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Being Free

From Anxiety to Peace of Mind

Laura Basha

 


Photo By: Laura Basha 2020

 

Have you found yourself dealing with the grip of anxiety, especially during this time of global concern? Is it possible that you have been paying attention to a particular mindset of thinking, not just to the pragmatic information we need to know to protect ourselves and others?

 

Many of us at this time are healthy and cautiously paying attention to the actual steps we can take to protect ourselves and our communities: social distancing, washing our hands for 20 seconds, elbow tapping instead of a handshake, etc. Yet what I notice in myself as well as my friends and family, is the insidious rise of anxiety, as we think about and/or speak with each other when the conversation inevitably turns to our concerns.

 

THINKING ACTUALLY CREATES OUR EXPERIENCE OF LIFE. WHEN WE PAY ATTENTION TO THOUGHTS OF DREAD, THE BODY HEARS THAT AS AN ACTUAL THREAT, AND GENERATES AN EMOTIONAL RESPONSE APPROPRIATE TO A DANGEROUS SITUATION.

 

Fear and anxiety surge within us. We may not be aware that this is the process that is happening, but on reflection, perhaps we can notice that our imagination has expanded our circumstances from one of safety with the need for practical preparation, to one of imminent danger, without anything actually having changed in our external world.

 

There are times when I have been quite calm and relaxed, and then as soon as I turn on the news I am bombarded with this imminent global danger. I walk away from the tv visibly shaken, no longer calm but considering my alarmed thinking that I hadn’t known the extent of the danger we are all in!

 

Here’s the thing. When we are reacting to our thinking about a situation, not dealing with the situation itself, there is no action we can take in the outer world. Were we to be faced with the actual circumstances we are imagining, we would take the appropriate actions necessary to address them. But when I walk away from my tv, in looking around the room – nothing has changed! It is the same room, with everything as it was before I turned on the tv. The only thing that has changed is my thinking about the circumstances. Does it occur to me to take the only action I can to feel safe again: to stop paying attention to my fearful thinking?

 

MUCH HAS BEEN DISCUSSED FOR SOME TIME ABOUT THE BENEFITS OF MEDITATION. THE FACT IS, WHEN WE ARE COMPLETELY PRESENT WITH OUR BREATH, FOCUSED ON THE INBREATH AND THEN FOCUSED ON THE OUTBREATH, WE CANNOT THINK! THIS GIVES AN AUTOMATIC REPRIEVE TO THE INFLUENCE FROM THE BACKGROUND OF THOUGHT.

 

Human beings are hard-wired to be thinking machines. Much of the time we aren’t even aware of the fact that we are thinking, yet the personality is attached to certain perceptions that run in the background, determining our experience of life.

 

Once we can distinguish that it is our thinking that is creating the anxiety, we have access to a bit of a buffer to choose to step away from paying attention to that thinking. Taking the time to slow down, taking several slow, deep breaths, we can feel our body relaxing. The body is no longer responding to thoughts of danger, but is rather connected to the present moment, which resonates only with the frequency of peace and well-being. Then we look around at the very same environment we have been in with anxiety, and have a completely different experience of it – one of ease. It is as if a huge burden has been lifted: the burden of fear.

 

Whenever the grip of anxiety pulls at you again, notice what thinking you are paying attention to, and see if you can take a step back, take a few deep breaths, paying attention only to the breathing, and allow yourself the reality of the peace of the present moment. Then if a tangible issue arises that needs to be addressed, it can be dealt with from the common sense thinking available by being completely present in the moment.

 

THIS IS THE HEART OF “BE HERE NOW”.

 

Let’s remain free from the suffering born of thinking, while we remain present for solutions to this very real issue.

 

Pragmatic action arising from wisdom is the most powerful remedy and always available to each one of us.

