by Gurucharan Khalsa
Gurucharan recently conducted The 21 Stages of Meditation Workshop here in Boulder. A question arose about how to deal with anxiety or feeling unsettled as a result of the intensive exploration. Here is Gurucharan’s response.
Quite a weekend and many good energies were touched and many thoughts come up to our awareness to process. We “process” by sensing our still center and our Self present. We become “larger” than the presenting thoughts. Then we can sense the thoughts, emotions, intensity and other qualities. Then we let that thought go through our negative, positive and then neutral mind. We accept and learn; or reject and send it to become zero over a distant horizon; or we accept and add to it something needed to make it useful and relevant to us and what is meaningful to our heart.
If something arises in us that is unsettling or unbalancing we first just sense that. Then again, don’t “create a fight between our mind and the ego or thought”. Simply evaluate, label it, and send it where you want it to go.
Come back to your full sense of your body–through a slow breath and a body scan for example–and notice what your body needs for care and balance. If you decide to taste a lovely broccoli or rice dish for example, and other thoughts intrude, simply “absorb” into the broccoli tastes and good reactions that your body naturally has as you let the other distractions go.
The intense immersion into your own processes may indeed be part of what you are experiencing. That should be useful and brief. It is probably a background anxiety, which is common to us all, especially when we think there is a great task of “overcome/get rid of” parts of our self. Perhaps the best thing to do is be “pre-forgiving” of whatever parts in you arise. After all they are all parts of you and your messy miracle. The best approach is simple acceptance and compassion for that part. And then let your mind know it is not a task to “get rid of” but to invite into your vast table as a guest who must behave well with the other guests/parts. SO the TASK is to not take the bait, so to speak, where-in a single part claims it is central to what you must do. No. You are already central, present and all these parts will adjust by your presence and calm.There is nothing to get rid of, only an open Self to bring present as you enjoy the show.
