Ask Deepak
Since my separation with the mother of my kids (we were together almost 17 years) 6 years ago, I have been more sensitive. Actually to both sides. I can appreciate the little things that makes life happy, but I am also much more prone to anxiety. Everything that has to do with separation makes me very anxious. The anxiety is located in the chest, in the heart area and it is so strong it is almost like it feels it was possible to grab it and lift it out of the body.
I am happy to have found my soulmate but still that anxiety comes and go. I have my kids (12 and 18) every second week. We switch on Friday and that hurts a lot. I usually feel I did not do enough (I know my mother always felt like that for me an my brother...) I also panic and feel anxiety as my daughter will move out next year. nd in a few years my son will also move out. An "empty nest" scares me a lot! I have asked my girlfriend about having kids, but she says she is too old (45) and if she has kids again, she will worry too much about them. She seems OK with an empty nest.
I sometimes take ayurvedic herbal compounds for mu anxiety. The vaidya says it is not very unusual with anxiety at my age when kids start to grow and there are lots of changes. Kids growing up is a also some kind of a separation.
My parent are over 70 now, and I realize they will not be around forever, and that makes my anxious also...
I even have anxiety when a favourite TV-show ends... I think I always ave been very easy to feel anxiety for every kind of separation. It seems this whole world is about separation. And this separation is suffering, makes this world into "hell". I have been meditating for 19 years with TM and the TM-Sidhi program, so I do taste the unbounded field. But it does not help.
Personally I feel ageless and timeless. I have been skateboarding for 30 years and still compete and do demos, and thanks to Ayurveda and yoga I skate better now at the age of 44 than at the age of 25, and my body is stronger and more flexible. But the world around me is too much of separation. Any tips and advices?
Answer:
I would suggest you learn Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) to deal with the anxiety as it arises. You can also look more deeply into the beliefs underlying your anxiety and then find new ways of looking at things. For instance, the anxiety you feel at the idea of being separate from the ones you love, might be related to a more fundamental belief that everything has to stay the same in your life in order to feel safe and secure—the same people, looking the same, and feeling the same. But such a belief sets you up for disappointment because everything in the relative world is constantly changing.
As Heraclitus tells us, we cannot step into the same river twice. Life is a constant flow of experiences, never the same from one moment to the next. The sun rises and sets; the seasons come one after the other; we are born into physicality, develop bonds of relationship, and then leave our physicality. These are the inevitable cycles of relative existence, and as Krishna tells Arjuna, “You should not grieve over the inevitable.”
Look for the timeless and unchanging in your higher Self, not in the outer world of change. Find ways to embrace and feel grateful for the constant change in life, instead of resisting it. Look for heroes you can emulate who have learned how to dance in the constant flow of creative change while remaining joyous and peacefully rooted in the calm center of their self-realization.
Love,
Deepak
