Mastering Anxiety With The Power Of Pure Thought

At times we all find ourselves feeling anxious. To feel anxious when we attempt something new is natural, it becomes a problem though when it stops us achieving our goals and grows into a feeling that we just don’t seem to be able to shake off. Knowing that our thoughts affect our feelings we can begin to first of all reason with our anxious thoughts. Ask yourself, ‘Is this really true?’ ‘Am I exaggerating?’ ‘Am I anticipating the worst?’ ‘How many of my past worries have come true?’
Sister Rose Goodenough shares some words of wisdom.

Meditation enables you to embark on this inward journey. Raja Yoga meditation gives you a clear spiritual understanding of yourself, helps you re–discover and use the positive qualities already latent within you, enables you to develop your strengths of character and create new attitudes and responses to life.

Transcript

I'm shanty.

How to master anxiety.

Now to master something is quite a statement.

It means I have to know how it works.

Otherwise I can't be a master.

At times we all find ourselves feeling anxious.

To feel anxious when we attempt something new is natural.

Although it becomes a problem when it stops us achieving our goals and grows into a feeling that we just don't seem to be able to shake off.

And knowing that our thoughts affect our feelings then we can begin to first of all reason with our anxious thoughts.

So ask yourself whatever it is that's worrying us.

Say to ourselves,

Look in a practical way.

Is this really true?

Or am I exaggerating?

Also am I anticipating the worst scenario?

How many of my past worries have come true?

When we look at Rad Yoga meditation it teaches us it means to know the self.

To know the self means to know everything about myself in life.

I mean I think everyone here there will be something that will tick a box.

In fact I would think in reality we'll all have everything.

We all want in life to have a happy life.

We all want good relationships around us.

Whether it's family,

Friends,

Colleagues.

But we want a harmony in those relationships.

We want a comfort of living as well.

We want love.

That's what we want.

All of these things.

And what is it we often think about instead?

So this is how we learn how to be a master.

We think worried thoughts.

I wonder if,

What if,

I'm not sure I can't do this.

I don't know if this means me.

What if I can't do it?

What if I fail?

What will people say about me?

So if I'm concerned about a situation I have these thoughts going on and on in my head.

And then it will create anxiety.

And if I feel sad or lonely or depressed.

Again these kind of thoughts will come into my head over and over.

If only,

Why,

What if,

Maybe,

Maybe I could do this.

Oh I'm so fed up.

Oh I haven't got the energy,

Etc,

Etc.

What's wrong with me?

There must be something wrong with me or there's something wrong with everyone else.

Why do they not like me?

How come I don't fit in?

These are all the kind of thoughts we have.

The thing is that we constantly go,

Does anyone recognise these thoughts?

Put your truthful hands up.

Because I recognise these thoughts and I've been doing this for 35 years.

Because they're habits and what happened is we've created these habits daily over and over again.

Something will come to us.

And sometimes it's quite a big and awkward thing and we don't know how to get our head round it.

But what we'll do is we'll think over and over and over of the heaviness of the situation.

Because somehow,

Somehow our habits have developed and somehow we've been trained to worry.

And what happens with thoughts?

We create a thought.

We create it,

We think it over and over.

We put it into practice by our actions of apprehension,

Of dislike,

Of fear,

Concern.

And we're making an energy pattern within ourselves.

An energy pattern,

We're creating it at that point.

So the situation comes and goes.

We'll just take one situation at a time.

Comes and it goes and I've worried and I was concerned.

And then it's over and I think,

It's gone.

Oh,

There it is.

I'm back to feeling okay again.

But I haven't realised I've created an energy pattern.

This is important if you want to become a master.

I created an energy pattern of worry and concern.

And then I'm going along in my life,

On my life's journey.

Something else comes along.

And oh my goodness,

What am I going to do here?

Oh,

I don't fit in.

Oh,

I don't know how,

What can I do?

Maybe I don't know what to do here.

This person doesn't like me.

I worry,

I get concerned,

I get anxious.

I'm creating heaviness onto the same energy pattern,

We might say.

