As an escape from reality?

TanukisBeard

I tend to focus on worrisome thoughts when alone. This can occur in a bus, shower, or walks. Now these thoughts tend to trigger desperate problem solving, stress and anxiety.
I recently started shutting my eyes, and focusing on my breath. This method has been functional, though I do not know if ideal. Eventually the worrisome thoughts resurface during the day or so. But again, this is new to me, and maybe the issues wouldn't resurface with regular practice.
But here's the thing. Is this suggested? Am I just escaping my problems, by simply running into my bubble?
What's going on?

lamaramadingdong

I think you are finding an escape TO reality.

Tosh

I guess we all have problems in life - I've certainly got what feels like more than my fair share at the moment - but worrying tends not to help them. In fact worrying can turn a bad situation into a worse situation.

We all have stuff we need to do, but fear (worry) can paralyse us from doing them. If we can remove the worry from a problem, all we're left with is a situation that needs dealing with.

It's easier said than done though. Frankie Boyle (a British comedian) wrote something that I thought was quite clever. He described problems/worries as being like a 'worry hole' in his head with a worry hanging out of it. Once he pulled one worry out, another appeared, just like a box of tissues when you pull one, another appears.

I also think fear and anxiety can create problems because we do unhealthy stuff to distract ourselves from them. I'm a recovered alkie, so obviously alcohol was mine, but I can also use food, sex, spending money (that I really shouldn't) and probably lots of other stuff too.

I think your technique of concentrating on your breath is good; another I use is to just put my concentration into my anxiety and really feel it - rather than internally trying to run away from it or distract myself from it. Doing this cuts off the thinking the fuels it. I also like taking and giving too; a Tonglen practise; have a google if you haven't heard of it.

black_tea

I think that sounds like a good way of dealing with things. It doesn't sound like you are trying to ignore your problems, but rather are trying to lessen the unnecessary stress. I will do something similar if I am really freaked out about something -- I silently recite the nembutsu. It's one thing to deal with real problems when they come up, but constant worrying over them isn't helpful.

BhanteLucky

TanukisBeard said:

But here's the thing. Is this suggested? Am I just escaping my problems, by simply running into my bubble?

It depends...
Are your problems solved by focussing on them? Does your worrying have a use? Or is it just prolifieration, rumination, dwelling on it uselessly?
If the worrying is useless, then the going into the "bubble" is great, the mediation or focus on the breath cuts through the cycle of almost obsessive thoughts, and interrupts them, allows a space to chill. That's a very good use of breath-awareness.

But if the thoughts are useful, then it's not so good to withdraw from them.

Sounds like they are just a pointless worry cycle thought, so I'd say you're doing the right thing in cutting them off by focussing on the breath.

Cory

I think that you are worrying yourself too much, like me, until a few weeks ago when I started frequently meditating, and reading. I do not worry that much, but when I do I pick up a book, normally a spiritual one. The deep breathing sounds like it is doing you good if it is cutting off the worry, even temporarily, because the more you do that exercise the less you will worry. On the bus or in the shower seems like the best place to do these because if these times are when your worry is getting to you the most, then you will not have these worries. To me worries are a major factor in what holds an individual back from accomplishing their greatest achievements.

how

A soap opera depends on time constrained drama just like most worrisome thoughts do.
Deliberately examining what is really being threatened within by a worrisome thought offers either the Dharma of facing up to the real source of the fear or demonstrates over & over just how unhelpful another case of worry really is.

genkaku

@TanukisBeard -- For meditation starters, things can seem to get worse because focus and attentiveness increase. So, instead of a shazzam solution to problems, the problems appear to gain force.

The short response to all this is, "Do it anyway." Be as big a fool or as much of a worry-wart as you need to be but ... do it anyway.

No one can escape their problems. In fact, trying to escape does nothing so much as to make the problems worse. Meditation is the art of not escaping. It may sound crazy, given all the good-news publicity spiritual endeavors can churn out, but really it is the only choice: When you can't escape, then don't.

Little by little, day by day, week by week, year by year, meditation gives a foundation to what anyone knew in the first place ... there's no escape and not-escaping is OK.

