The Hidden Source of Generalized Anxiety

Generalized anxiety is rooted in delusion and misunderstanding about reality. As a long sufferer of this condition it took me many years to realize this. No one tells you what is at the root, because people without chronic anxiety don’t care to know, and those of us who have experience with it are too busy fretting over nonsense to investigate it properly. 

At the deepest level, chronic, generalized anxiety is born out of discomfort with existence itself. The feeling of being uncomfortable and ill at ease in this body, in this world, at this point in time. The feeling of being spiritually homeless because this existence doesn’t feel like home. I think the most similar idea that pops up in common parlance is “being uncomfortable in one’s own skin.”

Being uncomfortable in one’s own skin is a poor way to live. It’s closely linked to negative self-conception and belief in one’s unworthiness. The more negative your self-conception, the more withdrawn you will be. The more withdrawn you become, the deeper your feeling of isolation will ingrain itself. Things can spiral quickly if you don’t bother to seek help. In my own case, help came in the form of meditation practice. Years of meditation helped me see reality for what it is: a game that I was giving entirely too much weight too.

If you were the master of the universe, you couldn’t be anxious. All that exists, the good and the bad is your work. You designed it and you’ve experienced it innumerable times. There’s nothing to be anxious about when you built the design stitch by stitch. There are no surprises. There’s nothing to be disgusted by. There’s no fretting over the opinions of others, because others are merely a reflection of you. Deep meditation led me to the conclusion that some quasi-solipsism is fundamentally true. Or at least not wrong. It’s a difficult thing to pin-down precisely what is true. All that matters is how closely it approximates to truth.

What makes anxiety delusional is that you (more specifically, the “you” behind your false self) are a direct link to all creation. To be anxious is to feel alienated from your own creation. Why be uncomfortable and fearful of a world  that is just a reflection of your own essence? Anxiety is entirely self-inflicted. This main seem obvious, but it’s only a misunderstanding of the external world that makes us fearful of it. 

The external world is an extension of yourself. Not your false self. Your real, higher self that you can discover in meditative states. You’re only anxious because of your over-identification with the false self. Identify with the higher self–and by extension–the whole of existence, and there won’t be any room for anxiety. It won’t make sense any longer in the face of this identity shift.

Reality is in a constant state of flux even if this change is imperceptible in any given moment. Every experience you’ve had in this life will be lost to time and space in short order. When you accept reality for what it is, anxiety is impossible. Anxious people project lies about reality in their mind’s eye and torture themselves with these lies for years on end. They believe they are lesser and the world is a hostile place out to harm them. They lack the stability to look at things for what they are. The world isn’t evil. It’s ambivalent to either good or evil and it’s up to you to carry forth your own morality.

Next time you experience deep anxiety ask yourself “Who or what is experiencing anxiety right now?” Am I really experiencing anxiety? Or is the false self I am misidentified with experiencing it? And if the false self is feeling it, why should I care?

With this question you enter alignment with the higher self. The higher self is never anxious because it’s not confined to this body or this existence. It’s never vulnerable, so it doesn’t fret needlessly. The longer you can sustain alignment with the higher self, the less anxiety will be an issue for you.

All experience is subjective and serves a purpose for you. Life isn’t supposed to be scary. Anxious people place too much importance on their own faults and feelings. Next time you feel anxious, don’t fight it. Pay it no mind.

Feel it. Recognize its borne out of attachment to the ego and the lower self, and move on. It’s not the real you who feels anxious. It’s the false you. This is an opportunity for you to distance yourself from the lower self.  By doing so, you align with God’s essence. Before you know it, the intensity and frequency and feeling of anxiousness will diminish greatly.