Meditation vs Anxiety

I’m getting back into meditation this month. I’m 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 bum I struggle to grant myself the time needed to clear and de-clutter my messy mind space.

It’s strange, isn’t it, how we can work so much harder for others, than we can work solely for ourselves… Or is that just me?

Anyhoo, I’ve 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’t do it? What if I can’t ‘zone out’, centre myself; whatever you want to call it?

Because this happens. Sometimes, I just can’t let go. I sit and breathe and focus or un-focus, and I can’t let go of the outer world and slip into my own inner consciousness.

The anxiety that I won’t 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’ll stop looking for cracks in the glass that just aren’t there.