In the middle of a fresh bout of worry, agitation, bad-tripping, and stressing, the following appeared in my mind:

The worried mind abides not in Truth.

The Truth-abiding mind worries not.

The sick mind does not heal itself from disease without help.

The worried mind does not free itself from its suffering without help.

After some reflection, the following appeared as a logical consequence:

With proper help and by rendering itself teachable, the sick mind can heal from disease.

With proper help and by rendering itself teachable, the worried mind can free itself from suffering.

Seeking further clarification, I went to Pathwork Lecture 132.

Whenever you function from your real self you are in truth, you are joyful. The most creative and constructive contributions to life come from your inner self. Everything that is great and generous, everything that is life-expanding, beautiful, and wise comes from the inner or real self.

Pathwork Lecture 132

It’s most certainly difficult to admit the existence of and dive deep into those places where we don’t abide in Truth, where we maintain a scam thesis, where we harbor unhealthy self-centered motivations. Truth isn’t just honesty, like admitting I can be a sarcastic, judgmental asshole sometimes. Truth is also about purifying the inner attachments, aversions, errors, etc. that give rise to manifest behaviors–integrity. Work of this type requires us to reveal secrets, even if to no one else but ourselves. And the little self bent on keeping up false ideals is highly resistant to facing these ugly truths.

The real self is most certainly willing to go into these places. The ”i” that abides in Truth is courageous and humble enough to seek, face, and work in what’s ugly and distorted for the purpose of cultivating beauty and benefit.

Perhaps it’s like going into a basement with years of horded material and facing it all piece by piece over days, weeks, and even months in order to clear it out and start a virtuous new story. There’s gonna be some pain without a doubt, but the soft, healing pain of living openly in Truth is vastly more desirable than the harsh, suffering pain of living in the contracted, fearful state of non-Truth.

But, one may ask, isn’t there a distinction between healthy worry and unhealthy worry? As I think about it, healthy instances of worry are of short duration, and an appropriate reaction to circumstances; though that doesn’t preclude the possibility that a current of unhealthy worry can be woven into a current of healthy worry. And perhaps we can say that some characteristics of unhealthy worry are chronic, persistent, entrenched, habitual go-to reaction–as in, the day’s not complete until I’ve found something to worry about.

What do you think?

Copyright (c) 2020, Justin Jaucian

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