Q: I’ve been suffering from anxiety.It’s been pretty bad lately. Been with me for quite some time, like decades. So bad these last few days I just take to bed and curl up in a ball. The medication, even though I can feel it in my body, and the meditation, the years of spiritual stuff — I mean I’ve tried everything, literally everything — barely touches it . Can you help?

A: There are two fundamental ways to treat anxiety, as I see it, and both are rooted in recognizing the illusory nature of it… the phenomen, the experience. Uh, and anxiety could be said to often be at the root of some other unwanted or unnecessary experiences, like depression.

In any case, in both of these, there is a seeing, a recognition that it’s not really an entity. Anxiety or depression or whatever mental state we pin a label on, does not have any standalone reality. It’s not some animal standing out there in the wild, like an Ephalope, that we can take a photo of. There’s a real sense in which we give it all the meaning it has, and all the reality it has.

But rather than getting into that, which I know some will argue with (especially if they are depressed or highly anxious haha – a thick flavor of resistance some along with it), I’ll tell you the two ways, and you can pick one that suits you, one that works for you. Different strokes for different strokes. Then maybe someday you will say, yes, I see what you mean about anxiety or depression, the mental state being unreal. Or maybe you won’t. But here we go – I am just the messenger, and it’s up to you to try the medicine and see, experiment for yourself with what works, what you see.

To be clear here, we are talking about mental anxiety, not fear. Fear is when a truck is actually bearing down on you now, and there is an instinctive physical reaction, and you move out of the way. Anxiety is when you remember a truck back in Afghanistan 10 years ago that almost ran you over, and you experience something now; or when you imagine trucks that might run you over in the future, and experience something from that mental scenario now. Fear is good, it keeps you alive and in one piece, physically speaking. Anxiety and depression are useless weights on your happiness, for the most part. Their only real use is to spur some deeper reflection inside, some deeper seeing.

Also of course I am not talking about regular concern or caution regarding common sense situations. For example, you smell gas, and a sense of alarm spurs you to go and find that the stove had been left on, and you turn it off. Or it occurs to you that, if you had needed some major surgery, or had an accident, you could not begin to afford the hospital bills, so in your worldly wisdom, and from caution, you buy some health insurance. Or turn the fricking gas off. (laughter) Once it’s done, it’s forgotten. You don’t need to go and keep checking it a hundred times to make sure the gas is off, or checking that you have insurance, out of anxiety. That would not be caution or concern, that would be what what we are calling “mental” here. It’s not a judgement, just a way of classifying, getting clear on our terms, so we can communicate. Love and communication go together, OK? (laughs)

OK, so with that out of the way, the first way is as follows.

One way to dissolve anxiety is to look away from it. This is the way of distraction. At some level, you know the anxiety isn’t based on something real – you’ve turned off the gas and bought health insurance – so all these monsters the brain is spitting out to try and suck you into an illusion, are fake news, are tin gods. So what you do is fire up your favorite TV show for a while, have a few laughs, and forget about it. You take a bike ride up to the local botanical garden and chat with some nice people there, talking about trees, and in the process, are totally forgetting yourself.

Basically you’re saying to that mental anxiety, “Hey I am totally ignoring you, you phantom dragon made of puffs of rusted iron, bits of steam and clouds.” And it dissipates, dissolves on its own. It’s like you have a friend that talks and talks about nonsense. If you ignore them long enough, they just give up and walk away. You may have let them in the house, but they need attention in order to stay, to survive, to live. The imaginary dragons can’t survive without your interest. Neither can the mental TV or radio station that blares out stupid ads. If no one tunes into it, and they don’t support the station, it will die, go away. Same thing here. You feed the news station by giving it your rapt attention, feeding energy to it. Stop that. Just stop it. It’s easy. Or gets easier, with practice.

S: OK, yeah. I get it, I see that.

T: You see? So I’m sure you can find something you like, some mystery TV show series or old cop show, or comedy, or a friend, or a hobby. But in any case, in the background is this knowing, this recognition, that you are not that. You know you’re not that fake shit. You are the awareness that is ever-present. To whatever is appearing, And disappearing.

S: This too shall pass.

T: Yeah! Exactly. 

S: The second way?

T: The second way is to look directly at it, at the so-called anxiety, rather than looking away from it. Rather than looking in the opposite direction as it were. This is the way I am most familiar in my recent experience, since I hung out with a teacher from that school, that approach – more of an Advaita and yoga way of seeing and doing things.

Q: How do you look at it. I mean, wouldn’t that make it worse, give it more reality, like you were saying about the dragon or the noisy friend, the loud news station?

T: You see its nature, directly. In an instant. If you’re really present, there can be a disinterested observation, sort of like a student of biology, or like an alien scientist, studying a phenomena. Now, you know, you have a clear definition or idea that what you are looking at isn’t ultimately real, but since it’s kind of sticky or close, you need some dispassion, some detachment, in order to really see it, in a neutral, curious way. You have to see from stillness, from an inner quiet. See what the situation is. And this helps. You have a guidebook. That stillness is always there, even if it’s seems like it isn’t. The truth of that becomes more solid over time. Though for some, it’s faster.

