Imagine a house infested with rats. Crawling everywhere, getting into food, spreading disease, and creating an absolute mess.
It would be pretty hard to live in that house, wouldn't it? It wouldn't be long before you sought answers. Heck, even just one rat would have you calling up the exterminator or heading to the closest home improvement store for some rat poisoning. The truth is, I along with so many others have lived in that house. Except instead of rats in the home, it's anxiety in the mind.
Rats inherently aren't good or bad. They're just rats. They become bad when we let them infest our homes, burrow in our trash, and spread disease. Anxiety is really just a bunch of thoughts. Worrisome ones, but still just thoughts and vibrations - neither good nor bad. The problem occurs when we live in the home that the thoughts occupy. That is, when we live in our minds, we essentially become our minds, and we have no choice but to react to those thoughts and vibrations. We believe them. Once we're in there, it feels like there's no escape.
It's us against the rats, and there's a lot more of them and only one of us.
So what do we do? Well, one option is to use rat repellant, or other ways to trick or kill the rats. That's what most people do, if they do anything at all. Just overpower the bad with the good! Spray Fabreze! Light a candle! Mop the floors! Kill the rats!
Sure, that will take care of a few of the rats. But will it take care of the source, or just the symptom?
No matter how much repellant you spray, or how many positive affirmations you say, if you don't clean up the mess that's bringing the rats in the first place, you'll be spraying and saying your whole life.
You see, rats only appear when we give them conditions to be present. Much like rats in a trash filled alley or bacteria in a petri dish, anxiety can only thrive in the right conditions. If we lower ourselves down into our minds, we create conditions in which our anxious thoughts are able to run rampant and control us. We give ourselves no other choice but to fight them.
But when we leave the realm of the mind, all there is to do is observe. There's no resistance. We don't push the thoughts away, because they're not able to push us away. Eventually, they'll have nothing to push on.
Anyone with anxiety knows, there's no winning against those thoughts. They creep in from all angles and find a way in no matter what. So a better option is to realize that you don't have to live in that home, and that you can leave your current conditions for new, better conditions the rats aren't even aware of.
You can still observe it, be aware of it, and check in with it, but that's not where you have to live. Look across the street, or next door, or around the block, and you'll find your real home. A place so magical that it can't be touched by any rat or disease or infestation. That's your real home. That's my real home.
I want to move to a place of peace, love, joy, strength, equanimity, optimism, courage, abundance, and freedom.
Anxiety has no place in that home. And neither does hate, negativity, greed, or injustice.
That's my dream home.
Live with substance!
Gabe Orlowitz
