Flash: What do anxiety and fear always eat for breakfast?

eaten alive cartoon
I am sitting in the Boulder International Film festival, happily watching an extraordinary movie about North Laos. Suddenly, a flare up of anxiety seizes me:

“Oh my god, I have to teach a workshop on the flash in just two days! What if no one comes! What if I can’t teach it! What if no one likes it!”

Have you noticed how anxiety and/or fear can just flare up in your mind like that? It is like you can be sitting comfortably at the campfire at night, and suddenly you hear a rustling in the woods. Then you think you see the yellow flash of a pair of eyes in the dark!  A spark of adrenaline spreads like wildfire through your chest; you can even feel a little sick.

I’ll share with you a possible solution to this dreadful experience, but first let’s see clearly what is happening in these anxious moments. The anxiety/fear eats your peace — devours any of your internalized feeling of connection.

Let me say that in the reverse: anxiety and fear are always, without exception, rooted in an experience of separation.

Crawl inside these moments as an observer, and you will see behind the curtain of the Wizard of Oz – a small, hunched-over separate self, desperately pulling at the levers, an encapsulated ego trying to force something to happen, before they are eaten alive by the flying monkeys of the Wicked Witch.

By contrast, in these moments of fear, you/we are NOT FEELING open and connected to a universal flow of beneficial energy through us, while surrounded and embedded in a cosmos of extraordinary love and power.

Yet we COULD feel that.

It is just as easy to have a flash of the Universe (Source, God, Higher Power), as it is to feel a flare up of anxiety.

In fact this connection is precisely what the separated, anxious, frightened part of you wants and needs.

But you have to grow up to make this shift. You have to be in charge of the one thing you can be in charge on — your own awareness. Awareness is life-giving.

Here’s a way for you to claim that wise maturity.  Next time you feel a flare up of anxiety, practice being aware enough to say to yourself “oh,  this anxiety is rooted in my feeling of separation. Instead, I am going to reach for a feeling of connection with the Universe.”

Think: “but wait,  in essence, and in spiritual truth, I AM a part of the Universe. I really AM.”

But more than think it, feel it. Here’s how:

In the midst of your anxiety, take in a slow, full, deep breath through your nose, while you smile and tip your face up to the sky, drinking in all of the life force and love in which you exist.

The benefit of doing this is deeply satisfying. You will feel the beginnings of a shift toward more connection. You will be moving your awareness toward inner peace. This will not make the anxiety “go away.” But this will dilute the anxiety, much like filtering bad tap water through a Britta water filer.

In a minute, in a flash, you can begin to shift your mind from scary separation to nourishing connection. Especially to the degree that you dedicate yourself to this coarse-correction, for even a minute.

In a minute!

Do you have to repeat this flash shift? I find that I do, if  my mind is flared up with the anxiety.

For example, the anxiety which I felt earlier (about teaching my workshop) continued to sporadically flare up inside me for the next two days after its sudden onset. Yet each time, I met that sick feeling of separation with a flash of connection to the Universe.

After 40 years of doing different inner work on my spiritual path and with my clients, this provides a simple yet profound way to do my inner work (my bio-psycho-spiritual work) with anxiety.

May I purpose the same for you. You can practice it right now. With or without anxiety, continue to experience how easily we can feel a connect to the Goodness that created us.

Whenever you notice that you feel separate, lonely or disconnected, or even just simply want to feel better –reach for a feeling of connection with the Universe.

Think: “In essence, and in spiritual truth, I AM a part of the Universe. I really AM.”

But more than think it, feel it:

Take in a slow breath through your nose, while you smile and tip your face up to the sky, drinking in all of the life force and love in which you exist.

Warmly, Frederic