Let’s start where it makes sense to start, at the root. What actually causes anxiety?
A Course in Miracles is direct about it. In the section called The Investment in Reality, Jesus tells us:
“To identify with the ego is to attack yourself and make yourself poor. That is why everyone who identifies with the ego feels deprived.”
He goes further, and this is the line that changes how we look at our own fear:
“Even if he is fully aware of anxiety he does not perceive its source as his own ego identification.”
I keep thinking of the old horror movie joke, where the call is finally traced and it’s coming from inside the house. That’s exactly what’s being described to us here.
The horror movie of fear, worry and anxiety is coming from inside our own house, our own mind. We’re the ones projecting it.
The call of terror is coming from inside the house.
It’s so common to believe we’re anxious because of something going on out in the world. It simply isn’t true.
I think of Thomas Alva Edison. When his laboratories at Menlo Park were burning to the ground in the middle of the night, he called for his wife to come and look, and he asked her if she’d ever seen anything more beautiful. His life’s work was inside that fire.
That’s Peace that isn’t circumstantial.
Many people would find a night like that absolutely devastating. Tremendous despair, anxiety, every kind of emotion rising up. Maybe some of that was rising in him too. He could still rise above it and see the beauty in the fire itself.
Here’s what’s super important to understand:
Trying to eliminate our fear by rearranging things outside in the world is what intensifies the fear.
We’re changing what’s outside the house so we’ll feel better about a call that’s coming from inside it.
Fear is like having a systemic illness, it’s a virus in the mind. The fearful mind will find reasons to be worried everywhere – even when there’s not one thing to be worried about.
We study spiritual teachings that tell us this, but still we keep trying to perfect the situation in the world, rather than healing the cause of the distress. And so we fail and fail and fail again. And that’s the purpose.
A different plan, a different city, a different person, a different schedule, a different diet – we try them all and still the call to worry keeps ringing anyway, because the worry was never coming from any of those places, it’s in our mind.
If the fear has been running your days and you’d like to go after its cause instead of its symptoms, join me in Finding Freedom From Fear, where we apply these principles rather than just talk about them.
Because the cause of fear is in our mind it can be released, dissolve and resolved by us. There is a way out of the habit of worry. We can find Freedom in our mind. Miracles are natural.
If you’d like some company while you look at what’s been running in the background, join us in Finding Freedom From Fear, where we do this looking together.
Deep within us is everything that’s perfect. It’s ready right now. All it’s waiting on is our willingness to stop investing in what was never true.
STARTS MONDAY: My Finding Freedom From Fear Spiritual Bootcamp is 90 days of moving out of coping and into real trust, faith and listening to the higher wisdom, together. This is my longest running program – popular because it is such a game changer. Are you up for truly moving past fear? I only offer this once per year – We start MONDAY. Click here now to learn more now.
NEW PODCAST EPISODE: Time Doesn’t Heal – Trust Does. In this episode of A Course in Miracles: Walking the Talk, Living the Love, I explore the ACIM line a friend brings up in every conversation. Have you forgiven and prayed, and still feel the hurt hanging on? After a Labor Day retreat, I turn to Chapter 26, Section VIII and uncover what ACIM calls our one remaining problem. I share the surprising flaw in a comfort most of us lean on, the fear hiding beneath it, and what a dog and a slice of chocolate cake taught me. The answer may surprise you.
