Ram Dass’s 3-Part Guide to Help Navigate Anxiety
Living in the 21st Century offers many things to be anxious about.
Anxiety as Dis-illusionment
I could tick off things that make me anxious on my fingers.
I feel anxiety about my daughters, living on opposite coasts, too far away from me and my ability to help in a crisis. I have had more than the occasional panic attack thinking about how little we are doing to mitigate climate change. Then comes the dread—a cousin of anxiety—when I witness the increasing frequency and intensity of “once in a lifetime” storms.
Reading the news these days, I feel anxious about the possible collapse of democracy, norms, and institutions. But I felt that same heightened fear when my dog ate a dead mouse before I could stop him, and all I could think was, “What if that mouse had been poisoned?” And every time I get on a flight, I know I will be white-knuckling through most of it, especially if we hit turbulence.
The what ifs—those are what get me. I have always credited myself with a powerful imagination. It’s a wonderful trait to have for creative writing, or for sinking deep into a sci-fi or fantasy novel. It isn’t so great when my imagination gets to work conjuring up all kinds of nightmare situations.
Anxiety has many definitions and descriptions. For me, it is the realization that I have no control over the current circumstances. That control is truly an illusion.
The Way to Radical Acceptance and Peace
Probably like you, I’ve received all kinds of advice and tips throughout my life to manage my anxiety. A friend used to say that fearful thinking was like wishing for what you don’t want. My husband often advises me to focus on my “circle of control” and put everything else into the “circle of concern.”
Valuable advice, surely. But it has never really helped. Because both of those messages still allow me to retain my illusion of control. I suppose that’s the point of most anxiety advice in the end.
Personally, though, I’d rather learn to live with the truth that I don’t have control over much at all. And so rather than fighting to find it or get it or hold onto it, I can surrender it. In that surrender, I find peace. I find acceptance.
Acceptance is not acquiescence or passivity. Quite the opposite. When we’re stuck in an anxiety loop, it is hard to see outside of ourselves. However, accepting my lack of control softens the grip of anxiety and allows me to engage despite my fears.
Ram Dass Wisdom
Ram Dass understood this paradox of peaceful engagement when he said:
“I’ve been asked many times whether this is the Aquarian age and it’s all just beginning, or if this is Armageddon and this is the end, and I have to admit I don’t know. Either way, my work remains the same.
My work is to quiet my mind and open my heart and relieve suffering wherever I find it.”
Instead of pretending we have control or trying to “manifest” our way out of anxiety, his words offer three practical steps we can take when it strikes.
1) Quiet our minds.
This is no easy task, as anyone who has sat for meditation knows. And for a busy brain like mine, it is even more challenging. But here is what we are often missing in this practice. We believe that quieting our minds is a kind of silencing. Like hushing a child. But to quiet the mind is not a repression. It is not to be forced. Rather, a quiet mind is a result of a practice of observing our thoughts, watching them come and go without fear or favor, and paying attention to the small, empty spaces in between thoughts. With time, those empty spaces naturally widen. And we rest in that widened space.
2) Open our hearts.
Anxiety results in a closing sensation within the body and mind. We seek to protect, to safeguard, to retreat. The practice of compassion— of reaching out — is never more needed than in anxious times. Recognize that you are not the first to feel this way; you will not be the last. Reach out, either in real life or in your imagination, to those who have been/are/will be in your shoes. Use your anxiety to connect to the larger realm of humanity.
3) Relieve suffering wherever we find it.
It doesn’t matter how much of a mess we might think we are. Or how little control over the future we have. We can all do something each day to help someone who is struggling. By validating their pain, loneliness, or fear, we normalize it for them and ourselves. That is how healing begins.
I offer a bi-weekly, online compassion meditation session to help with all of these things! Register here.
Freedom from Illusion
The world is changing rapidly right now. Old mantras and approaches to managing anxiety may not serve us any longer. Pretending we have control over things we do not forces us to constantly reinforce the illusion.
But if we choose freedom over maintaining the illusion of control, then we can work and live our lives fully—with or without anxiety.
