Feeling Overwhelmed

Question: I am constantly feeling overwhelmed by all the different demands on my time. It seems that I live out each day trying to “keep my head above water.” This inevitably leads to discouragement that I will ever succeed at anything.

Answer: At any given moment, regardless of appearance or emotional certainty to the contrary, it is not the demand of those already-overdue, one-hundred-and-one tasks that have you feeling so overwhelmed and under prepared. What you’re really experiencing is the overwhelming presence of one thought that has the power to freeze you in your tracks. This deceiving thought calls itself “one-hundred-and-one things to do.”

The next time you “hear” this inner voice of imminent doom, listen instead to this higher instruction: Never again look for a way out of any anxious condition. Look instead for a way to see through it.

Success only becomes impossible when you try to deal with what isn’t in your power. Renegade parts of you want you to waste your powers dealing with them. Your misguided attention to their punishing presence gives them a life they wouldn’t have without tricking you into giving them one. This means you don’t need power to deal with what has been defeating you, only the higher understanding it takes to consciously dismiss it from your inner life. You have that power now. Start using it by getting one thing done, one at a time, all the way down your “to do” list. Proceed in spite of any thoughts or feelings that would have you believe you can’t. Just behind your certainty that your list of what you have to do is too much for you lies a new and conscious capability to proceed one step at a time, to accomplish one task at a time, to your satisfaction.
(Excerpted from Design Your Destiny)

Question: I am feeling overwhelmed by sadness and a sense of futility. I just cannot seem to move out of this negative state because the pain feels so real to me. What inner action would snap me out of it?

Answer: Such darkness is a reality, including the shadowy creatures dwelling within it. But the key to understand here is that this reality called darkness is itself but an effect of a far and away Greater Reality: the Light.

Darkness, in whatever form we experience it – - from a simple black, starless night, to a depressed thought or feeling – only exists in the absence of light. And the more clearly we can see the truth of this principle, regardless of the world in which it is expressed, the greater our potential to realize its power.

For instance, in moments where any dark state appears within us, be it in the shape of a fear, a worry, or a hatred of where life has led us, we must see that the reason its power grows over us is because in this same time and space within our soul, there is no Light present.

Stated slightly differently, and perhaps a bit more accurately, there is no awareness of the presence of Light in us in these dark moments because, if there were, the punishing presence of that dark inner state would not be the sole basis of our reality.

The true solution for bringing an end to unconscious suffering rests in our hands. The power needed to release ourselves from our unhappy moments is in the light of our new understanding as to how dark states keep us in the dark. In other words, to know the truth of them is our triumph over them.

What should be clear is that dark inner states win their victory over us because we believe in them. The following healing truths will help you remember what you need to dismiss any dark inner state that threatens to overwhelm you:

• No negative state has the right to reside within you, and can only dwell therein if it tricks you into lending it a dark room in which to stay.
  
  
• The Light is all the might you need to successfully turn away any dark inner visitor.
  
  
• Your true wish to understand a negative state initiates the entrance of that specialized Light you need to make this same wish come true.
  
  
• You suffer what you do, as you do, only through your unconscious consent, so the first step in freeing yourself from unseen sorrow is to deliberately bring yourself into conscious awareness of its dark presence within you.
  
  
• Never accept the presence of any suffering state for the reasons it provides.
  
  
• It is possible to understand any negative state out of existence!

Your created nature is a blend of shadows and the light that creates them, but your True Nature, your original essence, is a Light that has no shadow.
(Excerpted from Seeker's Guide to Self-Freedom)