There’s a lyric in a song titled “Wake Me Up” by Avici that goes like this:
Finding my way through the darkness
guided by a beating heart
I can’t tell where this journey will end
but I know where it starts.
Where and when your life starts is the topic of this article. The simplest answer is now. Accepting that your life couldn’t possibly be a mistake since it’s still running, evolving, expanding.
When we have a strong sense of anxiety, feeling like something bad has happened, that anxious feeling is directing us to STOP doing something we are currently doing. The body hums and screeches with danger and invitation. Without exception, each of us thinks and feels all the time we are awake.
The journey starts here, now, and nowhere else. If we pay close attention to where we are holding our attention, we will find our attention is not with our senses. We are not seeing, hearing, touching what is here. Rather our senses are focused on thoughts which are “somewhere, sometime else”.
As you read this you are most assuredly safe from lions, bears, snakes, robbers, tornadoes, etc. Yet, if we turn our awareness to any one of those dangers, our bodies will reflect some degree of anxiety.
We will experience an imagined ‘accident about to happen’.
This type of thinking is what plagues most people when they experience anxiety and depression. Imagined vulnerability is still a vulnerability to the body, the center of our experience.
All of us are in relationship to life. We relate through senses from the inside out to the world around us, by our thoughts relating to that world. A focus on ‘accidents’, bad things that might happen, is normal and important. But if we live in too much of a haze or in the grip of something frightening, we have gone beyond simple, safe living and exploring. Our experience has solidified into thoughts of impending doom, and our life feels like an accident.
When we experience actual accidents, their memory can continue to carry a threat of continuation of that difficulty. Depending on the level of pain, shock, loss, a single word can last a lifetime, acting as an alarm to our bodies, “Don’t relax! You’re not safe!!”
Our society lives in a state of imagined fear that drives anxiety, addiction, and violence. Ultimately, this selfishness is moving to reshape itself into healthy relationship, a return to discovery and adventure.
Knowing that an awareness of expecting misfortune is the root of anxiety can become a moment of transforming the constant change of life into a benefit.
Take time to look within and without. Recognize this life of beauty as it unfolds. Know that Nature includes pain as part of its balance, just as it includes pleasure to lead us on. The pains we have experienced are not meant to be permanent threats, but reminders to be careful. Pay attention to your feelings. If they say ‘danger’, take in a breath, look around, trust your senses. If there is no rattlesnake or pencil you are about to set your coffee on, exhale and smile.
A version of this post was previously published at The Father Connection and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: By Tero Vesalainen @ Shutterstock