An excerpt from From Anxiety to Love by Corinne Zupko
Author Corinne Zupko, a licensed counselor and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction teacher, undertook her study of psychology out of necessity when debilitating anxiety threatened to derail her life. Seeking ways to do more than temporarily alleviate her symptoms, Corinne began to study A Course in Miracles (ACIM), mindfulness meditation, and the latest therapeutic approaches for treating anxiety.
As Corinne healed her own mental anguish, she compiled the perception-shifting process she describes in From Anxiety to Love: A Radical New Approach for Letting Go of Fear and Finding Lasting Peace. We hope you’ll enjoy this short excerpt from the book.
Waking up from the dream of anxiety is a gentle, gradual, and loving process. To move from anxiety to love, we have to learn to distinguish between the two voices in our mind and choose the voice we want to listen to. For each of us, there is a part of our mind that is sane and a part that is insane. The sane part is our Inner Therapist, who is the link back to remembering our Loving Source. The insane part is the ego, which believes itself to be exiled from its Source, and which views the body as its home and ally.
Turn on the nightly news, and you’ll instantly see ego insanity in action. The world is full of it. In the twisted theme park that is this earthly realm, dream figures utterly convince us of our separation from one another. This park has two attendants who are present to us during every moment of our visit. One is the ego, and the other is our Inner Therapist. We can hear both their voices, but the “ego always speaks first” and loudest (ACIM T-5.VI.3:5).
By choosing to listen to your Inner Therapist instead of the ego, you can repurpose every experience you go through in this theme park, changing it from an attempt by the ego to keep you asleep into an effort by the Inner Therapist to help you wake up.
The ego might tell you that you need to win tons of shiny tokens in the boardwalk games in order to be happy. Your Inner Therapist will tell you that winning or losing those tokens doesn’t define who you are, and your safety doesn’t depend on winning. When the roller coaster breaks down and you’re stuck in midair, the ego will tell you you’re vulnerable and should be terrified. Your Inner Therapist will remind you to think of the experience as an opportunity to trust that you are safe no matter what the circumstances. When you eat too much cotton candy and get a bellyache, the ego will use that as evidence that you must be a body. Repurposed through your Inner Therapist, the bellyache becomes an opportunity to learn that you are not your body.
Listening to Your Inner Therapist
You might now be asking, “How do I hear my Inner Therapist? How do I distinguish between the voice of the ego and the Voice of my Inner Therapist?” This takes practice, and we’ll explore some ways to do it. I have worked with many people who have felt paralyzed in making decisions because they were unsure whether their “guidance” was coming from ego or from their Inner Therapist. But ultimately, you don’t have to worry about figuring it out. As long as you are willing to consistently turn to your Inner Therapist, you can be certain that any ego that is present will gently fall away as you are ready to let it go. The more you do this, the better you will become at distinguishing between these two voices.
In my experience, the voice of the ego is any thought that is judgmental or fearful, or has a negative sense of urgency to it (like “You better do this now, or else!”). It makes you feel unworthy, and it limits your sense of self to a body. Because “the ego always speaks first,” it grabs most of our time and attention. But the good news is that your Inner Therapist “does not speak first, but He always answers” (ACIM T-6.IV.3:2).
The Voice of our Inner Therapist is very quiet — so quiet that it is easily drowned out by the endless distractions of the world. This Voice is a loving and gentle teacher that I experience not as words or sound, but as a feeling — a lightness at the core of my being. Although the body is not our true reality, it can be used as a communication device once we give its purpose over to our Inner Therapist instead of to ego. That means we can actually sense the Voice of the Inner Therapist in our own body.
I can also perceive the Voice of my Inner Therapist as thoughts, but they are very different from the loud, chatterbox thoughts of the ego. These thoughts often come as inspiration, such as when I ask for help with writing. I ask, I pause, and thoughts come forward.
