The Four Big Worries
There are four things that people worry about – Money, Relationships, Prestige and Health! All of them are going to go away one day, yet you worry about them.
See life from a bigger context. You worried about something ten years ago, but you are still alive now. You worried five years ago. Three years ago, you worried. This worrying did not do anything to you. You only created more toxins in your body. Life goes on anyway.
What is it that is bothering you? Wake up and see, everything is going to finish. Everything is going to come to an end one day. This very awareness, that everything is going to finish one day, can take you out of the worrying tendency of the mind. When you see that everything is changing, everything is vanishing, then you become so solid, so strong, yet so soft and centered.
Worrying is useless whereas working on what bothers you or what you desire can be useful. You need the strength, energy to act. Spiritual practices can boost your energy, your positivity.
Sources of Worries
Money is a source of worry for you? Look at the birds, look at all the animals, they all get their food? Nature provides everything. Nature is a big provider, so trust that nature will give you what you need. Your consciousness is like a field, whatever seed you put there, that sprouts. You put a seed of lack, then lack comes. If you say, ‘Yes there is abundance’, then abundance comes.
Relationships cause you problems and you get so heartbroken. Wake up and see. Before the relationship, you were alive and kicking. You were laughing, smiling, and happy. Remember the days before you met the person and started your relationship. Life was okay then. So it will be like that afterwards also. So why do you have to be so upset about it?
The awareness that everything is going to finish one day can take you out of the worrying tendency of the mind.
– Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Are you worried about health? How healthy are you going to keep yourself? However healthy you are, one day it is going to finish and your connection with the body is going to end. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep yourself healthy, but sitting and worrying about your health is nonsense.
Sitting and analysing and worrying about health is useless. The more you worry, your health becomes even worse. It increases stress cortisol hormones in your system which delays the healing.
You are worried about getting a job and you look so worried. Will anyone hire you? Will any employer employ you, employ a very worried person who is looking like a zombie, is absent minded, sad and unhappy? If you are an employer, will you hire such a person who has no juice, no enthusiasm and is only worried about the job? If you are a business person and you are worried, just by worrying, will you get your business going?
If you are single, and you are looking for a partner and you look so worried, will anybody want to marry you? Will you choose a person who is very dull and worried? Or you choose a person who is joyful, enthusiastic and happy? Remember, this world has 7 billion people of which two and half billion are of the opposite sex and of the right age of relationships. Why worry about finding a partner?
Wisdom for Worries
See life in a bigger context. Just imagine you are at a mental hospital. Listen to all those patients who are there. Look at their conditions and thank God that you are not admitted there. You are only a visitor, not a resident.
If this doesn’t work, go to a burial ground or cremation ground. Look at all the bodies that come every day and get burnt. You are also going to be there. What is the point in worrying?
However well your life has been, however rich you were or however famous or powerful you were, you and everyone else will all be cremated or buried once. Just sit there for half a day. You will see people come with the body, cry a bit, and cremate it and go back to have dinner. They will have breakfast the next day.
The curtain is going to fall one day or the other. What is the point of worrying?
But that doesn’t mean you think of suicide as an end since everything is going to end one day anyway. Let nature come and take its own course. Don’t interfere in nature. Don’t create problems for others, make them miserable.
Spiritual practices bring up the energy so you can act. They help you connect with your heart, your feelings so you are not stuck in the head.
– Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Suicide is useless because you have to go through the same cycle again. You have to come back and experience the whole thing once again. Finish it all here, knowing that it will come to an end one day.
The Worry Mechanism
Desire arises in you when you want to have something. To satisfy desires, you need to put your energy, your heart and soul. Worrying happens when you are unable to work for your desires and are just thinking about it. Your Icha Shakti (Power of desire) should be in balance with your Kriya Shakti (Energy to act).
Worrying is useless. It doesn’t make any difference, but working on what bothers you or what you desire makes a difference.
Spirituality gives one the strength, the energy to work, to act. Spiritual practices bring up the energy so you can act. They help you connect with your heart, your feelings so you are not stuck in the head.
The head worries and the heart feels. They cannot function at the same time. When your feelings dominate, worry dissolves. If you worry a lot, your feelings are dead and you are stuck in the head. Worrying makes your mind and heart inert and dull. Worries are like a rock in the head. Worry entangles you. Worry puts you in a cage. When you feel, you do not worry.
Feelings are like flowers, they come up, they blossom and they die. Feelings rise, they fall and then disappear. When feelings are expressed, you feel relieved. When you are angry, you express your anger and the next moment you are all right. Or you are upset, you cry and you get over it. Feelings last for some short time and then they drop, but worry eats you for a longer period of time, and eventually eats you up. Feelings make you spontaneous. Children feel, so they are spontaneous.
Adults put brakes on their feelings and they start worrying. Worrying about anything obstructs action while feelings propel action.