 

May you and yours be well and at peace.

h 2019 h

The Modern Mystic

Laura Basha

 Photo By: Laura Basha

 

Ushering In A New Year
For Positive Transformational Change

 

Are you interested in seeing what difference you can make towards positive change, given what’s happening in the world? And maybe your calling isn’t politics, or directly taking action in the environmental organizations, or in any one of the other great organizations that are focused on ending hunger, saving children, as well as saving some of our endangered species. Yet you care deeply about these issues.  There are many humanitarian crises that are confronting us now: firestorms and earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes, theunconscionable ways human beings can treat each other …

 

One can succumb to a feeling of helplessness in the midst of such overwhelm. But I boldly state, you can be a change agent of the most powerful kind. And you can be seemingly anonymous in the process. Your profession – or what you accomplish in the world every day, has nothing to do with it. Whether you are known, in the public eye, famous, or essentially anonymous – makes no difference.

 

YOUR POWER TO EFFECT CHANGE RESTS ON WHO YOU ARE BEING
WHILE YOU DO WHAT YOU DO.

 

You can become self-realized. Don’t let the words intimidate you or have you roll your eyes. This is a very attainable and pragmatic process in which to engage. And, by the way – it is the process that can free you to become the person you always dreamed yourself to be. No kidding. A self-realized person is a natural change agent. Change agent is one modern term for the true mystic.

 

THE TRUE MYSTIC WEARS NO ARMBAND ADVERTISING SUCH.
THE TRUE MYSTIC, AS A CHANGE AGENT, WALKS THROUGH ALL ARENAS OF LIFE: AS HOMEMAKER, LINE WORKER, CEO, EXECUTIVE, POET, TEACHER, STUDENT, ELDER,CHILD.

 

At any age, any gender, any role in life experience, any cultural or educational background, the true mystic emanates a serene countenance, listening from the cues of Infinite Intelligence, Omniscient Wisdom, and OmnipotentLove.

 

This modern mystic is a person who has cultivated the capacity to deal with their own inner turmoil, frustrations, and inauthentic expressions of self. The mystic turns to the Silence for intuitive guidance. Such a person consistently does the true inner work needed to cultivate Presence, being present to themselves as their purpose, their own authentic self-expression.

 

To have done this inner work is to have developed the capacity to act from being willing to be responsible for creating your experience of life. You can then be around reactive people and not get seduced into your own reactive response. You can maintain your bearings, your equilibrium, in the face of even extreme and dramatic behavior. The self-realized person knows that to react to another’s reactivity or drama, is to actually become the very behavior or action you are not committed to being.

 

This is a powerful freedom and a gift to give yourself. Grace permeates someone who understands the innate freedom available through the willingness to be responsible for creating his or her own life experience.

 

 This attitude emerges from alignment with the Silence, and is quietly contented and hopeful. It is an attitude which delightfully anticipates the unexpected, and allows for people’s mistakes without judgment. Operating from this gentle stance, you cast your own light, resulting in that light permeating the environment within which you walk. Your presence raises the feeling of the environment to one of hopefulness and calm.  Your light – at home, at school, or in the office – is simply the luminosity of the quality of your thinking. All is  thought.

 

The thought is the thing.

 

Since the physics of a higher vibrational rate catalyzes the lower  vibrational rate of the instruments around it, the resonance of your state of mind when aligned with the resonance of the Silence catalyzes the health in yourself, in another person, as well as in an entire system. The unhealthy system cannot stay the same if a consciousness of health and compassion remains withinit.

 

This is true leadership.

© Dr. Laura Basha, 2019

 

~ For deeper understanding regarding the process of self-realization, please read The Inward Outlook, by Dr. Laura Basha ~ 

Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Inward-Outlook-Laura-Basha/dp/1499038402

Joy to the World!

Laura Basha


 
Photo By: Arto Marttinen
 

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me
there lay an invincible summer.

 

– Albert Camus

 

 

It’s the beginning of December, and I just watched a beautiful sunset within this brief window of no rain in a week of much-needed rainy days.
 

The days are shorter, the nights longer. Cozy nights by a fire, soups, holiday movies and lots of reading – all call to us, whereas 6 months ago we were still out running errands and working and just being busy until the sun set much later in the day.
 

If we look at Life as a metaphor, we could see the symbolism within nature’s timetable. Less time for outer activity, more time for inner reflection. As the season gets colder, nature slows down, hibernates, leaves fall from the trees, growth slows or stops, and nature lies fallow to replenish and rejuvenate for Spring and its expansion.
 

