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Spiritual Evolution: How to Stop Worrying

Updated: May 5

Spiritual evolution simply means that you can handle reality. Not being able to handle reality - whether you like it or not - means that, as the Buddha said, you cling to it. This means that it keeps bothering you inside even though it is not happening any more. This causes you to drown. Most of us feel like we are drowning. Because you have a preference you store whatever is worrying you inside of you. The answer is to wake up and realise how you are using your mind, which is not who you are. You are pure consciousness and it’s beautiful and full of joy inside. The mind is like a condensation of matter. We don’t experience the world of form directly - it manifests through our mind. Light is reflected off objects and passes through your eye to hit your retina and then it gets rendered into the brain. This is the mind.


If something bothers you, your mind thinks about it. How do you fix the mind? Henry David Thoreau wrote "To affect the quality of the day - that is the highest of the arts!"


'The Scream' by Edvard Munch


Jesus said in Matthew 28:30 “Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your Souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Which meant that he was completely at peace as he completely accepted reality. He had no preferences. Therefore he did not suffer. Even when he was crucified. He had pain but no suffering.


Your mind (ego) is screwing up your life and your mind is running your life. It is telling you what you want and distracting you with it. It is bringing you out of your higher state of consciousness (your Higher Power).


You make a mess inside because you have likes and dislikes. So your mind tries to make you ok again by trying to control the Universe, which is not possible. So the answer is to stop misusing your mind. Your mind is telling you what to worry about and then your mind is doing the worrying about it! Don't worry though - we all do it without spiritual growth. You are worrying that the things that happened in the past either might happen again or might not happen. This is the entire basis of fear and anxiety. How can you start not doing that? We don’t stop doing this because we all have control issues. The mind created like and dislike. Like and dislike are not natural ways of BEing.


The root of worry is your mind. But it’s not your mind’s fault. Your mind takes a picture and then you make 'picture albums' of the things that you like and don’t like. It is you doing that. But you tend to only build albums of the things that always scared and bothered you. You get rid of worry by realising that it was you who caused it. You can’t get rid of worry by fighting the Universe and trying to control it. The more energy you put into it the more it becomes the focus of your life. You have now made your whole life about the things that bothered you the most. The problem is not that the problems happened. The problem is that you thought that you couldn’t handle it.


The alternative is learning to honour and respect reality. If you can handle it and you know that you can handle it you don’t worry. Keep saying to your Self “I can handle this.” It’s your choice. This choice is way more healthy than fighting the Universe. Spiritual evolution is learning to handle the reality of what is happening. Resistance is what you use to store your Samskaras (mental impressions, recollections, or psychological imprints). It’s your act of resistance that makes you store them. Deal with it. Let it go through you. Get neutral about it. You are much better dealing with it when you have clarity. You are clear when you know that you can handle it. The answer to worrying is acceptance. And to say to your Self “I can handle it”. Come what may, you can handle it. 90 percent of what you worry about will never happen. And you can handle the rest. Work on why your mind is not quiet rather than how to quieten it. The Buddha said 'work at the root'. The root is the fact that you stored this stuff. Stop defining success and failure. Life is just life. Success is not getting what you want and failure is not not getting what you want. See life as play. It’s fun and full of joy. Put your energy into something that works otherwise you’re going to be spending the rest of your life fighting the Universe to get what you want. Let go of that. Control is the opposite of Faith.


You Can Handle It
You Can Handle It

Richard Bach wrote that" What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the (spiritual) master calls a butterfly." We are often afraid of losing things we value, such as our job, our health, our possessions, or our loved ones. And the more we focus on these fears, the less we are able to cope with life, and the greater the distance between us and our Higher Power. Loss is a form of change that we can grow into. Fear of loss, fear of grief, and fear of change go hand in hand, yet when they happen under our Higher Power's guidance, they can lead to spiritual growth, personal fulfilment and acceptance. Although the caterpillar no doubt values his caterpillar self, turning into a butterfly gives him a different view. Each stage in our development entails both loss and growth. And our Higher Power is always there to offer a helping hand. Starting today, look beyond loss and see - with your Higher Power’s help - what you may become. Make peace with the past.


Bill Wilson wrote in 'As Bill Sees It' that fear is a stepping stone "The chief activator of our defects has been self-centred fear - primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded. Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration. Therefore, no peace was to be had unless we could find a means of reducing these demands", as outlined in this article. The 12 step serenity prayer is "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference." The foundation for life is that "We discover that we receive guidance for our lives (from our Higher Power) to just about the extent that we stop making demands upon God to give it to us on order and on our terms." Spiritual evolution is a story of suffering transmuted, under Grace, into spiritual progress.


Spiritual evolution is critical to spiritual awakening. Nothing is either good or bad - it is only our mind that makes it so. This is how you learn to respond with clarity rather than to react. True peace comes not from controlling the world but from understanding and mastering the mind’s tendencies toward worry, fear, not being able to handle things, non-acceptance, and attachment to preferences.


Your psychology, your psyche, also known as your mind, is the sum of your learned experiences. This created and conditioned your ego to have preferences: Either to get what you want or to not get what you don’t want.


The beginning of the ‘Third Chinese Patriarch’ of Zen, written by Sengstan Hsin Hsin Ming, blending together Buddhist and Taoist teachings, reads:


“The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and Heaven and Earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the Truth then hold no opinion for or against. The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikes is the disease of the mind.”


The mind is the ego. The self with a small ’s.’ As opposed to the real Self, the Soul. The cause of all suffering is desire, which is the same as preference. If you are able to stop being distracted by your preferences then you are Enlightened. This is the process of continuous, repeated acceptance and surrender, which are the absolute key components of the 12 steps. Reality is that which has already happened. You can’t change it so you may as well not have any preferences about it being a certain way. You can practice surrender and acceptance every minute of every day from the moment you wake up, by not having any preference when anything happens. Be here now, remain present, and work on not having any preferences and thus knowing that you can handle reality. 


Life is very much a dance of creation. And everyone is going through something. In my own journey, I've noticed the more I relax into Faith, especially during the storms, the more miracles happen. It can be a difficult shift because of our hardwired survival patterns. We've placed value on fear, stress, and anxiety because in the past they've propelled us into action. So that becomes our subconscious system to navigate challenges. But from my perspective, the cost on our well-being isn't worth the payoff, especially when another possibility exists that's rooted in peace, love, and presence. This is the way of clarity, of responding, and not reacting. And the shift can't happen until we reach higher awareness and perceive the opportunity of another possibility. So whatever you're going through, and as difficult as it might be, remember to surrender, to take it one day at a time, and to do your best to relax into Faith. God always makes a way, and Faith doesn't just move mountains, it moves the Universe. This is the way of miracles. 



Namaste.


Sending you love, light, and blessings brothers.


Olly



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