Anxiety Anyone? I Thought Not.

I discovered years ago that my feelings of Anxiety were different from the way I experienced most emotions. This revelation came to me during a meditation session, one where I was trying to relax, but no matter what I did, things didn’t work. It was a genuinely terrible feeling. I hated Anxiety. I believe you might have the same reaction.

It gives me a somewhat cold vibration throughout my body and paralyzes me mentally—a horrible feeling. And at times, it struck hard enough that I could accomplish nothing.

Sure, I’d listened to Gurus as they explained what a monumental waste of time it is; worrying about a thing won’t change a damn thing. All it does is waste energy and spend your time amplifying negative feelings into a long, drawn-out hell, squeezing and binding you up. But although the advice was correct, it didn’t help that much.

I’d even thought about it enough to recognize that most things you worry about when the actual materialization of the dreaded event happens, to borrow a line from Casablanca, “It doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.” Think back. Let’s take school with an assignment deadline drawing near, or maybe the homework assignment that didn’t get done, and now in class the instructor called on fellow students. Your heartbeat ramps up like the cannon fire in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Maybe you even mentally chanted, “Please don’t call on me … please don’t call on me.” like a mantra.

Then your name spilled out of the teacher’s mouth and …

Nothing. All the tension evaporated because the dreaded moment arrived. It was over. Now, all that had to happen was to admit you were unprepared. Nobody died, didn’t even become ill. Maybe you experienced an embarrassing second. It wasn’t worth the hours or days of labored flagellation. What a waste. Right?

Now, let’s look at the other side of catastrophes. You are minding your own business, doing what you love to do, living life to the most and, Wham! The worst personal tragedy that could exist happens, whatever that may be at the time. And you didn’t get a chance to nurture any anxiety at all. It just hit you in the back of your head with no warning whatsoever. Damn!

Haven’t most catastrophes come upon us in just that way? A stealth attack? I’m not including self-made disasters, such as torpedoing your relationships all by yourself. You had an inkling that might happen.

So, my takeaway was that it was completely counterproductive to let Anxiety get a foothold. It wasn’t a spectacular fix, but my mind had developed a tactic for dealing with unease in any future event. Perhaps I could use it later.

Now, at the risk of sounding like a bad commercial, I need to say, “But wait, there’s….”

A few months ago, I awoke from a decent night’s sleep, and that uneasy feeling crawled over me like a thousand earthworms trying to cover me in slime. Uck. It was horrible enough that I spent my morning meditation attempting to de-worm myself. I lay there, searching for, and visualizing all the calming exercises I could remember. All the while, reminding myself that worry was useless.

It was like trying to shovel the air away from myself. There was no progress whatsoever. No matter how many times I tried to move the air, it all rushed back.

Working through the quagmire of crappy feelings, I finally stopped. There had to be another avenue, another approach. The phrase, “There is more than one way to skin a …. ” Well, you know.

A scene from Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land kept coming to mind where Michael realized that he was about to consume himself if he did not correct his behavior. That was how overpowering the feeling was to me.

After all of this flopping about, I relaxed as well as I could, turned my attention away from it, and meditated on the question — why do we even have Anxiety? What purpose does it have? Then I remembered that everything was and is connected with vibrations. Oscillations produce and create everything.

That was when inspiration came.

I’ve talked about inspiration before. It’s what happens after we work on a problem and let it slide away, allowing our subconscious parts to take a shot. This process happens to everyone, but some of us ignore the development and let creativity die.

Anyway, it was the vibrations, the sound, the Music of it all that intrigued me. Maybe it wasn’t the actual emotion itself that was needed. What if the reason we have this Anxiety, the necessary part, is the actual vibration associated with it, that buzzing feeling that happens to you while the worrying berates you? Could it be the Music of it would help with the whole damn thing, maybe give relief?

I ruminated on my inspiration as part of the creative process, and the more I did, the more I liked the idea. The way Music, sound, and acoustics interact with the strings in string theory is how everything takes shape and comes into being throughout the Universe. It is how we perceive what is around us. (I explain my view of it in my book, I Am, Therefore I Think.)

The energy causes vibrations; the more vibrations, the more energy.

Is that the deal? Are the vibrations that accompany Anxiety there to help me cope with what browbeats me?

That irritating feeling, the vibrations, were they there not as a hinderance, but a way to give me energy and help me cope? That’s right. If I paid attention to those vibrations, not only would they tell me the relative size of the event I worried about, according to how my personality viewed it, but they also gave me the energy to work through the problem; it was a gift of energy to me. If that was the case, all I needed to do was relax and let the vibrations flow through me, in essence feeding myself. Once I did that my world would smooth out. If I used those oscillations to my advantage, they would cease bothering me and become a tool.

I tried it and the process gave me wonderful relief.

Does it work all the time? Alas, no. However, this attitude helped more than not using it by a humongous amount.

As a bonus, though. This method reinforces my belief that Music is my Tribe.  The Universe is a masterpiece of vibrations that include melodies and the grandest harmony that can be imagined. I have written this time and again, and this is one more avenue to integrate myself with the harmony of the Universe. Who am I to argue when it works? Must you follow my example? Not at all, unless you feel drawn to it. I find it helps me through difficult times, and we all have those. Better lives are possible for everyone. All it takes is commitment and follow-through. Take what you learn, believe in it, whatever its flavor is, and keep working it one notch at a time. We do that as a default anyway. The only difference would be that now you can consciously do it instead of fumbling around like a court jester.

Mostly, though, give some mental space to the idea that Music is universal, both through its idealistic aspects and its literal support of the Universe.  Every particle that exists in the Now (past, present, and future) creates Music. Join the Tribe of Music; you already belong, so make the conscious decision to accept it. What kind of Music do you crave? Today, I craved Music by the Beatles. yesterday it was Aerosmith; the day before, it was the Music of Alanis Morissette. Does your selection include Reba, maybe Eminem, or Pavarotti? It doesn’t matter. We all like Music. You can’t help it, so instead of dipping your head in the sand, own it.

 

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