We too could slow down, reflect, review the past accomplishments of the year, consider what we could evolve and grow into in the coming year, with the renewed capacities born of rest and reflection.

 

It is the Christmas season as well as the holiday season for many spiritual traditions to celebrate the birth of an awakened consciousness. In the dark and quiet seclusion of the deepest winter night, in the quiet seclusion of our deepest reflection, wisdom unfolds, gathering substance as we allow ourselves time to be present to the Silence. Wisdom emerges as inspired and awakened consciousness, lighting the way for our own inner sage to find voice, ready to take form in the coming longer days of Spring.
 

 

Peace within emanating to peace without,
choosing peace for all who think of us, all who speak of us,
and to
all whom we contact.

 

Happiest of holidays to us all!

 

Joy to the world!

Seeing the Possible Best in Everyone

Laura Basha


 

Photo By: Nathan Dumlao

 
While I was interning in graduate school, the psychiatrist who was the medical director of our clinic for the county’s most challenging persistently mentally ill, became quite frustrated with me for being so idealistic with my patients. He said I was not reality-based enough to be able to assist them. I replied as respectfully as I could that, perhaps he was right, but my perspective was to see the possible best in every patient in order to elicit the same from them, in spite of their presentation.
 

I never read the clinical reports on my patients until after I met with them, because I didn’t want my initial assessment to be contaminated by the previous clinicians’ diagnoses. As a result of allowing myself to “not know”, I was able to perceive possibilities with these patients that very likely wouldn’t have occurred to me had I assumed from the get-go the reality of accepted clinical diagnoses and reports. Of course, I read the reports later, but I had by then been able to bring a fresh perspective to what was assumed, thereby achieving some very unusually positive results with patients diagnosed as people who would never improve.
 
Interestingly enough, my work with them was so effective, that a year later the same medical director requested supervision from me on my particular methodology.
 

 

This article is an excerpt of a larger body of work, The Creative Process: A Portal to ‘Not-Knowing,’ which you can read HERE.
 

What is My “Truth?”

Laura Basha


 

Photo By: Raphael Schaller
 

What if we were to listen to the inner silence of what we don’t know, the inner wisdom of “not knowing”, with nothing on our minds but a complete curiosity for what we haven’t been hearing? This creative walk is available to each one of us, and can be applied to any project, situation, crisis, or conundrum.
 

Instead of a beautiful painting or dance or poem or piece of music, perhaps the creative Source emerges as a brilliant concept to expand a business vision, or as the insight of a missing equation for a new scientific breakthrough. Perhaps It emerges as exactly the right words that capture and articulate an individual’s personal purpose. Or for a parent at wit’s end with the situation they find themselves in with their teenager, in the quietness of listening to Source from not-knowing, the humility intrinsic in deep listening arises. From this reflective humility a thought occurs to them: Maybe they could listen for how their teen’s thinking makes sense to the teen? As parents they could then see a whole new world which is their teen’s view, and then compassion born of understanding might enter into the conversation, and a lack of judgment and dialogue could ensue, transforming separateness into communion.
 

When I finally began to do this with my own teenagers, it was an act of letting go within my own thinking, in which I finally granted greatness to my children instead of insisting they absorb my perceptions like sponges, as if I had the only realistic perspective.

 

I remember one day about 20 years ago, I took my daughter to lunch when she was a junior in high school. She became very frustrated with me before the lunch was finished and I couldn’t understand what had happened since the beginning of lunch was so pleasant. Humility came to me from being more committed to rapport with her than proving to myself that I was right.

 

So, once home, when she finally let me back in her room and I apologized for whatever I had done but told her that I didn’t know what that was, she turned to me with the sudden visage and wisdom of a mature woman and said, “I used to think that everything you told me was true, but now I am becoming aware that other people have other points of view, and I can’t just take your word for it, I have to figure out for myself what is true for me.” Her frustration instantly made sense to me as impersonal, and the result of my lack of listening to how she saw the world.

 

 

This article is an excerpt of a larger body of work, The Creative Process: A Portal to ‘Not-Knowing,’ which you can read HERE.