It's the same pattern.

But it's becoming deeper because I'm thinking about it again.

I might not sleep at night.

I might go through all sorts of things and thoughts and worries and spend money and buy things to make myself feel better or to give as a gift to try and appease whatever is the enemy or whatever.

I could do all sorts of things.

And when I'm in interaction with whatever that situation is,

I feel really dreadful.

I might put a face on,

But inside I've been worrying,

Worrying,

Worrying.

So I go through the situation.

It's over,

Done with.

It wasn't so bad really,

But I used my energy pattern again of worry.

And what I did was I made it deeper,

Deeper.

So if this goes on,

I would say basically almost every day it will go on.

There will be some form of concern.

I think we'd really have a day without some thing of concern coming,

Either from a situation,

From a person,

From my own feeling of disempowerment.

Every day I'm making that energy pattern of worry,

Anxiety,

Depression,

Sadness,

Deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper.

Now if we get that bit,

Now we can look at those things that have concerned us.

Quite often they're quite trivial.

They're not all that big sort of life-threatening,

Quite trivial.

Not so big.

Just someone was cheeky to me or someone didn't speak to me or something didn't go the way I thought it should or I felt a bit low that day.

Nothing so big.

But still my anxiety kicked in and again I went over it and over it and interacted with that at the back of my mind.

So that same energy pattern got deeper and deeper and deeper.

And it becomes a huge thing which could cause us a huge concern.

Until maybe I feel totally that I can't face,

Totally frightened,

Totally disturbed,

Totally depressed,

Totally many things.

With this huge and no one will then be able to convince us that it's okay because I've built it up to be a big pattern of concern for myself and I've built it out of trivia.

It's quite important you get that.

I've built it out of small things that concerned me but I did them over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

How many times I wonder in our life up until now did we use our anxious side of our character,

Our worried side of our character,

Our frightened side of our character,

Our deprived side of our character,

Our fearfulness.

How many times?

That's how much I developed the feelings that I could be having today which I may be saying there's something far wrong,

There's something far wrong,

I have to get counselling,

I have to get this,

I have to get that,

I have to find something,

I have to take something to take those feelings away.

So our thoughts create those feelings.

And maybe if I start to understand that I've been creating those feelings through the way I'm thinking and it's tricky now when it's developed to a big stage and it will have developed before we would say this has happened because when it's trivial we can brush it aside and as time goes on it's not so trivial and then a year later it's even less trivial and a bit time later it's becoming more of a concern for us.

So this is anxiety,

This is depression,

This is all of these uncomfortable feelings that we have and we're creating them through our thoughts and then they become very powerful attitudes inside.

There's only one way that I can change this.

It's by knowing how I built it.

If I could acknowledge that,

Who could really take and acknowledge the truth that they maybe built this in themselves?

Put your hands up.

Good.

You're halfway there.

Because it's when I realise that and then I'll start to see the way I'm going to add a bit more to it.

And I go,

Don't do it,

Don't do it,

Don't do it.

The only person that can start to control this now is me.

I can go and get pills.

I can go and speak to people,

It makes me feel sort of momentarily a bit better.

And it is good to sometimes talk and share but too much talking and sharing and too much emotion involved is deepening it again.

Up to a point,

Up to a point,

To a healthy level.

But then I'll get dependent on having to put all my problems onto someone else who's going to get them.

Some people are trained to listen to things.

But how can I offload that which is created on my own energy?

It's like if I record something on a CD or something,

We used to be able to record over a tape.

I'd have to record over it.

Why put record something fresh?

It's the same in here with our thinking.

I've recorded,

I've recorded,

I've recorded,

I've recorded feelings of anxiety and despair in myself.

And it's a big strong recording.

So when I understand,

I want to do something about it.

In Raj Yoga we say know yourself.

So that's getting to know yourself.

You know that you've now recorded.

You know that you now have the tendencies to create these feelings and to deepen those uncomfortable feelings within ourselves.

But the secret and the answer to it is we also have other tendencies.

I have to say that in today's world there's not as much focus or understanding or knowing the wonder of the other side.

