26: Anxiety Tools With Dr. Bob Rosenthal

Dr. Robert Rosenthal is with us again to talk about anxiety, coronavirus, and A Course in Miracles. Dr. Bob is a psychiatrist, co-president of the Foundation for Inner Peace, and author of many course-related books.

Transcript

This is From Anxiety to Love Radio,

The show about undoing anxiety through a course in miracles and other pathways of love.

Gain insights and tools to deepen your awareness of the peace that already exists within you.

I'm your host Corinne Zupko,

Author of the award-winning and best-selling book From Anxiety to Love.

Hey family,

On today's episode I've invited back Dr.

Bob Rosenthal.

He is the co-president of the Foundation for Inner Peace.

His latest book is called From Loving One to One Love,

Transforming Relationships Through a Course in Miracles.

You can actually hear our interview about this book and about special versus holy relationships on episode number 24.

Dr.

Bob is also a psychiatrist.

When I had him on episode 24,

I knew I wanted to have him back on the show to talk about anxiety.

Now because of everything going on with coronavirus,

I thought it would be helpful to have him on the show sooner rather than later.

So here we are again together.

At the end of the episode,

I'll share my takeaways as always,

Which you can find on the show notes page at fromanxietytolove.

Com forward slash 26.

Let's tune in to our conversation.

Welcome back to the show,

Dr.

Bob.

I'm so happy to have you here.

Thank you,

Corinne.

It is delightful to be here,

No matter what seems to be going on in the outside world.

Right?

We were joking around before we started recording that had we recorded this talk a week ago,

Like we had planned,

We'd be having a much different conversation.

And in light of everything happening with coronavirus and Dr.

Bob and I wanting to pull together again to talk about anxiety,

Let's do that.

Let's talk about all of it.

So where would you like to begin?

I can begin anywhere you can begin.

Well,

All right,

Let me jump in.

So I definitely have two different hats that I would wear or perspectives on this one as a psychiatrist,

Psychotherapist with,

You know,

30 plus years of clinical experience.

The other as a course in miracle student with 44 plus years of nonclinical but spiritual experience.

So combining those two makes for a very interesting mix.

Let's start with the psychiatrist because the way I always understood and worked with anxiety and believe me there,

You know,

It was probably the most common thing that I would work with in one way,

Shape,

Form or another is that I always thought about anxiety as a fear,

Whether rational or irrational,

About something in the future that we are afraid might happen.

Fear on the other hand is a more felt ongoing,

You know,

It seems to be justified.

So had we done this talk a week ago,

We might have talked about anxiety and fears about what might happen or fears in our own life.

I mean,

Whereas now people really are,

You know,

In the midst of this coronavirus pandemic,

There are real front and center daily issues that people are confronting.

I mean,

You know,

Life and death stuff like,

Will I have enough toilet paper to make it through the day?

Obviously I'm smiling as I say that because therein lies the difference between fear and anxiety.

Fear comes up when we identify with the physical body and believe that its survival is threatened in one way,

Shape,

Form or another.

You know,

I suspect had we all been living a thousand years ago,

That would have been a much more immediate fear.

Will I have enough to eat?

Will I have enough to drink?

Will the people I love have that?

Will I be attacked?

Will I be murdered?

And,

You know,

We could go on and on with that list.

We haven't really had to face a lot of that in this day and age.

And so I think when something like a pandemic comes up,

We almost reactivate those very,

Very old survival roots about the body.

Yet if we dig down,

This is a serious issue.

But I think that where it impacts us most interestingly is not just health,

Because we all know that,

You know,

If you're under age 60,

You're probably okay even if you catch this.

And,

You know,

Nobody wants to think,

Well,

My God,

You know,

We're just complacent with people dying.

But the fact is,

To the extent that we believe we're a body,

We are going to die.

And so is everyone else.

And so is everyone we love.

And so is everyone we can't stand.

But this is the craziness of the ego's world.

And this is what,

Of course,

In miracles is here to help us escape from this prison of identification with a physical body.

So back to where we are now.

There is fear,

But there is also a great deal of anxiety.

And the anxiety,

As I was just saying,

Isn't only about health.

It goes to the heart of our equating our financial status,

How much money we have,

Our jobs with survival.

Because the equation goes,

Oh,

My gosh,

If I'm not working,

I won't get a paycheck.

