Meditation & Worry
Extracted from Meditation A Foundation Course by Barry Long.
It could be said that the worried preoccupied mind is one of the greatest drains of energy and eclipses the natural joy of life. Barry Long shows how meditation helps you to master the mind that worries. He suggests exercises to reduce the predisposition to worry and to focus the attention on its triggers.
The first object of meditation is to become the master of your mind. Anyone who worries has obviously not achieved this, for the peculiar symptom of worry is that even when you observe its stupidity and futility and resolve to stop, you cannot. It is the mind - your master - that worries, not you.
But no one worries continuously. Worry comes in waves. So when you are worried, sit as usual, take some deep breaths, use your inner attention to feel the sensations in the body and observe what is happening. Try to isolate the first image that comes in; and hold it as long as possible. Then, after you have lost yourself in thought and recovered from it, backtrack if you can.
You will have to work hard at remaining conscious or present. The waves carrying the worrying thoughts will be very strong. You are likely to be doing a lot of huffing and puffing as the mind rebels; it wants to quit trying to be conscious and get on with the worry unimpeded. But meditation gives you the control to keep separating from the thought-line, pulling back to yourself – even though you soon end up identifying with the worry again.
To remember to separate is the thing. There is the worry, which is the thoughts; and there is you, the observer. You are not the same.
What counts is the number of times each minute, hour or day that you remember to separate; not how long you may think you hold each separation.
Do not get disheartened. It is difficult. But while you continue, even though you seem to fail so often, you are winning – gaining in consciousness.
Transforming Loss and Sorrow into Love
Worry always accompanies a sense of loss or defeat. If it accompanies an anticipated loss or defeat, it is fear. The loss will seem very personal but it will be observed to fall into one of these categories: loss of power, position, prestige, possessions, permanence (health) or a person. To lose any of these is to lose part of yourself – and it hurts.
The seeming magnitude of the loss is irrelevant. To some people the loss of their good name means more than the death of their child. Values vary with the individual. One thing that does not vary is the feeling of loss and the weight of the sorrow that follows.
Meditation slowly removes the feeling that you lose anything – and so it eventually rids you of all worry. And it transforms lingering sorrow into love.
Let me tell you how meditation does this.
Uncovering Your True Being
Meditation removes the false in you by allowing you to consciously see the false. When you consciously see the false in yourself you discard it. As anger, resentment, moodiness, vanity, guilt, cruelty, dishonesty, vindictiveness, insincerity and all the rest of these emotional reactions are false, they will begin to vanish once you observe them. Underneath the false – beneath the rubbish – is your true being. And in your true being is that wonderful feeling that everyone without exception longs for and seems to have lost consistent touch with – love.
Worry is false. But it is not good enough for you to just be told so, or to know it and not be able to stop it. You have to feel the pain of it. And you have to see it as false in yourself – in the midst of your worry, not afterwards. Everyone knows afterwards that worry is stupid, but they worry again. It doesn’t matter how much you want to believe that worry is false, or say you know that it is false, you’ll go on worrying. Like everything else false, worry is only overcome by understanding it in the moment that it is active, there, performing in you.
To understand anything you have to watch it work, examine it, and if possible get inside it; be there when it is born.
If you meditate regularly and earnestly you will find yourself separating from thoughts naturally. In the midst of worry there will be strange, still interludes. This separation is the unmistakable sign of progress.
Action negates worry
Worry arises out of self-interest. Nothing is wrong with self-interest. Without it we would be useless to anyone or anything and we would die. But worry is false self-interest because it contains no intention of action.
Genuine self-interest results in action – irrespective of whether the action is good or bad. False self-interest does not. Worry never contains the intention to act because it never has a genuine object. It is unconscious – deliberate self-delusion, aimless movement, all inside the head.
Here again you must beware of the mind’s trickery. The worried mind will try to make out that it’s exploring the possibilities of action. But it is not. You should observe for yourself that the moment you plan a genuine course of action to retrieve a position, you have to stop worrying.
Planned action requires aim. It demands a straight, cohesive thought-line of understood facts leading up to the action. You are too engaged in assembling the facts to worry; and later, too busy putting them into action. You reject impressions which are essentially hit-and-miss measurements. They are false – the stepping stones of worry. And because they are false they will not stand up to your conscious scrutiny.
The test for yourself is: Do I genuinely intend to act on the thought-line I am following? If not, give it up. Be honest, be strong.
The Vicious Circle of Worry
Observe that the self-delusion in worry gives your mind a vicious sideways twist. Instead of thinking straight, it tears around in a circular thought-line, always ending up back where it started – on loss, helplessness, or grief – and never on what can be done now.
Observe that if you can hold the first image in worry, you’re not able to go on worrying. You may still feel the loss or sorrow as a certain heaviness, like a black cloud in the background, but you will not have thought with it – a strange experience indeed for any man or woman used to the habit of lying awake worrying.
Obviously it is not easy to pin and hold the mind still like this while the emotions are disturbed. It is not achieved by a couple of efforts at meditating on worry. It comes from persistent practice – devotion to your aim.
You have various routines that excite your mind. Such as:
- reliving conversations you had today,
- thinking about last night‘s TV show,
- daydreaming about money, holidays, possessions and sex,
- mentally going over the events of the day when you’re lying in the bath or in bed at night.
Observe yourself performing these routines. Why am I indulging my mind like this?
See how fleeting and second-hand the pleasure of it is. See how rapacious the mind is. How it lusts for the past.
How much of my thinking is really necessary?
See that all this aimless mental activity wastes your vitality.
The times of deep worry, when the mind is desperate, are the times to use everything you have learned so far. Your meditation seems to fail you. You cannot stop the thoughts. Then remember this: With every attempt I gain in consciousness. And remember: There is the worry. And there is you. You are not the same.
Situation: you are walking along the street.
Some people have a tendency to read all the shop-signs and read the advertisements. Do you do it?
Do you inwardly name and label all the things around you?
If you do, observe how it places a screen between you and your experience.
And notice how much less you do it in the country, among natural things.
Man-made things are made by minds and make you think.
Test this for yourself. It may not be true.
Situation: you have a problem.
You’ve been thinking about it and got nowhere.
Now, get hold of the main thought; the one that keeps recurring. Fix your attention upon it.
Now ask yourself: How many times have I already thought about this?
Next, review the facts.
Now look to see if any action can be taken. Do I genuinely intend to act?
If there’s something you can do... Do it now.
If there’s nothing to be done... Why do I go on thinking about it?
If there are several possibilities, therefore uncertainty, therefore confusion...
What do I want? If you don’t know, get hold of the feeling of wanting something. It is a feeling somewhere in your body. Be patient. There’s nothing to be done at this moment. Except – give up the thought.
Increase the time you give each day to sitting in meditation.
Statements
If you can’t stop thinking in the good times, you’ll certainly find it hard in the bad times.
Meditation slowly removes the feeling that you lose anything – and so it eventually rids you of all worry.
Worry is only overcome by understanding it in the moment that it is active.
In your true being is that wonderful feeling that everyone without exception longs for and seems to have lost consistent touch with – love.
The moment you plan a genuine course of action to retrieve a position, you have to stop worrying.
If you can’t stop thinking in the good times, you’ll certainly find it hard in the bad times.
There is the worry, which is the thoughts; and there is you, the observer. You are not the same.
To understand worry you have to watch it work, examine it, and if possible get inside it; be there when it is born.
The Human Condition