“The Lord is near; have no anxiety, but in everything make your requests known to God in prayer and petition with thanksgiving. Then the peace of God, which is beyond our utmost understanding, will keep guard over your hearts and your thoughts, in Christ Jesus.”
Clients often show up in my office plagued by some anxiety. They want the anxiety gone, now. When I say we need to listen for what the anxiety is telling them, they are disappointed. Their response echoes a pervasive intolerance for emotions, as they have been pathologized in our culture. This attitude undermines the messages from the Self that emotions, including anxiety, communicate. When we listen deeply, we can hear the messages.
Listening deeply is a dialogue where we ask for clarity and receive what comes with open-heartedness. Open-heartedness is a traveling companion with thanksgiving. The writer of Philippians reminds readers of this connection between hearts and thoughts and thanksgiving. He invites us to pray—to communicate with the Divine—by pairing requests with gratitude.
Pray as if you already have what’s needed. The gratitude shifts consciousness from a focus on what’s lacking to resources already present. This moves the ego-self to see the larger Self that is already present. This view gets lost when unmediated anxiety arises.
Unmediated anxiety pulls us into a “painful or apprehensive uneasiness of mind usually over an impending or anticipated ill.” To resolve anxiety, we must first identify the impending or anticipated ill. Often, what we fear is a repeat of a past painful or unpleasant situation. Our body-mind automatically reacts to a present situation based on past experiences. With gratitude, we can stand with our present day self to differentiate the adaptive voices that echo past distresses or traumas from the voice of the Self/God Within.
When we look inward and dialogue with whatever is there, we consciously connect to our self. Inner dialogue goes on all the time without conscious attention. Think about the conflicting voices in your head: “I want a brownie… No, you do not. You need to lose weight.” “He’s bad for me. I can’t see him…I can’t leave him alone.” “I want something to be different…I can’t do anything different.”
When we engage in inner dialogue intentionally, we are using active imagination. We carry on a conversation with a feeling by personifying it; that is, we engage the feeling as if it’s a person who can speak to us. We get to know it by asking why it’s there, what’s its purpose, what it needs from us, and what its offering us. We offer gratitude for its presence in us.
By consciously engaging our inner voices or feelings, we open to understanding ourselves more fully. We build a relationship to the energies behind our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and other internal states. This facilitates a shift from anxious, problematic states to peaceful, joyous ones. Using active imagination or conscious inner dialogue is one way to offer prayer and petition with thanksgiving.
Inner Reflection and Outer Action
Offer gratitude for all you are in the present and your conscious connection to God Within. From this state of consciousness, practice deep listening by dialoguing with whatever emotions you are experiencing, including anxiety. Offer gratitude for their messages.