And if I don't get a paycheck,

I won't be able to buy food or keep the heat on.

And if I can't do that,

Now my body really is in peril and I might die.

Ultimately,

We can distill all fears down to the primary ego based fear of death,

Which,

Of course,

In miracles tells us has underneath it an attraction to death.

The ego likes the idea of death.

It won't tell you that,

But it likes it because it proves that you're not an eternal being of love,

That you really can overcome God.

It's almost like poking your finger in the eye of God and tweaking your nose and going,

Nah,

Nah,

You can't keep me alive.

I'm going to die.

But again,

That's the body.

So we're in this interesting time where we're afraid for our physical health and we're afraid for our financial well-being.

And as we've increasingly become a world where people have 401ks or have invested in the stock market,

The carnage that has gone on,

I think,

Has probably been very terrifying for a lot of people.

Before I go further,

Let me just pause there,

Corinne,

And ask if you have any thoughts,

Questions,

Or whether I should continue.

So I do just want to highlight a couple of points that you just made.

You said something to the effect of,

To the extent that we believe that we're a body is to the same extent that we believe in death.

And I feel like that is just a really important point to draw out because this is where looking at the underlying beliefs,

Exhuming them and turning them over to Holy Spirit is really helpful for me to look at what's really going on.

You're saying the issues,

The fears,

The things that are happening right now with health fears and financial fears are real,

But we can look deeper than that and look at that fear of death.

And then deeper than that,

The other thing I wanted to highlight that you just said is the attraction to death.

That is not something that is on most of our,

The tops of our minds right now.

And that is another deeper teaching from the course that I feel like is really helpful that as we look at that,

And again,

Exhume that,

That can be something that is handed over as well.

So did I get all that right?

Yes,

Absolutely.

And just in terms of,

You know,

Any of our listeners who are thinking,

Well,

I'm not attracted to death.

I,

I'm hard pressed to know of too many people who haven't at one point or another considered their death,

Bought life insurance,

Worried about what would happen to their,

Their partners or their children.

Were they to die?

And I'm not talking about patients.

I'm talking about family members.

I'm talking about friends.

So there is this ever present shadow of,

Of death and the impermanence of it all.

That is a constant feature of life in a body in the egos world.

And how is it that we're attracted to that?

Because in it,

And I'm just going to jump in here.

Is it because how I would answer that question if I was asked that question,

We're attracted to death because death establishes this as real and like you just said,

Nah nah nah to God,

We actually can die.

Is that is that correct?

Yeah.

Let's really parse our words carefully.

Who is the we that is attracted to death?

It's the we that has identified with the ego and the body.

And that does believe,

As the Course says in a number of places,

And I'm paraphrasing,

Yeah,

It's a real tough,

Sucky world.

Squeeze whatever you can get out of it because you ain't going to be here long.

And you know,

And that's your lot in life.

So if that is our we,

Then there's an attraction to death because it feels like such an intrinsic aspect of,

Of life.

I mean,

What an irony that,

You know,

Life is about death.

I mean,

I know in Judaism,

When we go into a temple on Yom Kippur,

The Day of Atonement,

You know,

One of the things they say is,

Yes,

Life is always in the shadow of death and at any instant you could die.

And,

You know,

That is somewhat true.

But again,

Who is the we who is both fearful of and attracted to death?

There was a wonderful book in the 1980s.

It's not a Course related book.

It was a Buddhist related book by Stephen Levine,

Who worked for decades with death and dying.

Just a beautiful teacher.

And the title of the book was Who Dies?

And it was really all about peeling away this identity,

This false identity,

This self concept that we build for ourselves in order to discover that beneath it,

Shimmering forever,

Is an awareness of beingness that is eternal,

That cannot die,

And that has nothing to do with your personality,

With your life history,

With how your body looks,

Or how it functions.

You know,

It's just there for everyone.

But it's very hard to experience that while we still hold this other identification and get so caught up in it.

And we all do.

In the morning,

I do my course lessons,

Or I'll read a section,

I'll go into deep peace.

And then it's like,

Okay,

What do I have to do today?

I'll just add one thing that I heard Nook Sanchez say that I found to be so helpful.

That false identity,

That false self is the self who fears.

So right now,

That false self is smack in our faces.

We're able to see it,

You know,

It's being triggered left and right.

And so I keep working with,

Okay,

You know,

This is the false self arising that which fears and,

And being willing to turn that over to Holy Spirit.

