Utilizing Positive Experiences of the past
A student recently told me this story:
“I got home yesterday from a long trip, about an hour earlier than I expected. I was very happy to be back home, and my partner was too, and we tucked into bed. I had had a lot of dental surgery the preceding week in another state, yet I was feeling pretty darn good about myself: My pain levels were down, I was feeling pretty rested. and looking forward to our conversation today. I was realizing last night that I can do it.
Then, in the middle of the night, I woke up very agitated and anxious, and for the rest of the night my sleep was disturbed. When I woke up this morning, I was in a pretty bad mood. I didn’t know if it had something to do with Santa Fe, or with the surgery, or something elseI couldn’t put my finger on it. I was wondering if you have any advice for me on this, of how I can bring my Deity practice to help me with these kinds of situations.”
Here is what I told the student:
“What you’re experiencing is what I like to call ‘galloping anxiety.’ What’s really happening is that various circumstances have given you a sense of worry. In Chapter 14, we were talking about how we create circumstances. If I have an unattached, free, radical sense of worry, I’m really quick to find a circumstance to glom that worry onto.
Now, when you’re sleeping, this uncertainty or free-floating anxietywhich is brought about by not a specific circumstance, but by vaguely familiar circumstancesincites an old pattern of worry. For you, it is being in a universe that’s hostile to you. But everything is okay. You went to bed, you were happy, you were smiling, your mate was smiling. You guys had just been on a trip, and you had now returned homethere is a lot that was ‘okay’ there. Then you wake up and think, “Wow. I’m really upset here.”
And you didn’t have a reason for it. That’s a really good connection with what we would call the super-structure of ‘Mr. Worry’. Basically, you were experiencing the emotional, energetic side of being uncertain, afraid, and anxious, without a circumstance that you can label as the reason and identify, “Okay, this is why!” This is actually really good. If you had you called me on the phone (and I’m glad you didn’t, because it was probably 3 o’clock in the morning), I would have suggested that you go back to the circle, and go back to your Deity Yoga Practice. Another possibility, and this is one of the things that I’ve been trying to encourage you to do, is to begin to bring into your Deity Yoga Practices a sense of emotional experience from your history.
Yogi Sean is the student of Swami Ramananda and the author of Dancing in the Fire of Transformation and The Everyday Sanyasin.
