{"id":13006,"date":"2016-11-01T01:10:34","date_gmt":"2016-11-01T06:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paganpages.org\/content\/?p=13658"},"modified":"2016-10-31T18:09:48","modified_gmt":"2016-10-31T23:09:48","slug":"anxiety-vs-meditation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2016\/11\/01\/anxiety-vs-meditation\/","title":{"rendered":"Anxiety vs Meditation"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\">\n\t<!--\n\t\t@page { margin: 0.79in }\n\t\tP { margin-bottom: 0.08in }\n\t-->\n\t<\/style>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>Anxiety vs Meditation <\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m getting back into meditation this month. I\u2019m fortunate enough to be involved with groups of spiritually minded people who are far more organised than I and can arrange structured workings. Without this kick in the butt I struggle to grant myself the time needed to clear and de-clutter my messy mind space.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s strange, isn\u2019t it, how we can work so much harder for others, than we can work solely for ourselves\u2026 Or is that just me?<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-13659\" src=\"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/meditation.jpg\" alt=\"meditation\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Anyhoo, I\u2019ve done my first, proper meditation in months and it was wild, intense, and full of vivid imagery that almost immediately led to poetry. This makes me happy. But now I have the fear. What if, tomorrow, I can\u2019t do it? What if I can\u2019t \u2018zone out\u2019, centre myself; whatever you want to call it?<\/p>\n<p>Because this happens. Sometimes, I just can\u2019t let go. I sit and breathe and focus or un-focus, and I can\u2019t let go of the outer world and slip into my own inner consciousness.<\/p>\n<p>The anxiety that I won\u2019t be able to let go, of course, makes this all the more likely to happen. Anxiety is a crippling, horrible force in my life, and when coupled with the fear of failure, can leave me vibrating like a spinning top; dizzy and ultimately useless.<\/p>\n<p>How do I step past this anxiety, into a calm space to let magic happen? How can I calm my mind, in order to calm my mind? I have no solid answers. I simply launch myself into what I am doing and hope for the best. Only one session in, and already I am spinning and looking for what might go wrong; when everything went so right today; utterly nonsensical.<\/p>\n<p>I should be proud that despite my (currently non medicated) anxiety, I have managed my first session with success. The twenty minutes or so before work left me bright and alert for the day, and excited for the following sessions. I should be high-fiving myself.<\/p>\n<p>One day, perhaps, I\u2019ll stop looking for cracks in the glass that just aren\u2019t there.<\/p>\n<p><strong><i>Originally posted on Mabh\u2019s blog, 2<\/i><sup><i>nd<\/i><\/sup><i> November 2015<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anxiety vs Meditation I\u2019m getting back into meditation this month. I\u2019m fortunate enough to be involved with groups of spiritually minded people who are far more organised than I and can arrange structured workings. Without this kick in the butt I struggle to grant myself the time needed to clear and de-clutter my messy mind space. It\u2019s strange, isn\u2019t it, how we can work so much harder for others, than we can work solely for ourselves\u2026 Or is that just me? &nbsp; Anyhoo, I\u2019ve done my first, proper meditation in months and it was wild, intense, and full of vivid imagery that almost immediately led to poetry. This makes me happy. But now I have the fear. What if, tomorrow, I can\u2019t do it? What if I can\u2019t \u2018zone out\u2019, centre myself; whatever you want to call it? Because this happens. Sometimes, I just can\u2019t let go. I sit and breathe and focus or un-focus, and I can\u2019t let go of the outer world and slip into my own inner consciousness. The anxiety that I won\u2019t be able to let go, of course, makes this all the more likely to happen. Anxiety is a crippling, horrible force in my life, and when coupled with the fear of failure, can leave me vibrating like a spinning top; dizzy and ultimately useless. How do I step past this anxiety, into a calm space to let magic happen? How can I calm my mind, in order to calm my mind? I have no solid answers. I simply launch myself into what I am doing and hope for the best. Only one session in, and already I am spinning and looking for what might go wrong; when everything went so right today; utterly nonsensical. I should be proud that despite my (currently non medicated) anxiety, I have managed my first session with success. The twenty minutes or so before work left me bright and alert for the day, and excited for the following sessions. I should be high-fiving myself. One day, perhaps, I\u2019ll stop looking for cracks in the glass that just aren\u2019t there. Originally posted on Mabh\u2019s blog, 2nd November 2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":206,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13006"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12386,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13006\/revisions\/12386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}