And that's the gift of it.

I mean,

In,

You know,

Lesson,

I think it's 193,

Where it says,

All things are lessons God would have me learn.

People ask frequently,

Well,

How is murder a lesson or this or that?

Everything seemingly negative surfaces a lesson,

A potential source of fear,

A little hidden nook of specialness,

A grievance that we didn't know was there,

Which once we're aware of it,

As you said earlier,

Corinne,

Yeah,

Now we release it to the Holy Spirit in the recognition that it's not really us.

It's not part of our self constant.

It's not really part of our capital S self.

That's great.

So where would you like to continue?

I hopped in before.

Yeah,

So I just to put it in context,

What what's happening now with coronavirus,

We haven't lived through this particular thing before,

But it's really important to remember that the ego's world is thoroughly insane and contains both personal tragedies and losses,

Which are inevitable for all of us at a personal level.

But it's also contained collective horrors over and over and over.

I mean,

We could recite them.

The obvious ones would be the Holocaust or various genocides where,

You know,

You could wake up in the morning and not know if you were going to be killed that day.

I mean,

Truly,

In the world of diseases,

There are two examples that come to mind.

There was the Spanish flu,

Which killed upwards of 30 million people right on the heels of World War One.

So a country like England,

Which lost so many men in the war,

Then had the additional,

You know,

A pandemic that wiped people out.

There was,

I think I mentioned the bubonic plague earlier that changed society.

We have gone through these these mass events before,

Droughts,

Famines.

The ego's world is beautiful when we see it through the eyes of Christ.

We bring the light of oneness,

The light of love to it.

And when we have those mystical experiences or stand and look out over the Grand Canyon or Bryce or whatever,

That's what we're bringing to it.

It's not the outside that brings it to us.

It's our inner world that lights up.

But if you really look at what life here is like and has been like,

It hasn't been a picnic.

And if anything,

We've been living in some of the best times in history where not only are our lives safe and food and water guaranteed,

But we have access to spiritual tools like A Course in Miracles and all these amazing teachers,

You know.

We've we've I was speaking with Holly Holden,

Another course teacher,

Earlier,

And she was saying how,

You know,

How entitled we've been that we have access to food.

You know,

I mean,

Many of us who have privilege,

You know,

Have easy access to these things,

Not everyone for sure.

But back for the people around the time of World War Two,

You know,

They had the perspective like for World War Two,

There was food rationing,

They had to really come together to survive.

And those folks are no longer with us.

So it seems like we're in this,

And it's brand new.

But to your point,

This has happened before.

And Holly and I were just,

You know,

Kind of laughing that those people who survived World War Two,

You know,

Would look at the next generations as like,

Oh,

They're so entitled,

They have no idea.

And now here,

You know,

We're faced with this pandemic and that entitlement,

That sense of safety that we seem to find in the world is being shaken to its core,

Because the safety cannot be found in the world.

So I really appreciate your point.

The safety can't be found in the world.

And I would add,

If you look at it historically,

This is nothing compared to a war.

It's a war on one's own soil.

You know,

This is nothing compared to a genocide.

You know,

Most of the fear is due to our own inner minds.

So I actually feel like,

Like we've already done so much work,

Particularly as course students,

That the lessons are there,

But they are in bite sized chunks.

They're in pieces that we really can learn from.

Because,

You know,

When you're really in deep fear,

You can't learn.

You are too focused on survival.

Well,

You can,

As you did with your panics,

Corinne,

Panic attacks,

But it's more difficult.

Whereas this one,

It's,

You know,

There's a surreal quality to it.

Like,

All right,

There is this bug out there and it's,

It's,

It's,

It's not a fun one.

It's going to kill people.

But I can still go to my grocery store and other than toilet paper and hand sanitizer,

I can still pretty get,

Pretty much get whatever I need.

I had the same experience in my food store.

I felt moved to go late at night because my food store is open till midnight.

I had the whole store to myself.

There were a few select things,

Like you said,

That weren't there,

Like toilet paper and cleaner,

But I didn't need any of that.

And everything else was stocked.

But the one thing it was,

It was kind of interesting.

It was almost like a little sign,

I guess.

I wanted dry black beans and there were no beans.

There was no rice,

You know,

That,

That was all gone too.

And I was in the produce section and I turned around and my eyes rested down on a shelf that was below a display.

