What is anxiety?

"Don't follow the past, nor anticipate the future, nor try to prolong the present moment. Just rest in the pure awareness of now, of now-ness."-- Dzogchen teachings




I have anxiety and so do you, we all do. Some of us have it in very high levels but every human has it, without exception. Yet we think we are alone in it or that there is something deeply wrong with us or we should not be feeling anxiety, we are embarassed about feeling it.

The main reason for anxiety in humans is uncertainty. It lies dormant and waiting, always, because we never know what is going to happen next, ever. Think about that and keep thinking about it. When you do you will realise where your state of anxiety comes from.

We don't know that we have anxiety due to life's uncertainties until we actually investigate this. We think it's due to life events or a person or people, and of course these are contributing factors, but uncertainty lies all the time in our mind with or without others, even when life is peaceful.

People meditate because they think they will become peaceful, have no worries and that anxiety will go. Yes meditation can have the effect of peace but it won't last long, no one tells you this. You think that you are the only person sitting on their cushion in a state of anxiety. The great thing about meditation is not peace but the realisation and revelation that you are in fact anxious. Meditation brings awareness of our conditions and habits. We begin to see how messy we are, how we try to trick ourself into believing we can control it all. It is a dissapointment to find we can't. Dissapointing but very freeing because we can relax knowing that.

Once you know this fact you can start to chill about it, a bit anyway. You begin to see it is just the way it is. This is how life is, messy, unpredictable, terrifying. Meditation slowed down my mind an dbrought the reality of my anxiety and how it was caused by never knowing what was going to happen. Being unable to control my life. Uncertainty.

 It was just a theory to begin with but over the years it became a reality and a realisation.  At first it made it worse because it seemed to increase it, the knowledge of it. What was realy happening is not that it was increasing but that I had, in slowing my mind down, become acutely aware of it. Then when I began to accept it as a part of life, something I can not control, I calmed down about it all. I still get anxious, I am not cured totally but I can laugh at it more, relax into my anxiety, welcome it in and make friends with it. 'Oh you again', I say. We even have tea together!

Understanding uncertainty makes you become less entangled and clinging. If you know things are uncertain, every single thing, you cling less. The more you try to control things the worse it gets because you realise you can't actually control anything or anyone fully. Change will come no matter how tight you hold on. In a split second your life can change, this is a truth and this knowledge unconsciously makes us anxious.

Even if you are sitting alone in your house uncertainty is still there. Anything can happen at any moment. Change is always there. Nothing stays the same ever. We get ill suddenly, die suddenly, someone leaves us. We can't predict any of it nor stop it happening. We can stop trying to spend energy believing we can manipulate things. Knowing this for certain we can become much more relaxed and less controlling. It takes some effort to train yourself. You have to move your thoughts one hundred degrees to the way you were used to thinking.

 Because I have lost so much in my life again and again I know deeply how uncertain it all is. But in that there is hope because when things are bad they can also change too. We cling to our misery as if it will last forever but it changes day by day, moment by moment. Knowing this you can start to take it less seriously. 

Two things helped me the most in life and that is the certainty of impermanence and the certainty of uncertainty. In the end you start to see some humour in it all as you watch the show of life endlessley playing out just like an old man watching children at play.

Make the most of today and this very minute because it is uncertain and precious. Everything is impermanent and so much more valuable. Don't waste a single moment more. Anxiety will not make things better.