there - as if these thoughts were happening in someone else's mind, and you are not affected. Problematic thoughts occur when you identify with them and believe them. You have the power, as Knower, not to believe these thoughts.

Thoughts keep changing, arising, staying for some time and then leaving. You, the Pure Space, never changes. Just as air can be a refreshing breeze or a hurricane force gale, it still exists as air, throughout, ever the same element in both manifestations. Whether your consciousness is still and calm or moves and becomes thought waves, it has never changed from being consciousness. When you, the Knower, tune-in to this Pure Consciousness, that is the same whether moving or unmoving, you know that this Knower is who you are. Established as Knower you can be free from destructive thinking!

In meditation on this awareness of Pure Consciousness, Knower, the mind settles and you come to know this stillness and remain peaceful.

What persists throughout is You, Self, Being - pure, free, forever.

To receive a Free Doubt Free Meditation MP3 and to review our online home study meditation courses, teacher training, books and CDs please go to transformedu.com.

Sherrie Wade, M.A., Director of Transformation Meditation Online Institute and creator of the Transformation Meditation Home Study Teacher Training, has come to realize that the peaceful meditative state is our true nature. She speaks and writes with clarity and wisdom as to how one can unfold this awareness and transform one’s life. She is a certified meditation instructor from the International Meditation Institute, Himalayas, India, where she has spent over twelve years in self-inquiry and study. Shree has been teaching meditation since 1985 and is now known as a teacher of teachers.



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