And there all by itself was a bag of dry black beans.

And I just smiled that like,

Even now in the midst of this chaos and this fear,

We can ask for help.

We can ask for guidance.

We need to ask for help and ask for guidance.

And to your point about Christ's vision,

You know,

When we look out on the Grand Canyon and it looks so beautiful,

We're looking out with,

It's not the form,

But it's,

It's what's behind it that's beautiful.

Let's practice that now still with everything and everyone that we meet.

Yes.

And let's demonstrate that in the way that you just did.

You know,

Miracles happen all the time in every place.

They're not limited by circumstances.

There is no order of difficulty in miracles.

And I I've had experiences like that too,

Where,

You know,

I remember once walking into the Princeton miracles group and I always brought a pen with me to take notes or,

You know,

Reference one section of the text to another.

And I realized,

Ah,

I didn't bring a pen with me.

Oh,

Darn.

And I sort of,

You know,

Turned it over and as I'm walking in,

It was in a unity church with classrooms.

I look over and there's a little pen sitting right there and I pick it up.

I used it for the group on my way out.

I put it back where I found it and it was just like,

Thank you spirit.

We get these things.

And,

You know,

In a time like this,

That's where the trust and reassurance can really come from,

That we're not operating under normal laws of cause and effect.

I am under no laws but gods,

Not the laws of pandemics or illness or food supply or financial markets.

You know,

I am under no laws but gods.

Beautiful.

Thank you.

So I guess my next question then with what is coming up and what is being exposed,

You know,

What's bubbling up for a lot of people right now is a lot of fear,

A lot of anxiety.

And so I'm wondering if we can talk about ways that people might be able to reduce that fear,

Some course ideas,

Maybe some ideas that you found just in your experience as psychiatrist in working with patients with anxiety.

What advice do you have for us?

So I think the first thing that comes to my mind is that it's in the nature of negative emotions,

Difficult emotions to be self-reinforcing.

What do I mean by that?

If you're angry,

You're likely to see and experience things that make you more angry.

You're likely to behave in ways that will provoke anger in others and therefore increase it in yourself.

If you're feeling embarrassed or ashamed,

You know,

You slink away and people notice this and then you feel even more embarrassed that you even had the embarrassment in the first place.

And this is true of fear as well.

So I think the first thing we have to do is to take an honest look,

Not try to deny what's there,

But just to make a very neutral space for it.

Some people would call this embodying the witness or the observer and just acknowledging,

Yeah,

I'm in fear.

There's fear here.

And it's OK to have fear.

And I don't have to be adding to that fear by how to put it,

Coloring it in,

Filling in the blanks with fearful scenarios that that fear is driving.

In some respects,

It's more effective for this kind of a thing to say,

Yeah,

Here's fear.

I am feeling fear.

And let me expand the space around the fear.

My arms are out here so that I can hold it and see it.

And ultimately I am embracing it the way I might a tiny,

Frightened child,

Rather than letting the fear drive you.

And then the fear takes you to,

Oh,

My God,

What if the grocery store never has toilet paper or were bread?

What if we run out of essential medication?

What if,

What if,

What if?

One of the core things about anxiety and this would be the second take home that I would give people,

And I used it all the time in my practice,

Is that anxiety almost always involves a what if proposition.

You may not be aware of it,

But if you think it through,

There is almost always a what if dot,

Dot,

Dot,

Fill in the blank.

And ultimately,

As I said earlier,

If you distill that down,

It's going to be what if I die?

What if this kills me?

There is a very,

Very simple antidote to that type of egoic thought.

And it's,

It's,

I find it surprisingly powerful.

I use it myself.

And the antidote is just to immediately,

When you realize you're caught in a what if,

Is well,

What if it doesn't?

It's,

It's,

It's simply acknowledging and honoring the opposite pole because the what if selectively focuses on some worst case scenario.

That's the nature of it.

In,

In professional therapy,

We call it a catastrophization.

You know,

You're,

You're looking at the worst case and you're making it even worse still with your fear.

So when you find the what if,

You know,

Go to,

Well,

What if it doesn't?

And there's an immediate relaxing of the body just for saying it that way because you are acknowledging that there is another option,

That there is another choice.

Does that,

Is that clear?

I love it.

Yes.

I was just like kind of smiling to myself like,

Oh yeah,

I know those what ifs very well.

