Lately I have been experiencing anxiety. It arises from uncertainty about the future, stays with me for a while and then subdues into the abyss of unconsciousness. Despite unchanged external events, anxiety comes and goes, teaching me how the cause and the cure are not to be found outside, but are only to be addressed through fine-tuning of the inside.
To provide a bit of context – I have been standing on the verge of quite a change. I have been working for corporates for almost 10 years and have build a great career in one of the most demanding, impactful and prestige business environments, clinging on to certainty of such predetermined path to success. However, the more I unravel myself, the more I understand walking a predetermined path is not for me – I need to make it my own. I am yearning for freedom, independency and an adventure of building something limitless in its potential.
However, the anxiety I am experiencing is sometimes paralyzing. It craves for the known, for the promises of system’s security. It opposes to the nature of things, withholding me from jumping into the abyss of the unknown. It whispers: “You are not good enough. You will never succeed doing what you like. You have to compromise.” Coming from a post-war, post-communist Yugoslavia, such conditioning is embedded in my family and cultural heritage. I grew up believing money is bad and reserved to war criminals and thieves, success only happens if you come from a wealthy family, there is general scarcity of resources and we are built to work for and not to own.
Overcoming these limiting beliefs is an evolving process, and sometimes it seems never ending. Remember the path is that of a spiral – through dedicated practice, we keep on thinning our limiting beliefs by iterating lessons again and again, until the samskara (seed mental impression) itself dissolves. The victory is embedded in the process as growth is embedded in hardships. I made this blog about cracking the code on how to unravel – and for this particular code I found there are two main formulas to remember.
Uncertainty = Freedom = Creativity
First is to understand the mechanism behind the security/uncertainty coin. Security is nothing more then attachment to the known, to our past. There is no evolution in that, no creation, no expansion – just stagnation through stale repetition of outworn memories. Our tormentor today is our self left over from yesterday. On the other hand, uncertainty is the only place where something new can happen. If we have a clear idea of what is to happen, we shut down a whole range of possibilities. But if we step into the unknown, we open ourselves to limitless possibilities of creation. It is in our willingness to step into the unknown that we find freedom.
To be willing to step into the unknown, we need to accept and detach. To accept starts with accepting ourselves (our humanity) and to detach starts with understanding who we truly are (being). From detachment comes the freedom to create – as we let go of our past and tap into the limitless potential of our being. If we can experience the being, then we can experience detachment with ease – as detachment is embedded in the very nature of our being.
Confidence + Faith = Embracing uncertainty
Second is to practice our willingness to step into the unknown. This is done by cultivating two essential qualities: confidence (in ourselves) and faith (in universe). The first element – confidence – in my native language translates as self-reliance. In other words, to be confident for me means to be assured I can rely on myself in any situation. It is a combination of deep, peaceful feeling in my body and a clear intellectual understanding of the reason why. The feeling is of integrity, smoothness, lava like density and melted gold. The feeling supports intellectual understanding in a way it integrates it into our psychology by forming a new, positive belief and changing our responsive habits. There is a difference between mere intellectual processing of reason why I should be confident and integration of that reasoning into a new belief – and the difference lies in the feeling. The reason why (for example, my virtues, past achievements and skills) serve as a raw input, as the feeling then transforms it into a clarity of insight and finally forges it into a new belief. (To get a guidance on how to find the feeling, check the end of the post.)
The second element to embracing uncertainty is to have faith. To cultivate faith is to cultivate ishvara pranidana, our connection and surrender to the Source. For me, this happens two-folds. Firstly, I am re-discovering my faith through playful connection with different deities. All these deities for me represent an embodiment of a certain quality, certain sublime energy which is so pure and divine in its essence, that by finding and cultivating it in myself I remember my own divinity. Now the second layer comes in, because, guess what – the Divine IS the Source IS the Being IS You. So the next time when you practice resting in the being, try looking for that underlying connection to everything that is. When we experience awareness, we realize awareness is all-pervasive and all that exists in it is one and the same thing – is awareness itself. This insight happens when we overcome the illusion of ahamkara, the I-ness, or the primary concept of separation (I exist as an individual that is different from you). If there is no concept of I, then what is left is pure awareness without separation of the things that exist in that awareness. I do not exist as separate from you, as we both exist in our awareness. (To play a bit with the concept of separation, check the “You are the Sofa” meditation.)
