In prayer I asked to understand anxiety. What was it that flowed through me in the middle of the night? What was it trying to show me? Was it just a personal anxiety or connected to something larger?
It was uncomfortable. But I knew – I remembered – how anxiety can cut us off from the healing that comes from the Sacred source. How it can cover over our connection to grace.
I then had dreams showing me how to work with it. Through the dreams I began to piece together an understanding. I write about it here because I know that many women are working, each in our own way, to live from a deeper place. And this requires tending to denser energies such as anxiety, worry or despondency, that sometimes overwhelm us even as we dedicate ourself to service.
During this time I recalled an experience from several years ago. Inwardly I had asked, ‘How can I help the earth?’ And in the night came an inner response: Just love more.
So I was willing to open to the anxiety rather than turn away from it. And then, through another dream, I realized a link between anxiety and surrender. I had no idea, until this dream, that I had been resisting the flow of life. In the dream I was told that the answer to anxiety lies in the Yes, in the surrender.
One night, with this awareness of surrender, I got up instead of lying down when I felt the anxiety. My mind didn’t know what to do next, but something deeper in me knew how to be on this sleepless night. I began to walk quietly, just as a woman knows to walk when in labor. And then I felt to stand still, barely moving. I had a sense that I could breathe with the earth, even if I didn’t know how. In a brief time, the anxiety fell away. In its place came stillness. And then joy, like sunlight.
It was a simple experience, but one that I cannot forget. For it has to with trust of the inner knowing, the greening wisdom that is inside each of us.
Yes, thank you Zakira. To read of your experience helps me to recognize this quality of surrender in my own walks in nature. Or even in the city, for nature can be found there too. But what you write has deepened my understanding and valuing of how we open to life, as it is.
Thank you, Anne, for writing about anxiety so beautifully.
Thank you, Anne. I am finding how this body has so much to show me, to share, about my condition in the moment, and how to respond. For me, everything is changed by a walk in nature, so simple. If I can connect with the sensation of feet touching ground, birdsong, breezes, rain, warmth on skin, breath in and out, there is room for more than my little thoughts. Nothing to fix, just walk, in sensation. Sometimes sadness arises, sometimes tears of unknown origin, sometimes joy, grief, peace, but always there is more spaciousness. This also feels like a surrender, to the “is-ness” of life.
Brenda, Thanks for sharing this synchronicity of the blog and your dream. It touched me with the simplicity of how life shows us what we need to know, or how we need to be.
Thank you!! Beautiful!
What a gift to open and read this morning. Only in the past two of my 65 earth years have I experienced anxiety as an identifiable feeling in my body. You are so right on about the connection between feeling anxiety and the work of surrendering to Love
Thank you Anne. Last night I (basically) dreamt about trust and surrender, although sometimes difficult to interpret. So anyway, I woke up this morning thinking about these vivid dreams trying (desperately) to tell me something, then I looked at my email and your blog was there and it opened up without me even clicking on it! wow, the universe is definitely telling me to pay attention and trust! I feel my dreams have been guiding me for a while now and it has taking me along time to believe in them, to trust them and to surrender to my life.
Anne,yes, this is amazing, and it makes me think of how the heartbeat of each of us is connected and interconnected as we find our way, opening to this Love. So many ways, so many stories, seem to be reflecting this response – this need – that comes from deep within us. Thank you….
Amazing, Anne, I love the synchronous ways we are all moving. The article I’ve been writing for Kosmos Journal’s fall issue is about sensing/feeling our way into Love as the human response needed by the earth at this time.
Thank you, Ann. The timing for this blog is perfect. Daily I’m opening hospital & doctor bills following a small stroke, and am seeing that even with insurance my small savings will probably be gone. I worry about my concentration and lack of energy- the upcoming school year with a full roster of classes and energetic middle schoolers. Anxious, mortal, and CRABBY best describe my state of mind these days.