And I love your simple add on of two different words that change the meaning of what if to what if it doesn't.

That's just so helpful.

I mean,

Another way to look at it is what if I'm wrong?

And you know,

In,

In the rules for decision section at the beginning of chapter 30 of the text,

You know,

It talks about starting our day in the right way and you know,

Making all decisions with the Holy Spirit.

But you know,

If you can't do that and you get off on the wrong track,

At some point it essentially leads us to,

Well,

You know,

Would I rather be right in my,

My obstinance or would I rather be peaceful and happy?

So another way to think about the thought is what if I'm wrong?

And this leads to what I believe is the most powerful or one of the most powerful course applications that we can use.

And that is that from our limited egoic perspective,

We don't know jack poop.

We don't know anything because we judge everything based on our limited experience or the experience that we have been told about from others,

Whether people we know,

Family members,

Or now what we hear on TV or see on Facebook.

And these are really lousy,

Unreliable sources of information.

Even in the best of circumstances,

Even if you,

I don't know,

Sat at a nerve center at the,

You know,

NSA or,

You know,

One of those places that gathers huge chunks of information and digests them,

You're still working in the egos world where,

You know,

Everything is about perception.

Everything is about the interpretation of a perception.

And the only way we can interpret what we see,

Hear,

And feel is based on what we saw,

Heard,

And felt at some point in the past.

I used to tell my patients,

Well,

You know,

In the caveman days,

You walk by that cave and a saber tooth tiger came charging out and killed your family and you barely managed to escape with your life.

And now there's a message in your head that says caves are bad,

Caves are dangerous.

Don't go near a cave.

Every time you walk by a cave,

You expect a saber tooth tiger to come out.

I actually experienced this one firsthand in my family because my younger sister was attacked by a very vicious dog when she was young.

It bit her pretty badly and she developed a fear of dogs quite understandably.

But what's interesting,

And this brings us back to that selective perception,

Her mind processed it as all dogs are dangerous.

That's a very broad brush.

She should have processed it,

And we're not talking Course in Miracles here,

We're talking psychology.

She should have processed it.

Growling,

Barking dogs with fangs bared that are lunging at me are really dangerous.

Other dogs are not because a little dog running up to you to jump on you with its tongue lolling and you know just wanting to lick you and love you is obviously not dangerous,

But the signals get confused.

So we don't know how to make judgments.

And in a time like this,

We are making judgments and we're turning on the news and we're trying to absorb as much information as we can.

And this is what caused the panic.

You know,

Somebody said,

Oh,

Hong Kong ran out of toilet paper and immediately people started going to buy toilet paper.

And when people saw that,

Ooh,

That person's got a shopping cart full of toilet paper,

I'd better get mine.

Now we're in a full-fledged fear panic and it has not stopped.

So the best way to pull out of selective perception is to realize that all of our perceptions are selective and that all of our judgments are severely limited.

And you know,

My little course prayer from page 298 of the Foundation for Inner Peace,

Third edition and second goes something like,

I do not know what anything including this means and so I do not know how to respond to it and I will not use my own past learning as the light to guide me now.

That third line is really important.

As I said,

Past learning is all we've got.

So what do you use instead?

You give it to the Holy Spirit and you say,

I don't know what this means.

I don't know what it's for.

I don't know where it's taking us and that's not my job.

Above my pay grade.

My goal,

And I think this is a place we want to get to today Corinne,

My goal is to be a teacher of peace and to be a teacher of peace I have to learn peace and practice peace.

And when I do that I will see peace out in the world.

I will seek peace in myself,

S-E-E-K,

And I will seed peace,

S-E-E-D,

Among my brothers and sisters out there.

Because it's much harder to be anxious around someone who's just very very peaceful.

You know,

I,

My mother was talking to some friends,

We're in California,

Corinne is in New Jersey,

I used to live in New Jersey,

And my mother was talking to some friends in New Jersey who said it's really getting kind of nasty and scary here.

You know,

People are getting kind of ugly and I thought,

How interesting.

I really have not encountered that out here.

You know,

We're still taking walks,

We're smiling at each other,

Even at the grocery store people are behaving and I think that there's just a fundamental greater level of calmness in some places than in others and in times like this that amplifies.

But we want to see peace,

I guess I should change the order,

Seek peace,

See peace,

And then seed peace.

Seek,

See,

And then seed.

I love that.

I love that.

