by Martin Petersen
Reiki is about being in a state of no anger, no worry, gratefulness, compassion and being true to one’s way or original nature. I’ve told myself countless times that I’m not a person who worries about the future because I have good confidence in my ability to navigate life. I have put faith in this thought and believed in its trueness. But I was wrong. By contemplating the precept of “do not worry” I have come to realize my own ignorance. For that reason, this essay will investigate the concept and depths of what “worrying” is and how it can show up in our lives in occluded ways.
What does it mean to worry? In Chinese medicine, worrying is associated with the quality of Dampness which creates sticky thoughts. When something sticks, it is hard to get rid of, just like our worries. As I’m writing these sentences, I become aware that a part of me is fearful if that statement is correct. If it’s true. If it’s precise enough. Whether I made a mistake. By observing my thoughts mindfully, I see, that my worrying thoughts has the quality of neurotic fear. This fear is called neurotic because I’m not in any real and immediate danger. It is a fear entirely based on imagined outcomes. If I make a mistake, it must mean I’m stupid. If I’m stupid you will not like me or reject me. This can very well be rooted in past experiences, but when I’m mindful about the here and now I can realize, that it is in fact nothing but thoughts and fantasies about the future. In fact, the whole concept of “I” can also be argued to be a fantasy, but that is a difficult subject for most people, and I will leave it for another day.
The future doesn’t exist, so by worrying, the only thing I’m really doing is projecting my energy, my lifeforce, into a fantasy and then reacting to the bodily and mental sensations which follow.
This fantasy about the future is central to worrying. You cannot really worry about the past, and if you try, you will only end up worrying about a fantasy of the past, and not the actual past. When I remember this, I become aware how much energy I’m spending on fantasies about the future. What will I do when… How do I achieve this… What measures should I take to… This is the mechanism of how I create suffering for myself, and it is all based on a fantasy. I’m not saying to never plan for the future, but we shouldn’t do it out of neurotic fear or a need to control.
So … I realized my own ignorance, which is great, however that is often not easy. Some realizations can come directly from contemplation but sometimes we also need a helping hand from the outside. One way to examine if we’re actually doing something, even though we are denying it, is by looking up the verb in a dictionary. If we look up “worry” we can see, it is defined as to “feel or cause to feel anxious or troubled about actual or potential problems”. Looking at synonyms for worry, we will discover many other words from our daily lives, which we might not realize is also forms of worrying: Fret, concerned, anxious, agonize, brood, dwell on, panic, fluster, stressed, concerning, taxing, troublesome, unsettling, dismaying, awkward, and many more.
If I was to add some more words to this list, just off my head, these would be excessive planning, controlling behaviour, excessive checking, perfectionism, insecurity, the need to compare, “knowing” what others think of me, almost any thought about the future.
Wrapping it all up and looking at it from a higher perspective, it seems that “worrying about potential problems” it is really all about excessive energy spend on thoughts about the future in combination with a misplaced faith in the trueness of these thoughts. We easily get caught up in our thoughts, they stick to us and weigh us down, but we must try to remember that these thoughts are not us. They are fantasies, and they are only the content of our mind, but not the mind itself.
For today only;
Do not anger
Do not worry
Be grateful
Be true to your way
Be compassionate to yourself and others
