HEALING ANXIETY
By Rev. Dr. Arthur Chang
What is anxiety?
Anxiety is a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. Whenever some condition is important to us it is likely we will experience some anxiety. As the invisible wind shakes the leaves of a tree, so can anxiety cause a generalized fear, or inner turmoil.
One way of treating it is through a prayer that says, “I am excited for this opportunity to move through this challenge.”
Once we change the terms of anxiety, then we are not allowing the present to magnify past fear but to neutralize it and by such a playful action, bring about calm and consequently healing.
What causes anxiety?
Anxiety may be caused by a mental condition, a physical condition, the effects of
drugs, or a combination of these.
The medical profession says common causes of anxiety include these mental conditions:
· Phobic disorders
· Stress disorders
Research also shows that the following common external factors can cause anxiety:
· Stress at work
· Stress from school
· Stress in a personal relationship such as marriage
· Financial stress
· Stress from global occurrences or political issues
· Stress from unpredictable or uncertain world events, like a “pandemic”
· Stress from an emotional trauma such as the death of a loved one
· Stress from a serious medical illness
· Use of an illicit drug, such as cocaine
· Lack of oxygen in circumstances as diverse as high altitude sickness, emphysema, or pulmonary embolism (a blood clot in the vessels of the lung)
Using Prayer Effectively for Anxiety
Ernest Holmes offer this prayer for the treatment of Anxiety:
I know that God is within me and I know this Divine Spirit is perfect. I enter into peace and love and I am secure with a sense of protection. Today my heart is without fear. I have implicit confidence in God’s action through me, guiding and directing me. The power of the Infinite sustains and upholds me.
I enter into a conscious union with Spirit and my heart is without fear, for the unerring judgment of Divine Intelligence directs my faith and makes plain the way before me. I enter this day with joy and look to tomorrow with courage and confidence.
For deeper refection:
I know that God is within me and I know this Divine Spirit is perfect. Be aware that there is no distance between you and God that is the Source of all good.
I enter into peace and love and I am secure with a sense of protection. Realize you are entering peace and love with a sense of security and protection right now. Feel it as if going through a door and closing the door behind you, shutting out all anxiety provoking factors. Feel the purity of your new condition.
Today my heart is without fear. I have implicit confidence in God’s action through me, guiding and directing me. The power of the Infinite sustains and upholds me. Further reinforce the immediacy of the moment when your heart is not beating to the rhythm of the fight or flight response. In addition, as fear is dissolved back into the nothingness from which it came, spontaneously will you feel Divine Guidance, sustaining and upholding you.
I enter into a conscious union with Spirit and my heart is without fear, for the unerring judgment of Divine Intelligence directs my faith and makes plain the way before me. I enter this day with joy and look to tomorrow with courage and confidence. Holmes understands the need to reinforce the mind by feeling the union of Spirit with unerring judgment. It is a new time or faith to make plain the highway of the Lord, as Isaiah has expressed it. Holmes further emphasized the present is a moment of joy, not fear, and that progress forward will be taken with the courage of one who knows the path is opening for greater good to occur.
We need to know that this access to healing anxiety is part of our daily practice of the Science of Mind.