You know,

That reminds me,

It also,

That that may be true that there are some areas that are maybe more prone to mass fear than,

Or unkindness than others,

And yet it always comes down to us and our work.

I was going for a walk the other day on a loop that I enjoy and I felt moved to just smile at people while I was walking.

And at first,

I guess I did notice that everybody was very withdrawn and kind of just staying in their own little space,

But that inspiration just to smile,

That change in our environment,

If we are in a place where it seems like,

You know,

Everyone is very fearful and getting really nasty,

Sometimes all it takes to shift that is that love,

That miracle that wants to pour through you via a smile to somebody else.

So that's just a reminder for everyone that everywhere that we go,

We can be that light.

Yeah,

You were seeing peace and seeding it.

Yeah.

I mean,

And if we don't do it,

Then who does?

That's a key point.

And I really want to emphasize that for a moment because if we don't,

Who does?

And so for all of us listening,

If we're feeling really anxious and really scared,

Remember that that love is in you and it wants to come out.

And so if it's not you,

Who is it going to be?

And I know for me,

When I,

In those experiences where I have found myself just expressing love and it gets reflected back to me,

It makes me feel 20 times better.

Like there's that cyclical peace with miracles,

With extending love.

And so if not us,

Who?

So thank you for saying that because I think that's really important.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you know,

One of two things will happen.

Either the person you've extended love to will respond with love and you're both better off or they won't.

And you'll just realize that that's their call for help and healing as per the beginning of chapter 12 of the text.

And you have at some level helped provide that.

I think that one of the most important teachings of A Course in Miracles that isn't necessarily echoed by a lot of other spiritual systems is what it calls,

Well is this idea that what you do in your mind really does have impacts on other minds.

I mean,

In the miracle principles,

It tells us that we may not know or see or experience the effect of a miracle,

That Jesus is in charge of miracles and will take them to whatever mind is most ready for them and can use them most appropriately.

Therefore,

You don't have to go up to people on the street necessarily and give them something to make them smile.

Although I think this is a great time to send out funny little memes and gifs and things that'll make us laugh and YouTube videos that just cause a chuckle.

If you embody that sense of peacefulness,

I want the peace of God,

You know,

Above anything else,

That's what you want.

You are changing minds,

You are changing the world.

You don't need to see the effect of that.

That's ego going,

Well,

I don't believe it unless,

You know,

Unless I see someone immediately drop their fear and,

You know,

And their aura expands by 30 feet and they just start levitating.

No,

You know,

We do it first for ourselves because we still conceptualize ourself as a small S self,

But we also do it for our largest self,

The son of God,

Which includes everyone.

So when you do it,

You do bring it everywhere.

And that is just so fundamentally important.

Yeah,

It really is.

I'm wondering if you have any other tools or tips that come to mind for people who are really looking to find a way out of the high level of fear that they might be experiencing right now.

We already talked your two takeaways,

Which I think are just so helpful.

Taking that honest look,

You know,

Not denying anything,

Making that neutral space around the feeling and also what if it doesn't instead of what if,

What if it doesn't.

I'm wondering,

Do you have any other thoughts to share about how people might bring their fear levels down?

So in a very weird way,

If you are purely in the present without a past to make judgments about a future that hasn't happened,

It's not possible to experience fear.

You know,

Fear always involves some level of evaluation of danger,

Threat,

Etc.

So,

You know,

And I mean,

This mirrors Eckhart Tolle to a large degree,

But what do you do to stay present?

So what one of my old mentors used to advocate is he would say,

Okay,

Close your eyes.

Now open them.

What exactly is in front of you?

You know,

Don't add anything.

I mean,

It was really a way of kind of anchoring in the visual present.

He was not a course in miracles teacher.

What he was trying to do was just say,

What is in front of you now?

You know,

I have a computer,

I have a glass of water,

I have a room full of books,

I have some comfortable chairs.

There is nothing in front of me right now that is worthy of provoking fear.

To get to the fear,

I have to start going in other places.

So that's helpful.

I like to add to it though,

Let me close my eyes and take a breath and if possible,

Let me,

You know,

Do abdominal breathing.

Let me make sure my diaphragm is expanding so that,

That,

That breath gets all the way down.

And then let me visualize that I'm,

I'm breathing in a sense of peacefulness.

I don't like relaxation as much as peace,

Especially if you're a course student because peace goes so much deeper.