Jeffrey

Tune into the feeling you get when not worried and when worried. There is ordinary sensitivity: the wish to feel well. There is the sensitivity of impermanence: the rising and falling of micro joys and sorrows, attraction, aversion, and indifference. There are distortions of sensitivity: turning away from experience and impatience at not having a clarity of thinking. There is the sensitivity of having a heart: taking perspective where the feeling aggregate (good, bad, neutral) is turned towards with equanimity.

These ideas are all where I am recently in my studies of a course. It was synchronicity to hear from you about worry and i thought it related to a page in my workbook I had just worked on (above paragraph).

lobster

What's going on?

Dukkha ducky, dukkha. :eek2:

You need to worry more. Worry why you are not chanting to a helpful purelander, such as Quan Yin. Worry about why you have not been to your local temple. Fill 'your mind' - it is obviously not yours - but let us pretend, with worrisome Dharma.

Strangely, miraculously, guaranteed, you will become calm. :om:

pegembara

"What, concretely, is Enlightenment?"
"Seeing Reality as it is," said the Master.
"Doesn't everyone see Reality as it is?"
"Oh, no! Most people see it as they think it is."
"What's the difference?"
"The difference between thinking you are drowning in a stormy sea and knowing you cannot drown because there isn't any water in sight for miles around."

de Mello

chela

I have some anxiety issues, and so does my husband. We fight (we fought) about problems that may or may not arise in the future. I think about things and get anxious because something "might" go wrong. I read Thich Nhat Hanh's book Peace is Every Step. I started meditating and practicing mindful breathing (and now mindful everything). This is all fairly recent, yet it has had a profound effect on me and on my relationship with my husband. We haven't even argued in 3 weeks over anything. I feel more peaceful. I started going to Buddhist Dharma Center for weekly meditations and discussion. I feel almost like a new person-- a much calmer and improved me.

Worrying can be good if you have a problem you are currently trying to solve, or are figuring out how to prevent a problem. But if you find you have a habit of worrying, and anxiety that affects your ability to communicate effectively and be happy, then you need to slow down, breathe, and watch what's going on in your mind. Once you do that, you can then see that many of your thoughts are irrational, and you can let them go easily and be at peace.

Nwoso

One of the things I have learned thus far in my short career as a practicing, meditating Buddhist is the analogy of visualizing our thoughts, fears, and anxieties as waves rising from the calm sea of our consciousness (or clouds obscuring the clear skies of our clear mind).

It seems to me that you are aware of these thoughts taking hold and you are taking steps to clear your mind of these counterproductive emotional states. To me that is completely healthy. The fact that they come back is just how life works - as someone else mentioned, simply put, we will always find something to worry over.

Now that I have begun to meditate every day, and have had some notion of what a clear mind feels like - free of distracting worries and negative impulses - it is something I strive to have as much as possible.

evolve

when I "lose myself" sometimes I find myself. finding a way to forget myself, meaning all that I think/feel/worry.forgetting about it all sometimes helps to see yourself more clearly.focus on what it might be like to be something else. take yourself out of your head for a minute. connect with everything in a deeper way, one that isn't in that association of worry, connect in a way where "you" don't exist, you're just part of it all already.

ZendoLord84

Calming mind and body to solve problems is no escape.
Its a tool.
Or at least it should be.

shadowleaver

Like someone said, it's more like an escape TO reality.

Letting your ideas about life drop away and experiencing that life as it is unfolding moment by moment, in the body, seems to be key to a freer way of being. Stress and anxiety arise when "I" fixates on future possibilities as well as the past, throwing life energy into that fixation. Since both past and future are outside of our control, that is a guaranteed recipe for being uneasy, stressed, anxious etc-- in other words, dukha.

But this very moment is typically quite manageable and usually not nearly as painful as our attempts to make sense of the abstractions of the future and the past. It is also at this very moment that we actually have any control. Whatever practice reconnects us with this very moment (counting breathes, chanting, intense physical activity) seems to be like a very worthwhile undertaking.