To strengthen my ability to listen to my Inner Therapist, I use the game of solitaire. When I have to make a decision about a move, my first inclination is to move the card quickly to an obvious spot. However, I’ve practiced slowing down the process, inwardly asking for assistance in placing my cards. I sit without making a move until I feel an energy that’s brighter, quieter, and more spacious than my initial ego feeling of “Move this game along, sister!” Using solitaire as a listening exercise, I am repurposing the goal of the game from winning to slowing down and simply paying attention.
A simple game like solitaire can remind us that in every moment we have the power to choose to listen to one of two voices and make one of two choices. Do we listen to the ego’s voice and choose to follow its incessant demand to react or attack? Or do we listen to the Inner Therapist’s Voice and choose to follow its quiet plan of healing and miracles? This is a decision that we have countless opportunities to practice in the game of life.
Corinne Zupko, EdS, LPC, is the author of From Anxiety to Love. As a licensed counselor and keynote speaker, she has helped thousands of individuals through her one-on-one counseling, weekly meditation classes for corporations, and the largest virtual conference of ACIM in the world, through the organization Miracle Share International, which she cofounded. Visit her online at FromAnxietytoLove.com.
Excerpted from the book From Anxiety to Love: A Radical New Approach for Letting Go of Fear and Finding Lasting Peace. Copyright ©2018 by Corinne Zupko. Printed with permission from New World Library.
"Life happens. Life in the flow."
We learn over time that nobody can solve our problems, but someone can guide you how to solve the problem. You may receive guidance through a teacher, a guru or even strangers that you run into every day. As we practice yoga we learn that the more we know, the less we truly know. Every day I am reminded how much I truly do not know; a very humbling experience.
Yoga teaches me to be present. To just live for being and enjoying life as it is right NOW. Not ten minutes from now, no five days ago, but right now. We are taught to get out of our heads, to release worries and fears of the past or the future and to only live for this very moment. Presence.
"Lead me from untruth to truth, lead me from darkness to light." ~ Buddha
Through yoga we are reminded that we do have a dark side as well as a light side. We are not to repress the dark side, but embrace that side of our Self. We are the yin and the yang. We ultimately cleanse the dark stuff we hold inside. We shine the light on this. We must make friends with dark side. Both positive and negative balance out the whole. Daily practice refines and improves our inner vision to see our Self more clearly. We no longer need to run from fears. Face them and say I'm not running from you anymore. So much is in our heads, so much dark is only in our heads, self-doubt judgment betrayal. Yoga grounds the body so that the light and dark sides of ourselves become clear. So much is truly untrue. But as we diligently practice we are able to find the middle ground and walk our centered balanced line in life. We gain balance in centered lightheartedness. We can have harmony in both light and dark.
"Yoga tells us that the world is actually a projection of our own thoughts and we can modify our inner world to manifest into our outer world. When our inside realm is at peace and in harmony, our outer world shines this projection back at us." ~ David, Jiva Mukti Yoga co-founder
Yoga is observation.
We can observe our world and see what part that is in us is begin reflected back to us. We can then see what part of us needs modification or adjustment in order to have our outer reality reflect back to us the peace, happiness and love we so greatly desire and deserve.
Yoga is already inside of you. Happiness is there. Yoga helps you peel away the onion layers to get to the core. To freedom. The deepest Divine connection to the Ultimate Light Source.
Come out of wanting and back into acceptance and Joy. A yogi or yogini can turn any situation into bliss. That is a yogi. Yoga is being now. Ultimate yoga is meditation. Just BE.
Yoga is love.
"Love is the light that dissolves all walls between souls." ~ Paramahansa Yogananda
Through a dedicated practice of all forms of yoga we can participate in the world with a sense of freedom, unaffected from trauma, depression, anger, etc. The freedom is balance in both.
Maggie Anderson is a Yoga & Spiritual Teacher, Reiki Master Teacher, Integrated Energy Therapy® Master Instructor, Soul Coach®, Past Life Coach, Magnified Healing® Master Teacher and Angelights Messenger. She is the author of How I Found My True Inner Peace and Divine Embrace. You can contact Maggie at SpiritualCompassConnection.com.
"Follow Your Bliss. It's Your Spiritual Compass."