Escape the Unseen Trap of Anxious Thoughts and Feelings

by Guy Finley

Key Lesson: In the end, there's only one place that anxious thoughts for "tomorrow" can lead you to... and that is deeper into the trap of believing that it's possible to think your way into being a complete human being.

I'm sure we can all agree that no intelligent, conscious person would ever intentionally hurt themselves. No one would choose to ache. Yet the fact remains that all of us do hurt ourselves every day with bursts of anger or fits of depression or anxiety. Even at the simplest level, there can be no doubt: fear and worry take an immeasurable toll on our health and well-being. So, then, knowing intelligent people would never intentionally hurt themselves, but also admitting that we do just that one way or another, almost every day, how do we reconcile this contradiction? There is only one possible conclusion that we can draw from these facts, as startling as it may seem at first glimpse.

Stop Sinking into Negative Thinking

We must have been unconscious while thinking that we were awake! In other words, during those times of self-betrayal when we are hurting others or ourselves with negative inner states -- even though our eyes were open and all kinds of sensations were coursing through us -- we must have been asleep to what we were doing. We could not act against ourselves otherwise. Somehow we have become separated from the real intelligence within us that knows better than to punish itself. There is never, I repeat, never any intelligent reason to feel bad. If you will only let these truthful ideas prove this astonishing fact to you, one day this new understanding will go before you and defeat all that has been defeating you.

Now comes an important moment in our self-questioning. If real intelligence is incapable of hurting itself, then how can we call any thinking that leads to a stressful state intelligent? Obviously we can no longer continue to call such thinking intelligent unless we want to go on sinking from this present level of thinking.

Let's review briefly. Intelligence does not cause itself to suffer. Yet, as proven, we suffer. This can only mean that a counterfeit intelligence has been passed off on us and its thinking accepted as our very own. There is only one way that such a sinister switch could take place within us and go undetected. During those all-too-familiar worry-packed moments, we are asleep to ourselves. In this strange psychic slumber we only dream we are awake, so can you see the solution to this sorry state? Since unawareness of ourselves is the only problem, then awareness is the only answer. A sting operation can only work as long as the victim believes that one of the players who is secretly in on the sting is trying to help him. Let's say all of this in another way.

You may not be able to think your way out of a nagging problem, but you can see your way clear of it. This special kind of inner seeing is safety. Waking up to yourself is the same as letting go of all those self-defeating thoughts and feelings that have been telling you how to win.