By combining confidence and faith, we create a bulletproof tactic that strengthens our will to overcome whatever conditioning or negative feeling holds us back and to embrace the unknown. We become more assured that everything is gonna be alright, actually much better then alright – we understand that what awaits us is the next step in our evolution, an experience that is beyond our current capacity to imagine.
I will conclude by one of my favorite guidelines: Don’t overthink and just go into the fear. This is the very definition of courage and the only way to overcome whatever you are afraid of. Godspeed.
To cultivate confidence or any other virtue or positive belief, one first has to experience what it feels like in your body. This can be done through simple meditation.
- Close your eyes and take some time to get yourself in a meditative state, either through pranayama or 10-min of breath focus meditation. It is important to get our minds a bit quieter and to be able to keep our focus steady for an extended period of time, as this skill will allow us to sink deeper into the feeling and gain insight.
- Once your mind feels present and calm, focus on how your body feels, especially in the area of your first, second and third chakra. Then start repeating “I am confident”. The key is to keep your attention focused on your body, and your attitude in the position of the observer, while repeating the phrase.
- Once you notice a subtle feeling in your body arising, go for it. It is as if you allow yourself – your attention – to sink deeper into that feeling, deeper into your flesh. Keep your focus on the feeling and allow it to grow until it overwhelms your attention. You will notice it has always been there, strong and present, and you just unraveled layers of noise in order to experience it more clearly.
- Rest in that feeling for how long you need to get truly familiar in it and allow your process to unravel in a way that is specific to your system in order to integrate it. Whatever comes, embrace it and act on it – be it an insight, a self healing process, a continuation to different realizations or an urge to move. Finish in 10 minute savasana, releasing the experience.
- You will find that it will become much easier to access this feeling on demand, even in our daily, busy monkey-mind consciousness. As a follow-up, sit and write down all the reasons why you can be self reliant (e.g. list of your skills, achievement, unique qualities, talents, education, etc.). Your intellectual understanding of the rationale behind will serve as a complementary piece to embedding your new belief and finally acting on it. Congratulations!
To experience a subtle insight on the illusion of separation, try this “You are Sofa” meditation:
- Sit comfortably and take some time to quiet down your mind and enter the space, or in other words, to cultivate meta-awareness. Meta awareness is presence and awareness of everything: yourself and everything that exists outside of you. Keep you eyes opened and just notice what is around you.
- Now choose one object to focus on, for example a sofa. Focus on the sofa and notice how it just exists there. Notice how your mind process the visual input of this object into a cognitive understanding how this object is what we call “a sofa” and what are its functions in relation to you.
- Now notice a peculiar thing – existence of an external object in a relation to you. Notice the concept of I. Notice how it is nothing more but a concept, a thought. This concept is one of the primal components of your mind that allows us to experience and relate to the reality in the way we do, that defines us as humans. Will that sofa still be here if we remove the I? Most probably so. But it will cease to be a sofa, a concept whose functionality serves you, it will just be an unnamed object, unnamed thing that exists in the space and that you are able to perceive due to your senses.
- Now notice how you can be aware of both the concept of a sofa and the concept of I. Play with the idea that, if you remove the concept of I, you remove the concept of sofa, you remove your cognitive understanding, processing and the storyline you have created about reality and all that is left is just awareness. Notice how everything just exists in awareness equally. In other words, the matter is the same, it just manifests in different forms. In other words, you are the awareness, are the sofa, are you.
Unravel Ninja 