It's our ability to love,

To love ourselves,

To know that I'm creating good feelings.

I was looking at it in a way that it's easy to grasp and understand.

The language of love isn't flying around all over the place today.

Or the language of sex is,

But that's not love.

That's like gymnastics.

It's got nothing much to do with these tender,

Delicate feelings that are inside the mind.

You want to create those feelings.

And for myself I was looking at when I went way back to childhood,

When there was that innocence,

And when you heard lovely stories,

Or your mother sang you a lovely song to put you to sleep,

Or you heard hymns or lovely things in your religion.

They made you feel great.

You didn't know why,

But you would dance and bounce around and sing these little things and you'd feel really good.

You felt cherished,

You felt warm,

Even if you were not a rich person.

You didn't have to have the big roaring fire and all the comforts that we now have today.

But you felt loved just by very simple food.

The language was softer to each other.

We said nicer things to each other.

And I remember as a child from a very early age I learned to read,

Very early.

And I used to read all the books,

All my reading books,

To the end the minute I got them.

And I always loved some of the nice words,

Just nice words.

And when I got a bit older and I would read things that were poetic,

They just used to touch you so deeply because nobody went around saying really lovely things to you.

But somehow it taught you something about the language of words.

Words lifted you up.

I didn't know that.

I didn't know I was getting lifted up.

But when I look back,

I see that I was.

And the way you spoke to other people,

It made it a bit different,

A bit more sensitive.

You used a more respectful,

You didn't even know it was respectful,

But a more thoughtful way of speaking and didn't get into much to such rough speaking.

Today's language is horrendous.

Rough,

Tough,

Harsh,

Vicious,

Violent and harmful to the mind.

So think about it,

The language,

The beautiful language of loving the self.

And it's not even getting into meditation here,

We're talking just people.

Feelings,

Respecting each other,

Appreciating nice things in each other.

And then songs that used to really touch your heart.

Yes,

You heard all the jazzy stuff and that was all nice.

Everybody liked it if they wanted to dance.

But when someone sang a love song,

The whole world listened to these words because they were,

Who said these words to you?

Even your beloveds didn't speak to you like that.

And this is what the soul was thirsting for.

That's why they sold thousands and thousands of records because they were hearing words that they'd never heard from any human being.

But their pop star would sing this song of love.

But some of us were lucky and learned these words in our hearts.

And then you would find you had a really good life,

But you wonder you didn't know why you were having a good life.

It's only later with hindsight when you looked at the language you used and interaction.

It was a thoughtful,

Caring,

Appreciative,

Respectful,

Loving,

Cooperative,

Helpful language.

And every time you thought,

Sang,

Said,

Shared words like that,

You developed that energy pattern inside you.

Nothing could destroy it as recorded,

Just the same as the other side.

Or fed up,

Couldn't care less,

Unhappy,

Depressed,

That's been recorded.

But you also recorded the sweetness,

The kindness,

The loving.

That is how to master anxiety.

So just to look at how you feel about beautiful words,

It can actually make your heart dance.

So I practice this today,

I start to think of all the songs that had touched me over the years.

A lot of them religious songs,

I have to say,

Songs to God.

That was before I was doing this,

But they just happened to be,

At one point,

They were about the only ones around.

And I thought,

Gosh,

I feel absolutely great.

And looking at how I thought and the impact of a torrent of loving songs.

Not in love with a person or anything like that,

Not even sitting in meditation.

But looking at how the vibration of these beautiful words were affecting me.

So I sat there thinking,

I thought of another one,

Another one,

Another one,

Another one.

I even wrote a lot of them down.

And it was just like an incredible experience of wellbeing,

Lightness,

Happiness,

Freshness.

Now,

Is this difficult?

So really easy because we all have lovely songs,

Lovely poems or lovely words.

People send us lovely cards.

But do we really sit,

We just go,

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

Some of them we might think,

Oh,

That's quite nice.

And then that's that.

But say it over to yourself.

Look and think,

That's beautiful.

Think of it,

Think of it,

Think of it.

