Anxiety and Spirituality — Spotify from the CEC Library

Today's topic is anxiety. A listener asked: does an anxious person attract spirits to themselves, or is it the number of spirits with them that makes them anxious? We take emotional processes, the person's psychic context, and the spiritual aspect into consideration. Personally, I think we create our best or worst living conditions based on our emotional condition. When we talk about spirituality, it is obvious: whom do we want close to us? Imagine someone who is doing poorly, who is depressed, full of conflicts, anxious, with all those things that hinder us and bubble up inside; then we want to have a wonderful, supremely balanced spirit of light close to us.

Personally, I do not see things that way; I think you will have a consciousness near you that is just as turbulent as you are, and for that reason you will not attract an evolved consciousness. Imagine a highly evolved consciousness observing a confused and turbulent person. Approaching would require an immense effort because their patterns would differ. I believe we remain close to those who are similar to us; an elevated consciousness would therefore not return to the pattern it had left.

You are making an effort to leave these processes behind, become more balanced, and live alongside equally balanced consciousnesses. Voluntarily returning to a turbulent environment and remaining there would not be compatible with this process. Consciousnesses at the same level share that environment. If you have depressive processes, the consciousnesses near you are certainly at the same level as well. You may ask whether they are depressed; no, they simply share similar difficulties. You may have depression and the other consciousness may have another condition, but the emotional context is similar.

When it comes to energy, we tend to invent stories to explain what we cannot see clearly. Personally, I see it as energy patterns. If we consider the chakras, we will find that, in a very poor emotional condition, we operate through reactive and instinctive chakras over which we have no control. People with anxiety processes or an anxiety disorder may believe anxiety is something simple. Anxiety can reach a point at which a person experiences suffering and very intense inner conflict and cannot cope. Their inner time is so limited that they may panic and trigger other kinds of difficulties. We must understand that. It is not enough to say, "Oh, but anxiety is something... everyone is anxious." That is not what this is.

A person becomes more anxious the further removed they are from reality, and the reality I mean is the here and now. This moment you are living, right now as you listen to me, is that moment. If you begin observing what is around you and making contact with everything around you, you will become aware of the here and now, at least for a few seconds, a few moments, because our inner mechanism normally operates in the past. I understand anxiety and emotional difficulties as processes connected to the past rather than to what occurs in the here and now.

I think we should treat everyone politely and recognize their efforts. We should draw closer to those who show politeness, good judgment, and less ego-driven behavior without disputing, competing, or trying to bring another person down. These behaviors favor more balanced feelings instead of merely emotional reactions.

When you speak of spirits, those who remain close to a person in difficulty do not necessarily have the same anxiety or emotional problem; their patterns are similar, which is why they remain close. Your turbulence therefore never ends. You feel trembling and discomfort, as though something were circling you. I think that image is a good description of a headache that feels as though it is about to start. When a denser, more primitive spirit—not an evil spirit, merely a more ignorant one—approaches you, you sense that a headache is about to start. I interpret this kind of sensation in that way.

You are calm, and suddenly you become irritated. Your ego is then being influenced by another ego. This question was asked at a talk: the person said they had a headache and then took an aspirin tablet or something for the headache and began to feel better. Certain medications would directly influence our chakras; in this hypothesis, aspirin would increase the circulation of energy and reach the chakras above the heart chakra, with its activity beginning at the heart chakra. My hypothesis is that our chakra may be affected by this medication, increasing the circulation of energy and causing any coupled spiritual consciousnesses to decouple. The energy circulates, and they decouple.

We naturally circulate energies, certainly, but you can enhance this through your will. It is possible to increase the circulation of energy, and then the spirit cannot keep up with you because it will begin to lose energy, something aspirin does with ease. I do not recommend using aspirin or any medication for this spiritual purpose. Medication changes should be discussed with a health professional; we need to learn to work with our own energies.

As for the question of whether changes in our society are creating a trend toward our becoming increasingly anxious: imagine that, fifty years ago, you worked two blocks from your home and did not have a car; perhaps you owned a bicycle. You woke up at seven, showered, had breakfast, and left on foot, arriving at work at eight. At lunchtime, you went back home, ate calmly, and spent time with your family.

Everyone was waiting for you for lunch; because you worked only two blocks from home, you arrived quickly, in five minutes. After lunch, you left, went back to work, and at five or six in the afternoon you walked home or stopped somewhere to talk with a friend. Does that seem like a different kind of time? What I am explaining is that you can accomplish things in another way. You were not in a hurry.

I will explain how this happens. If you live in São Paulo, you cannot leave home without giving yourself forty minutes, an hour, sometimes more, depending on the day. You need to hear the traffic report on television; otherwise, it is simply impossible to arrive at work on time. Things have changed. Since you cannot arrive on time and cannot cope with living here in São Paulo, what do you do? You move to a nearby city, where you will have a little peace, less pollution and noise, and be able to do things more calmly. However, you will have to commute about an hour and a half from home. You think, "It is worth it because I do not need to stay here; I rest on weekends."

The context of our lives keeps changing, and obviously inner time changes as well. The situation becomes more complicated. You will need to keep music CDs in the car. Some people carry a CD, video camera, book, notepad, or recorder. The house is being transported inside the car because, if you are stuck in traffic on the expressway, you will have something to do. I have seen people get out of the car with a camera and photograph herons in the Pinheiros River. This is real. I have also seen someone sitting on the hood of the car ahead, talking, after the driver got out.

Everything keeps changing. You lose contact with the calmer things in life. You need to organize some kind of arrangement just to manage yourself. Your inner time is changing; you no longer have as much inner time or inner organization. Your inner space changes as well, because you will need to make the most of whatever scraps of time you have.

Would you not become anxious? Getting home is different when you live in a town in the countryside, where work is five or ten minutes away and much more time remains available. If we consider someone who lives in the city of São Paulo, that person loses between two and three hours getting to and from work, and it can take even longer because it varies. If São Paulo floods, it may take four or five hours to leave the city. Your time therefore decreases, and that time is very important because it is related to anxiety.

I am talking about something that is common today, although it is not normal, for everyone who lives in very turbulent, heavily populated cities. Fifty years ago in São Paulo, you could walk through neighborhoods at night without any problem, calmly, with no one on the street. Today, you cannot get around anywhere because there are traffic jams on Saturdays, Sundays, and even at two in the morning.

When I speak of inner time and space, I mean the time you have left. This is important because it is something you no longer have. Your inner speed needs to increase to make up for this shortage; your emotional speed also grows, and what you once did calmly is no longer done that way because you must arrive, do, have, and achieve. This is the result of your lack of time. Inner time no longer exists, and space disappears along with it. According to the changes in our society, is there a trend toward our becoming increasingly anxious?

Human beings cannot perceive that they should move toward tranquility and ever-better relationships. We need to have time to talk to one another. Fifty years ago, someone would sit calmly in a rocking chair in front of their house, right here on Paulista Avenue, rock back and forth, and recount what had happened during the day. Today, you cannot even walk on Paulista Avenue, and you still need to do so carefully because, if you walk carelessly, you may be robbed. It is complicated. We are moving against our own best interests, and we need to realize that. We flee to the most distant places. Expansion and growth make us more anxious, at least apparently.