So anything that like that,

That brings you back to the present moment will,

Will be helpful.

Now it's tough because as I said earlier,

You know,

You can be in the midst of a mystical moment and then the ego comes in and whispers,

Yeah,

But you know,

What are you going to have for dinner tonight?

Or is your mom okay?

You know,

That's the nature of the ego.

I always,

I mean,

Course groups like to characterize the ego as a nightmare factory.

It just manufactures these things one after another after another and tells you be afraid,

Be very afraid.

So I think staying in the present,

You know,

Neutralizing what if thoughts realizing that we don't know anything.

And then the other one that I go to is lesson 194,

I placed the future in the hands of God.

For me,

This is extremely reassuring because it absolves me of all responsibility.

It allows me just to sink deeper to trust and to begin to develop my sense of trust.

And there's one particular line in there that,

That I actually want to read.

You know what?

I'm going to read the whole darn paragraph.

Yeah.

So this is paragraph eight in lesson 194.

Place then your future in the hands of God.

For thus you call the memory of him to come again,

Replacing all your thoughts of sin and evil with the truth of love.

Thank you.

The world could fail to gain thereby and every living creature not respond with healed perception.

And then here's the line I want to emphasize.

Who entrusts himself to God has also placed the world within the hands to which he has himself appealed for comfort and security.

He lays aside the sick illusions of the world along with his and offers peace to both.

So that's a very powerful teaching because it tells us that yes,

We ask God to replace all our thoughts of sin and evil,

Which includes anxiety and fear of course,

And that if we entrust ourselves,

Our own lives to God,

We're also placing the whole world in his hands and that every living thing benefits from that.

I don't know.

I can't think of a more powerful teaching.

I agree.

And as you were reading that I had such gratitude swell up in my heart for the course.

I feel like wasn't there a piece about how Helen was receiving the course before she was actually ready and she got the sense that it was because there was this speed up happening.

It was needed.

And I feel like,

Here we go.

Like that,

You know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That the course could establish itself,

You know,

45 years before we really hit the difficult stuff.

Yeah.

And so I just feel such an incredible sense of gratitude for the course,

For the work that you do,

For the fact that we have these tools available to us now.

And literally I feel like our pathway,

A spiritual students has gone from a nice wide road down to a tight rope,

Meaning like it's time to focus.

Like it's time to really do the lesson,

Not just read it and feel good and put it down and go back to what you were doing.

We can't get away from what's happening in the world right now.

Nobody in the world can.

And so the,

That can be a motivator for those of us who are doing this work to really do it and not just hold it as this nice thing that I do sometimes that makes me feel good.

But that literally,

Literally this is about healing the sunchip.

Yeah.

Well,

You know,

The feedback loops get sort of tighter and more immediate.

If you succumb to fear,

You're going to feel that fear,

You know,

In spades.

If you practice peace,

As we said earlier,

Seek,

See and seed peace,

That feedback loop will,

Will also happen.

And yeah,

You're right.

Helen,

The way they put it was there was a celestial speed up and from Helen's visions that came before the course in the interval between where Bill said to her,

There must be a better way.

And she said,

I'll help you find it.

And the actual dictating of the course,

She had all of these visions and they had some incredibly profound experiences,

Which are recorded in a number of books.

But the sort of the,

The message and this,

This is more in the world of form and duality,

Of course,

But it was that Helen wasn't completely ready that,

That,

You know,

My sense is she probably would have had another lifetime if you believe such to come back and really,

You know,

Do this.

But she was pressed into service because of this celestial speed up.

The world really needed this.

And that's probably why she had so much resistance at the beginning and such an inability to practice it at the end.

I mean,

That could be a whole nother,

You know,

Talk as well.

Sort of confusing what the scribes had to go through and what their path was with where we are.

But I agree with you,

Corinne,

It's,

It's just so amazing that,

Yeah,

We have this,

You know,

Millions of people have the books,

Have the audio,

You know,

We have this very clear lit,

Lit up path for us to follow if we choose to.

And the beauty is if we deviate,

We choose once again,

You know,

There,

There is no sin,

There's no permanence to the ego,

You always get another chance.

Yes,

We do.

Yes,

We do.

I feel like that's a great note to end on.

Do you have any final words that you'd like to share?

Um,

You know,

Be at peace,

You know,

You,

You,

We,

We are the teachers of peace.

