Anxiety,
you scared little child…
You stand there trembling,
tucked away in a dark corner,
while everyone either diverts their gaze from you,
or else urges you to lick your own wounds,
in your own time, in your own space, away from others.

Everyone recognises you, you know.
Most of them have met you in their own swirling and spiralling moments.
Perhaps they don’t know how much you long to be embraced in warmth and loving-kindness.
Instead, they believe you are to be shooed away - a nuisance, at best.
And at worst, an enemy.

I see you.

I hear you ringing inside eardrums.
I feel you, urging hearts to flutter faster.
I sense your panic in the quick movement of feet and the quicker firing of words.
I catch glimpses of you in pursed lips and clenched jaws which dare not utter a single word.

I know you are afraid.

Anxiety, my dear, you belong.

You are worthy of the Great Love that surrounds us all.

When you have a moment, I urge you to pace around the heart a few times, and when you are ready, enter inside.

Enter the vast and ever-welcoming doorways of the heartspace.

Here, you will be loved and held.
You will be rocked to rest, as a lullaby you have long-known soothes your very being.

Here, you will know that life was never yours to control, and the world was never yours to fix.

You carry no burden.

If, by chance, you meet the mind here inside the heart, as it too rests from its toil and trouble, greet it with a smile – a smile that you have now discovered on your very own lips – and lay down together to watch the sky and admire the clouds passing.

Together, you may rest in the knowledge that you do not carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.

Together, you name the shapes of passing clouds, and wonder what time it is.

You not only smile, but laugh heartily at all the moments you’ve been fooled into thinking that you can figure it all out.

Figure what out?

You can barely contain your laughter, the both of you.

Figure it out!
What an absurd idea!
I wonder who came up with it!

Laugh on, don’t worry about it. Someone else will!

Eventually, perhaps inevitably, you will wander out of the heart’s embrace, and back into your own valleys and corners, and highways and alleyways…

Again, you will peek suspiciously at others, wanting so desperately to be heard, yet speaking too low or too loud or too fast or not at all.

Until you remember, once again, to book that retreat you’ve been eyeing.

The one for which you need not pack, nor plan.

The one where you can bring all your baggage, or none at all.

The heartspace is always open and ready to greet you.
Never expecting, yet ever-welcoming.
A steady resting place for all weary travellers.

It beats and hums while you retreat and rest.

There, you will meet your true nature again. Every single time.

The moment you merge with the heart, you will remember that you have never been separate from it.

You only dreamed and imagined you were.

And that’s alright.

We dream and imagine;
we travel far from our homes,
only to return again
to peace and silence,
to roaring laughter,
to a steady beat.

Anxiety?
Is that even your name?

Never mind.

Lay down here beside me.

Here, we all bear the same name.

Here, we are all called Love.

Anxiety, you scared little child…

Do we not see?