Everyone talks about fatigue or about feeling stressed out due to the heightened pace of our daily life. We blame our lifestyle, education, circumstances, everything and everyone, except ourselves. What causes stress and how can we take responsibility for our emotional state?
Stress is an emotion that we experience with the change in the status quo of life. When we experience change, the fear of the unknown gives rise to feelings and thoughts of helplessness, uncertainity and of not feeling in control. This sense of inadequacy causes our emotions to stretch and to project externally onto any object or person so that we feel safe.
I spent my life accumulating identifications as a mother, spouse, coach, friend and more to feel secure. Since the last few years after my transformation, I have experienced that ‘less is more’. Slowing down and anchoring my emotions internally with my inner voice has enabled me to shed my multiple sense of identifications and prompted me to accept my true Self as a manifestation of Nature. This has reduced my responsibility and involvement from managing multiple relationships to only managing one. Today, my inner voice is my guide to managing all my relationships.
We need to think about how we can develop a relationship with our inner Self. Our cluttered thoughts reduce our ability to listen to our inner voice. Life is transient and therefore, the less we identify with it and to our external attachments, the more space we create internally to be aware of our inner voice and to be ready to act in accordance with that voice.
When my children were young and would have an emotional meltdown, I would give them some timeout to calm themselves. Over the years, I have realised that adults, too, have to take out time to give our agitated emotions time to tide over. Life happens moment-to-moment and a regular habit of awareness and reflection builds a moment of mental pause that prevents us from hurtling around and getting injured repeatedly.
We can use our breath or a mantra or any other technique that resonates with our emotions to cultivate a pause between our flow of cluttered thoughts. This helps to curb the impulse to react and instead helps to develop patience to access our vocabulary and respond effectively. Gradually, our emotions get anchored to our inner voice and flow masterfully.
We are so busy playing out the responsibilities of our different roles that we forget to pause and reflect to listen to our inner voice. The temptation for instant sense gratification in a material world challenges our ability to discipline our emotions.
Both denial and obsession are two extremes. The world has been created for our enjoyment, but we have to develop a sense of balance to enjoy it. The way too much rain results in floods and too little rain causes drought, similarly, when we stay aware and alert while enjoying the world and discipline our consumption of the earth’s resources, we can experience and enjoy the world to its fullest.
During Vipassana meditation, I realised that although I was intellectually aware of the laws of nature, there were some laws that I was not in sync with. Worrying and reacting to some of these laws had become a sort of addiction, like an automatic switch that would get turned on as soon as something occurred. Committing to give up some of these habits has been an intense exercise of withdrawing internally and developing faith in the inner voice.
Certainly, anxiety does creep in occasionally. But when it does, I patiently remind myself of the law of transience in nature. It is in that moment of pause or silence that I am able to access the knowledge and discover solutions that are empowering.
We are surrounded by abundance from birth. Nature provides us with all the ingredients to fulfil our basic necessities and grants us with several skills to earn our livelihoods. The only effort required by us is ‘to nurture’ those gifts. If we direct our efforts to nurture our relationship with our inner Self, nature will automatically help us along.
Ashu Khanna