And I want to come back to,

You know,

If we don't do it,

Who will,

And to see this whole episode we're going through and,

You know,

It could go on a while.

It might not.

I don't know.

That's,

That's,

You know,

We,

I placed the future in the hands of God to see the whole thing as an opportunity to perhaps bring people together with a greater sense of love.

Um,

You know,

We don't know the path.

It might be that that's something like,

You know,

Coronavirus turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to the world.

Very quickly,

I'll just add,

You know,

When the bubonic plague hit Europe in 1348 through 1353,

Five years,

It ended the system of,

Of feudal,

You know,

Lords and serfs because it killed so many people that one ruling class couldn't Lord it over another.

Um,

That was a good thing.

It eventually opened the door to the Renaissance and people being more equal and you know,

All of that still within the world of form,

But we don't know the path forward.

And so our goal is whatever within us is exposed as fearful,

Special,

Um,

You know,

Et cetera.

That's what's in front of us to heal.

We're the,

We're the ones,

Nobody else could do it.

And our separation from each other via imaginary lines of countries,

Those have dissolved.

We're all facing the same thing.

So my hope is that we're going,

People who have not acknowledged that before or seen our shared humanity,

You know,

That we're going to have a big,

A big opening,

A big spiritual awakening,

Just like my first panic attack opened me up to a spiritual pathway.

The world is having a collective panic attack.

And my hope is that on a world level,

I know this is still informed,

But that there's a shift in consciousness because of what is happening right now.

So that's beautiful.

And I agree completely.

Oh,

Thank you.

Thank you,

Dr.

Bob for being here.

It was so great that we could connect again over this and I'm just,

I'm so grateful for you and the foundation for inner peace and for everything that you do.

Thank you so much.

Thank you,

Karen.

I appreciate all you're doing here as well.

I just love Dr.

Bob.

Quick,

Funny story for you.

When I first met him in person for the first time,

It was at his going away party.

He was moving with his wife from New Jersey out to California so he could take on his role with the foundation for inner peace.

I told him that I had big plans for him,

Only I couldn't tell him what those plans were.

And I remember him laughing.

I don't know what he was thinking.

I actually should have asked him,

But at that time I was still working on From Anxiety to Love.

I did not yet have a book deal and I knew however that I wanted him to write the forward.

I knew he just had to do it.

So I was so happy that he agreed.

That's my random story for you.

So let's go ahead and dive into my takeaways.

These takeaways mirror what Dr.

Bob shared in this episode.

Number one,

Acknowledge your fear when it arises.

I love how Dr.

Bob spoke about creating space around the fear,

So making a neutral space for it and being a witness to it.

Number two,

When you get caught in the what-ifs,

And we do this all the time,

What if this is going to happen?

What if that is going to happen?

When you say that,

Catch yourself and say instead,

What if it doesn't?

This is such a fabulous way to pull yourself out of catastrophic thinking and we know that that catastrophic thinking can absolutely hijack our peace of mind.

Number three,

Stay in the present as best you can.

Fear is usually about the future.

It isn't in the now.

So take a break from the news,

Come back to noticing what is in the space around you in the here and now.

So come back to the present as best you can.

And number four,

If we don't,

Who does?

I love this question.

So love is in you and it wants to come out of you to be expressed.

If you don't do this,

If you don't allow this,

Who will?

You and I,

All of us,

We're being called as miracle workers to step up into our role in this world.

The world absolutely needs your light and your love.

So allow that love to be expressed through you through miracles.

Get these takeaways on the show notes page at fromanxietytolove.

Com forward slash 26.

Thank you so much for tuning in and I will see you on the next episode.

I am with you in your journey of undoing fear.

I'll leave you with the last few sentences from my book from anxiety to love.

I believe in you.

We're healing together.

Every gain that I've made is a gain for you.

And every game that you make is a gain for me.

My gains are yours and yours are mine because we are one.

We're going to make it.

The light in you is too bright to fail.

If you buy a copy of from anxiety to love,

Make sure you take advantage of your free bonus,

The from anxiety to love summit,

Which features six interviews with experts in undoing fear.

Get access at fromanxietytolove.

Com forward slash summit.

Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you on the next episode.

Reviews

Wonderful talk! Very informative and helpful, thank you!

I'm not traditionally religious, but I felt this was very wise, useful, and inspiring. Really great guidance for this moment. 🙏