Amazing statement that! Why, I can think of lots of reasons! Money, health, relationship troubles, politics, war – just to name a few. Anyone with half a brain can find easy justification for worry about something! <\/p>\n
It\u2019s just that there really isn\u2019t any good reason for it. Really. No joke. Ok, ok, I guess you could say I need to worry about getting hit by the oncoming car in my lane doing 80 and swerving madly\u2026.but even then, what\u2019s needed is an efficient response to avoid the wreck if possible, not worry. No time for that\u2026<\/p>\n
Take your favorite worry and examine it. Maybe you have cancer, or someone stole your economic identity. Pick one of your own. Now what can you see about the worry around such events? (Actually we worry a lot about events that haven\u2019t occurred but we fear may!). Take one that seems perfectly \u2018justifiable\u2019 in the world\u2019s way of understanding things. \u2018I could die soon!\u2019 \u2018Someone has my social security # and can ruin my life!\u2019 Aren\u2019t these worth worrying about? No. <\/p>\n
If you pay real attention to what\u2019s happening when there\u2019s worry, you can catch something remarkable that we don\u2019t usually see: the movement of \u201cme\u201d and it\u2019s incessant concern for it\u2019s \u201clife\u201d. <\/p>\n
Wait! Isn\u2019t that MY life!? Again, no. But it is what\u2019s torturing you with worry (I\u2019m assuming we all can agree that worry is disagreeable, that it hurts). It\u2019s the life where how things turn out is so important, the one everyone takes for granted as real, the one that insists you worry. It\u2019s a life where the turn of events can take \u2018you\u2019 with them \u2013 whirling up or spiraling down. There is nothing in your authentic nature that can worry or justify worry. You are essentially a warm curious being in whom this tummy-ache of worry is alive. It\u2019s something to take note of, to study, pay attention to, watch carefully and learn from. It is in your interior landscape, but it\u2019s not your life.<\/p>\n
Can you catch sight of this? I call the life that justifies worrying, the \u201ctime-line life\u201d. It lives in time, the past moving toward future, where \u201cme\u201d wants things to be ok. If your life is on that time-line, you must worry how things will turn out, good or ill. Of course. But if your life is one in which you are learning all about the time-line life, you are someone entirely different. You are more like a loving parent watching a child disturbed about something that really doesn\u2019t matter but who is crying and upset. This is our interior landscape and we have the capacity to see it and learn all of this. The worry (or fear or anxiety or stress or anger or hate) grabs our attention. How we respond then is critical. <\/p>\n
If our minds (thinking, analysis, etc.) jump in to justify the feelings, we are lost, as millions are (unless we see this as it happens). The upset continues and is now \u2018justifiable\u2019! I call this \u2018justifiable suicide\u2019. Yet, if we become intensely curious, do not try to justify or stop the upset, we might just learn about this whole process inside of us, how it works to cause us distress, and in the process discover who we really are. <\/p>\n
How lovely that would be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Amazing statement that! Why, I can think of lots of reasons! Money, health, relationship troubles, politics, war – just to name a few. Anyone with half a brain can find easy justification for worry about something! It\u2019s just that there really isn\u2019t any good reason for it. Really. No joke. Ok, ok, I guess you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discussions","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/erniethayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/erniethayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/erniethayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erniethayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erniethayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/erniethayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/erniethayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erniethayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erniethayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}