I believe many of our fears, career-related or otherwise, stem from a misperception of ourselves as small and weak.  We see ourselves as too fragile to deal with possible setbacks in our jobs, confrontations in our relationships, medical issues, and so on.  Even if we know it’s not rational, many of us have the deep-seated anxiety that the next problem we face in our lives will make us fall apart or curl up into a whimpering fetal position.  These mistaken beliefs have us hold ourselves back from going for what we want or worry compulsively.

In my experience, one way to overcome this sense of frailty is to feel, on a physical level, the fact that you are much greater and stronger than you may think you are.  In fact, as the exercise I’ll describe here helps you see, in your essence you have no boundaries or limitations, and no problem arising in your life can truly harm you.  This will sound metaphysical, but bear with me—it’s one of the most potent techniques I’ve used with myself and others to break free of the tyranny of fear.

As I’ve discussed in more detail elsewhere, we tend to assume we are our bodies.  If asked to point to themselves, many people point to their chests or heads and say “this is me.”  But when we reflect on this a little more, we recognize that we don’t really perceive ourselves as our bodies—we experience ourselves as the controllers of our bodies, as if our bodies were cars and we were the drivers.  For instance, notice that, when you talk about your arm, you say “my arm”—implying that you are the thing that directs your arm’s motion, not the arm itself.

What are you, then, if you aren’t your body?  What do you look like in your true essence?  Consider, for a moment, the possibility that what you really are doesn’t “look like” anything, as there are no limits to what you are—in fact, you are as large and enduring as the universe.  When we move beyond the illusion that we are our bodies, nothing remains to define the borders of what we are—nor do we feel any need for something to do so.

The Vigyan Bhairav, an ancient Indian yogic text, describes a method for connecting with your boundless nature at a deep level.  The passage I’m thinking about says “imagine spirit simultaneously within and around you until the entire universe spiritualizes.”

As I understand this exercise, it works like this.  Sit in a quiet, undistracted place.  As you sit, start focusing your attention on the sensations you feel on the surface of your skin.  After a little while, you may begin to notice that your skin’s surface, though it may look solid, is actually permeable, meaning energy can move through it into and out of your body.  Focus your attention on the movements of energy through your skin until you feel the boundaries between the inside and outside of your body begin to blur.

As you have this experience, notice how you begin perceiving objects in the “outside world” more acutely—almost as if you can touch them without using your hands, or feel them in the same way that you feel the beating of your heart and your breathing.  Expand the range of your “feeling” to include everything around you, reaching out to include the ground and sky.  Consider the possibility that you aren’t just imagining how things outside you feel—that, in fact, there is nothing “inside” or “outside” you at all, because you are everything.

When you’re back in your daily activities, keep part of your awareness focused on “feeling” the world around you, as if you could physically touch the mountains far off in the distance, the ceilings of the rooms you enter, and so on. 

In this state, you’ll likely find that the things in your life that used to scare you seem to have lost some of their seriousness.  The petty concerns that used to absorb your attention—perhaps about other people’s opinions, whether you forgot to run an errand, whether your relationship will stay together, and so on—seem to strangely fade into the background.

This exercise is intended to dispel the notion that we are our bodies because that belief, as some spiritual teachers suggest, is the source of many of our fears.  The human body is, in some ways, frail and vulnerable—it’s susceptible to disease, accidents, stress, and other kinds of injury—and if we think we’re nothing more than our bodies, we’re bound to worry a lot.  As the Indian sage Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj said, “[a]s long as you identify yourself with the body-mind, you are vulnerable to sorrow and suffering.”

This exercise gives you just a taste of what you really are—a being without dimensions or limitations.  As you experience your real nature, you’ll likely feel the fears that used to haunt you fading away.  Those fears, after all, were based on the wrong idea that you are your body, and that your body is too weak to deal with the problems confronting you in your life.  In fact, you aren’t weak at all—you are larger than any setback or challenge you may face.

(This article appeared in the Carnival of Healing, located at  http://www.moritherapy.org/article/carnival-of-healing-143/.)

Related posts:

1. Simplifying Your Fears, Part Two: Owning Our Disowned Energies
2. Simplifying Your Fears
3. Your Fears Aren’t That Original
4. Transcending Your Anxiety Scenarios (And A Few Other Notes)
5. Videos of My Recent “Transcending Procrastination” Talk