And this guidebook says, this animal called “anxiety” or “depression” is made from the experiences of sensations, perceptions, and thoughts. That’s all. How do you know this? Because everything is made from these elements – everything experienced that is not consciousness, or awareness, whatever you want to call “That what you Are”. You are clear on that, because you studied your chemistry, you know that all rocks are made of silicon, oxygen, hydrogen, and a limited collection of other atoms like iron or magnesium. And went out and looked at them under a microscope, and dissolved them with acid.

Same here, but it’s even simpler. You know that there’s only Consciousness, and what appears in it that comes and goes can be resolved to those fundamental elements, once you see their nature. Nothing to fear. Nothing to worry about. Resolved and dissolved. There’s just bodily sensations, sense perceptions, and thoughts within consciousness; the contents of awareness in other words. Appearing and disappearing. Everything comes and goes, if it’s content. Phenomena. Illusory. Like on a movie screen: the screen stays, but various movies made of light, of pictures and sounds, come and go. When you turn the movie off, turn off the power to the projector, the screen is still there.

My experience with this is that somehow, there’s a cutting through or dissolving of the anxiety or mood — either quickly or more slowly — when one is still, and able to just look, observe. The elements of anxiety resolve themselves under observation to be just bodily sensations and thoughts. In a loop. And seeing that, you don’t add more thinking. You see it doesn’t have any meaning, any real meaning, any real foundation, or big significance. Why give meaning, unnecessary meaning, to some body sensations. Somehow the mere awareness or consciousness, the seeing of it, dissipates the clouds.

I know there are some that will say, will want to go into the past, meaning memories, thinking, bring up memories deliberately, as a method I mean – not just casually as they pop up in living day to day, to be seen and dropped – that supposedly are causing feelings. Giving credit to feelings, as big important messages, meaningful things on their own. That’s the psychological approach, such as seeing it as caused by trauma, that kind of thing. Casues and effects, and you are at effect. As a person. The truth is, we give everything all the meaning it has. We do. As awareness.

If you want to cut down a tree, leaf by leaf, branch by branch, you can do that. It’s a long trek. Get a psychology degree, become a professional feeler of feelings, lay on a couch… “Sit with them”, as a meditator. It may go on forever, who knows. But I rather like just pulling up the weeds by the roots, and be done with it… rather than giving the weed some more reality than it deserves, so to speak. Not in a harsh way, but simply recognizing it’s a beautiful garden overall. We don’t really need these weeds. If you tend the weeds, like if you tend the illusory person, or personality, by treating their memories, implicitly granting them an existence, they will be maintained, and grow. You can do that if you like them, think they are cute. The spiritual identity, the the psychological identity. That’s fine. So be it. But as I see it, why identify with anything? Why take or maintain ownership? What a burden.

Like Atmananda Krishna Menon – sort of the grandfather of the Direct Path – wrote:
“Water can be reached straightaway from wave by following the direct path. If the way through the sea is taken, much more time is needed.”

I did that for a lot of that for years and years, and am just done with it. Done. Non-duality is the final answer here, so to speak. (laughs)

S: That sounds difficult. To be so direct. Like you have to be a really solid meditator, with years of experience…

T: Not really. Maybe I’m making it sound harder or more complicated than it is. But I’m combating, so to speak, all the wrong ways of seeing things, the built-up layers of belief in the culture, the conditioning – including in the spiritual world and the psychological culture – about what we are, and the nature of things; seeing oneself as material or a clod of solid stuff. Earth stuff. Bodies. Minds. As if mind were real. So in a sense, you may have to do some work, mentally, spiritually. Until all that fails. Or the body drops off, dies. (laughs).

Either way, you’re free. Now, or later. Take your pick.

But why waste time? Here and now is life, with a capital L. In essence, it’s available instantly, accessible to anyone, anytime. Why should it require so much work, if it’s of the essence of what we really are? You see? Can you allow that? Your heart to do its work?

S: Because it’s what we are.

T: Because it’s what we are. Exactly. One starts to see that one is “in the world but not of it” as the quote from Jesus said. That’s the esoteric meaning of that… but it’s very practical. Very practical.

You are what you’re’ looking for, as that quote from Francis of Assisi goes. Or, what is it exactly?

“The one you are looking for is the one who is looking.”

Very succinct…

But yes, there’s nothing practical about anxiety or depression that keeps you tied down to a bed, tied to the Earth, like a clod of dirt. Or addicted to meds or drugs… Time to clean the swamp.

S: Thanks. I’ll, uh, do my best. (laughter).

T: Yeah. The outer path and the inner path. I believe these two fundamental ways I outlines may correspond to the Zen on the one hand, Zen Buddhism, along with some yoga paths, like Kashmir Shaivism (which is a kind of Tantra – like a non-dual yoga), and the Advaita on the other, I believe – the outer path and the inner path… but don’t quote me on that. I’m not a scholar. I’m just speaking from my experience and exposure to different living teachers and students and teachings and methods and so forth, over the decades, as well as a little bit of confirmation from listening, dialogues and reading, and my direct insights, my experience … and telling you what works here, and what I’ve seen.

S: Thank you.