Anxious Perspectives

The sun begins  her glorious golden silent ascent behind our local mountains still dark silhouettes.  The Santa Ana winds forcefully blow ensuring we see in full view the fall of the leaves from our once bright green abundantly leafy trees.  Even the giant birch tree out front struggles in these gusts to hold on to the beautiful green ones that still glow golden etched in morning’s first light.  The Santa Ana winds bring with them heat, positively and frenetically charged ions that seem to set this part of the world on edge.  Knowing they were soon to come, I spent yesterday morning at the ocean shore, sitting cross-legged in the sand feeling the sounds of the beautiful waves rise, crest and crash onto the shore.  Reaching with the soul of me for those soothing negative ions of the vast expanse of the Pacific, the calmness came in nearly an instant.  When I let my thoughts scatter in the sea breeze I was soon rewarded by the energy of the sea.  Palpably I could feel the essence wrap around me filling me to my core.  With much gratitude did I thank her for all of her power, beauty and pure energy being the holder of the essence of existence throughout all time.  A side thought grabbed hold of a memory about how water records time, from all time.  Water has been here for so long in our lively existence on planet Earth.  I let go of that string of distracting thoughts and returned to the present.

I return to the present sitting in the quiet but certainly no trace of stillness of this morning, I notice the feelings of anxiety rising unbidden.  It’s more than the gusty winds and an over abundance of positively charged ions that leave me feeling anxiety.  I face a fear this week I’m both eager and yet feeling a bit of trepidation to experience but I know I’ll get through.  These particular feelings of anxiety are baseless and I’ve learned in life that as I generate thoughts of fear, I set off a chain reaction within my body that attempts to prevent my own success at achieving any sense of true well-being.  There is nothing to fear in this movie I have created.  When the heart stops, the projector stops.  It’s just that simple and no fear in it. There is no pain or bitterness within when the projector stops I’ve learned.  So, this means, these thoughts turned-emotion hold no sway over the truth of existence for me in this moment.  Our human minds construct all manner of feelings looking into a future there is never any certainty of.  I struggle with the feelings of this even though my heart and soul know the truth.  It’s amusing a bit to know the truth and yet discover a reaction from a perception out of sync.  You’ll know when you face something like this by the very feeling of fear or anxiety itself.

A quick glance up from my lap top and I see the sun has now etched all of the leaves in my field of vision in fiery silver gold light as they are tussled about in the relentless winds.  The heat brought in by these desert winds is strange on a fall morning but even that is perfect.  Everything is perfect in ways it’s so hard for us to understand with the limited ability to see.  Maybe it’s not really a limited ability but maybe the lack of knowledge in how to see.  When I step back into the knowingness of the whole of which I am part, I realize there is nothing but love, nothing but strength and nothing but connectedness across the whole of my existence now in this moment and throughout all times past.  As I look ahead a little, I feel buoyed by this thought of connectedness and realize that at some level, it rings more as the truth than the perceptions my emotion would have me give into.  Resolved I am to face what I will.  I’ve faced so many things of greater concern in my past and always has my life been truly enriched by the experience.  It will be no different this time.  I'm praying this knowing of the truth stays with me when the superficial feelings of fear and anxiety return.  There is nothing to fear as all I see before me now, I am but one tiny particle of—the wind, the trees, the leaves, the sky, the stars and sun.  We are all connected in this movie whether we allow the knowingness to enter the scenes or not.

I think I find the greatest comfort in the knowing that I trust implicitly in my own ability to create for me an enriching experience of this movie that is my life.  I trust that only good can come of my creations because that is ultimately the intent that I set with all the love of the universe behind the sentiment entirely.  I may not be able to articulate everything I see and feel in this moment but I do feel this moment in a way by far beyond the limits of mentally created and impermanent emotion.  I laugh at myself for entertaining fears.  Not in any malicious way, of course, but with a gentle prodding to remember to have greater trust and faith in my own ability to create in this world.  A momentary stillness takes hold in the moment and the Santa Ana’s briefly stop their forceful blustering as if to help me accentuate this moment of peace.  The once rustling branches and leaves in the trees are only gently moving at the moment.  Sipping delicious coffee as I sit now in the quiet stillness of morning… It’s beautiful, just beautiful as is life.

(c) 2013 Jaie Hart (words/photo)