Because as you think of it,

It's creating a feeling inside your head,

Which is lifting up your spirits.

Which is creating an energy pattern or is deepening that energy pattern which you've had from childhood.

Because from childhood,

Nice things would have happened over and over and over.

But you see,

It's not the fashion now.

Very few.

Some people get it from religion and then they're looked at as a bit weird.

Some people do meditation,

They're sometimes looked at as a bit unusual as well.

And so it's like,

Oh,

Just a few people do that.

And well,

They're not the ordinary run-of-the-mill people.

But I think they're probably quite happy people.

Because it's very,

Very precious to think beautiful thoughts.

If you don't believe in any kind of religion,

Love songs,

Your mother's love,

Lullabies,

Your mother looking after you and cherishing you and cooking you your favourite dinner or whatever and loving you and wrapping you up in the wintertime,

Love,

Love.

And nothing to do with money,

Nothing to do with being rich,

Nothing to do with being super clever,

Nothing to do with being beautiful,

Nothing to do with not being beautiful.

It's to do with love.

And that actually gives you health as well.

It affects your immune system and gives you strength.

It actually does give you strength to be healthy and to keep going on your track.

And you don't stay bouncing with joy all the time,

But you can have a lot of moments of absolute lightheartedness.

The other things come because that's part of the journey.

But when you know how it works,

You become a master.

You can go,

For goodness sake,

If I've had enough of that,

I'm going to go for the good bit,

For the love and the good feelings and respect and appreciation.

Om Shanti,

Om Shanti,

Om Shanti.

Let me sit very calmly and quietly and gently reflect on my inner world.

Of all the gifts I can give myself,

The most precious is self-respect.

When I step into my self-respect,

Everything in life becomes easy.

How do I feel about myself?

How do I feel deep down?

How do I treat myself?

Do I value who I am?

Do I appreciate who I am?

To regain my self-respect,

I need to go deep within to discover who I am.

Along the way I've collected some baggage,

But I let that go and appreciate the real,

Authentic me.

I see myself as the soul,

And know and appreciate and love the real me.

When I connect with this authentic me,

All my beauty emerges and a very sweet feeling of regaining a real connection with my true self.

This is like coming home to a place where I really belong.

This is the real me,

And a deep and sweet feeling of well-being emanates all through me.

When I create the sweet feelings of soul awareness,

I feel so comfortable about who I am.

I feel good about myself.

Reviews

Thank you for your talks - they are a beautiful source of contemplation for me. I feel rich having these at this moment in my life 🙏🏼🌸

This was so helpful and moving. I will return to it frequently. Thank you!

Love this!

I love your teaching, it gives me perspective and peace. Thank you. ❤️

Insightful and resonating. Loved it! Thank you 🙏🏽

So grateful fir this beautiful meditation. It has brought me deepest awareness of how I can control my own inner world with a simple thought about 💕 love.

I didn’t see this was a talk before clicking and ended up meditating to it lol excellent talk and few minutes of actual meditation in the end

If I could give this 10 stars I would!! 👍
Absolutely beautiful messages.
Thank you!! 💕🌼🌈💕🌼🌈

Such a good reminder that we need to be kind and compassionate to ourselves when we are experiencing anxiety. I tend to beat up on myself when I get anxious because I feel like I am to blame for how I'm feeling which I am period but feeling anxious doesn't need to be as big of a deal as I make it . I can reshape my thoughts.

Very helpful at a difficult time

Very nice. Thank you!

Soul awareness- beautiful!
Thank you.

Excellent talk and description followed by very peaceful empowering meditation. Thankyou🙏

Well explained and very effective. Thanks a lot!

Feeling a relief in my heart with your words. Was in need of that. Thank you🤗

Soothing voice of love and fantastic information about our choice of vocabulary .... thank you! 🙏🏽

Very wise words

Was feeling so anxious but this talk brought everything into perspective. Thank you.

Made perfect sense how we get to that high level of anxiety. Felt instantly relax after listening, will be playing again!

Who is this lovely lady? Definitely somebody I'd like to hang out with! Thank you so much