I was in a full panic.

I made a mental inventory of the possible reasons:

But none of them seemed right.
I knew I was not panicked about any of those, really.

It was none of those.
So, like a diver on a recovery mission, I decided to submerge again – to seek out the cause of my anxiety.
I was anxious. It must have a cause. The cause was __________, but I didn’t know how to fill in the blank.

And, then, it dawned on me clearly.
I got a revelation at 3:30 in the morning.
I was looking for a reason for the anxiety, but I was looking for the wrong thing. Because I was anxious – without the thing.
The anxiety was just anxiety.
If I had been anxious because of __________, I would have thought of __________ first, then become anxious.
But it didn’t happen that way.
I was anxious, and then I was looking for a reason to justify the feeling.
The feeling was the feeling. It was not caused by a particular reason.
Had I settled on _________ being the cause, I might have exacerbated the anxiety!
Once I realized this, I calmed down some and then fell back to sleep.
For full disclosure, before I fell back to sleep, I woke Jane up, had her hold me and help me with a breathing technique, and made certain that there was a CBD gummy within arm’s reach so I could take it if the anxiety reappeared.

Children

A fine, bad mood

Last Thursday, I drove from my side of Portland, over one of our many bridges, to the other side of town to a meeting of the Oregon Board of Rabbis. On the route, I noticed that I had a sinking feeling. My mind was telling me that I was a fraud, that I wasn’t doing anything of any importance in my life. I felt anguish, discomfort.
This feeling was probably exacerbated by my “outside the box” ministry without a building, dues-paying members, or a “religious” adherence to Judaism as the path I promote.
But the feeling was just the feeling. The words in my head were just words in my head.
I knew this feeling. I knew these words. They weren’t really about my status within the Oregon Board of Rabbis. It was really a feeling and a set of words that seem to cycle to me from time to time. In my 49 years, I had previously experienced this feeling and these words. And I knew that in a matter of hours or days, I would return to feeling like me.
In that way, I was able to be detached from the despair.
It was a delightful and new experience for me. To be in a bad mood, but not in a bad mood about being in a bad mood.
On my drive back from the meeting, I phoned my friend Cohen to tell him about it. I laughed while telling him, “I’m in a really bad mood, but, here’s the thing, I’m in a fine mood about it.”
 

Notice, don’t believe

Jiddu Krishnamurti remarked:

Allan Lokos of the Community Meditation Center in New York City teaches: