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Feb. 17, 2025
Overcoming Anxiety: Embracing Formless Awareness
In today's podcast, we explore the profound relationship between anxiety and present awareness. The discussion illuminates personal experiences, the teachings of Eckhart Tolle, and crucial practices like "neti neti," guiding listeners to transcend anxiety through mindfulness and understanding their true nature.
• The personal narrative of experiencing anxiety regarding finances
• Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now" as a source of peace
• Importance of present awareness in managing anxious thoughts
• The practice of "neti neti" to separate oneself from worries
• The distinction between mild anxiety and crippling mental health issues
• Engaging in self-exploration and mindfulness practices
• How awareness can elevate the human experience beyond anxiety
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Transcript
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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Bearded Mystic podcast, and I'm your host, rahul N Singh.
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Thank you for joining today and please like this video.
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Please comment on this video.
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Please like this on your favourite podcast streaming app and subscribe and follow this podcast.
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It's really important that you do so so you don't miss an episode that I do Now.
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This has been pretty good.
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We've been doing these kind of casual podcasts and I'm kind of liking it.
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I'm feeling more comfortable with it.
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So today I want to talk about a time I felt anxiety.
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I wanted to talk about a time I felt anxiety, and we know that anxiety is when you're kind of feeling fear and easiness about the future.
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What are the consequences?
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Maybe the last time I ever felt anxious, like anxiety, was maybe in 2013, and it was a time when I don't think I had much money and so I was very worried about what was going to happen, whether I would afford rent, whether I would be able to pay the bills, even afford the train ticket to go to work.
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So that anxiety, I remembered that train ride and certain things come into your life at the right time, and I just finished reading Eckhart Tolle's the Power of Now.
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Now, that book never gave me an awakening experience or enlightenment, or even I would say I would say it probably refined whatever I had already experienced.
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However, it did put me at ease in that moment.
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In that moment, all I said was well, right now do I have to pay the bills?
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No, right now.
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Do I have to pay the rent?
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No, right now do I need to pay for a train ticket?
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No, because I normally bought like a I think it was a monthly or a weekly season pass, so I would save money.
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And so when, whenever that feeling and easiness, kind of Tension about the future came up, I would Just go into the now and I'll be in the present moment.
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I'll bring my awareness to the present and at this moment.
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You know, I hadn't gone deeper into awareness at this point.
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This was more like on the periphery of just being aware of my thoughts, aware of the mind.
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So it was very, very.
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It was shallow but I guess, deeper than most people.
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But all I remember at that moment was feeling a sense of peace, a sense of direction that I could do something about this, or I actually didn't have to worry about it, because by that time I'll have the next paycheck.
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I think I had to pay the property tax that month or something, and it was something I didn't anticipate, or the gas bill was higher than expected, so it meant that I would have to pay.
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Yeah, I think it was a gas bill.
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I had to pay council tax, which is property tax in the US, every month anyway.
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So that wasn't the thing, it was a gas bill and that kind of took me off the budget type of thing.
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So I was extremely worried and I didn't think this is what happens when you get deep into anxiety.
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You don't think properly and I didn't understand that actually I would have got paid by the time any of this would have when I had to pay my rent or had to pay my bills or anything like that.
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So and this was a long time ago and since then I never felt anxiety and I guess it was because I'd already dealt or I was dealing with more or less the.
00:05:05.482 --> 00:05:12.396
At that time, I think I was dealing with the grief of losing my brother, so it was.
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It was like I was already working on getting my mind strong.
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So I guess if I was deep into grief and the grief would overwhelm me into depression, then it would have probably had a much deeper impact, but because I didn't allow it to, kind of because I've already was dealing with working with my mind and looking at grief and looking at when I got upset and in pain that that anxiety wasn't able to kind of grab hold of me as it could have done.
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But feeling that moment of anxiety feeling, I remember just going into the now and at that time it was just like I mentioned, all about just making sure I could control my thoughts.
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So it wasn't about getting rid of thought or getting or resting in awareness, it was simply just becoming aware of thought and you know, from incessant thinking which the anxiety brought up, and feeling things.
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So the incessant chatter of sensations and feelings, emotions and thoughts, as that was rising up, I would just be like watching them, like and slow down and calm down and I would be like, okay, I'm in the now and the beauty of See being in the now is being in the present moment Is, is what I would say A very important Kind of foundational step.
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I wouldn't say it's something deep or it is something that is Going to lead you to self-realization or even enlightenment, unless one is given the training to understand what Brahman, or consciousness, is.
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Now, my clarity about consciousness only occurred and the seed was planted with my guru when he told me to be in awareness, in the awareness of the formless 24-7, which is literally now the name of my course I'm creating, which is Resting in formless awareness, and that teaching again, I got taught this and it only I only understood it maybe four years later.
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I think I was told this in 2015, 2014, yeah, 2015, and 2019, 2020, is when I started to kind of understand the depth of that teaching.
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There's one thing being shown what your true nature is which is formless, like, like there's one thing.
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Knowing it and then being in awareness of it continuously is a challenge because, like any knowledge, we have it, but do we just bring it up to be a concept or do we bring it into experience?
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Do we really want to be kind of living it practically?
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And it was only when I properly, like, got deep into studying Advaita Vedanta and sorry about the sound of that, car I don't know why these days there's lots of that sound, but anyway, it's happening in awareness.
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I'm joking, I'm living in the relative reality.
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I still have to deal with it.
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So, but anyway, when it comes to resting in awareness.
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When it comes to you know, when you're aware of being aware that awareness then does not have a single concept, a single vibrational move.
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There's no movement, there's no energy there.
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There's potential for energy, but that doesn't mean there's energy there, and that's something we have to understand, because people seem to correlate energy to this.
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One thing I will say is once you bring energy into this, you're bringing it back to the vahavadika level, so you're bringing this back to the transactional reality.
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The absolute reality will not even have that energy there.
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You, there's no sensation in this, there's no thought in this, there's no riti in this, so there's no movement.
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Even that leads to thoughts.
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There's no thought in this, there's no riti in this, so there's no movement.
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Even that leads to thought.
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There's no desire in this.
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There's no, there's no separation in this.
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It's oneness and it's in its nature.
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It's not that something brings this about, it's just that when you're resting in awareness, this is the exact nature of awareness there's peacefulness and there's blissfulness, there's contentment and there's blissfulness, there's contentment and there's completeness.
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So, when you are at that point, before thought, before emotions, before sensations, before anxiety, fear, anything like that, yeah, terror or, you know, worry or stress or anything like that, prior to any of that awareness is there.
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You could say, naked.
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It's that emperor literally has no clothes on.
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That emperor literally has no clothes on.
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It's, it's so.
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And because of that, when it comes to existence, when we bring it back to the Vahevarika level, the transactional level, and you're in that constant remembrance.
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Remember on that level, you're in the remembrance, the self on that level, you're in the remembrance, the self-remembrance Of I am Brahman.
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I am Brahman.
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I am this formless awareness.
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I am this formless awareness and again, it's not a concept, this is we're going through the Atma Vichara.
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We are doing the kind of, we are just doing self-remembrance.
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We're not remembering something different to us or separate to us.
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We're remembering our true nature and you have to remember that for many lifetimes we have thought that we are this body and mind and that's why anxiety comes into our life, because we believe we are this body and mind, and that's why anxiety comes into our life, because we believe we are this body and mind.
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So when that happens, it's very important that we start practicing neti neti.
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So the knowledge that I got was through the process of neti neti, that when you remove everything, then what's left?
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And you can't that pointing.
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You know, all you can say is there's just formless awareness, there's just awareness that remains and you're captured in that awareness, and that is what is higher than knowledge.
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It's beyond knowledge, if we could say, and that's when we move from the Vahavadika level to the Paramatika level, the absolute reality, and so resting in that absolute reality and functioning and understanding that that's the absolute.
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But I'm on this transactional reality and I'm functioning.
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When worries or stresses come up, you can actually deal with them.
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In fact, I would say there will just be a slight movement, but they won't even enter into thought.
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So you can literally transcend anxiety.
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Now what I want to say importantly is that if you have crippling anxiety, where it harms your psychological health, your mental health, then utilizing a mental health practitioner is super, super, super, super, super, super, super important.
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Let me make that very clear.
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Do not think that just simply by being aware you'll get rid of your anxiety.
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If you had something like what I had, which was a very passing anxiety, it wasn't something that would cripple me, it was something I could easily control.
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It's different in my case, but I can't say that in my case you will like.
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Everyone has the same case that I have.
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That would be very naive and unfortunately, a lot of non-dual teachers, non-duality teachers, do not teach this.
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They do not on this, and I feel that that's what's missing.
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So, remember, whenever anxiety comes up and again, it's not one that's crippling you, so if it's crippling you, you seek a mental health professional and seek guidance there.
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You can also do this.
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But remember, this exercise will only work if you have your anxiety under control, okay, if you have your mind under control.
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So all you have to do is, literally, through the process of neti neti, realize I'm not the body, I'm not the mind, I'm not the intellect, I'm not the discernment, I'm not the viveka, I'm not the wisdom, I'm not the ignorance, I'm not my thoughts, I'm not my emotions, I'm not my sensations, I'm not even the objects of the senses, I'm not even the witness of the mind.
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I am just simply the witnessing.
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I am that formless where there is no space, time, where there is no causality, where this formless awareness is self-existent, is boundless, it is imageless, it is colorless, shapeless, it is beyond hot and cold, beyond sound, beyond blankness, and that's where you remain and once you are stabilized in that awareness and it's not something that a thought will arise to say you're stable in this.
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No, it's literally you just feel things align like you, you, just you, you, the.
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The alignment occurs and very naturally, very spontaneously, and you just simply rest and dissolve in that.
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So, if there's any iota of existence still left, of name and form, that will dissolve in this and one just simply remains there, remains here, remains now, remains in the present, because there is no future and there is no past here, when we say even the present is one that is timeless, is eternal, here no modifications of any kind occur.
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Therefore there's only happiness, there's only blissfulness, there's only fullness and at the same time, because we live in the world, remember that this world comes back because it has the potential to do so, due to awareness housing that potential.
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Now, that potential can never be awareness, but that potential is there because of awareness, because of consciousness, and in that formlessness is where all forms arise, where all mental constructs arise, where all psychology arises.
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And one remains as that formless awareness, even while functioning in the world of forms, of names, of sensations, of emotions, of the mind and the body, and yet never loses its place in the absolute reality, while functioning in oneness with the relative reality.
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And that's how we live a life free from anxiety, beyond anxiety, and say we're enlightened and anxiety turns up and it tries to get us.
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Even then we just rest back in awareness.
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If we find it crippling within us, then we seek help.
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There's nothing wrong with that Because, remember, the mind, the body, the intellect, all belongs to Prakriti, belongs to nature.
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It does not belong to the absolute reality, it does not belong to formless awareness.
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And that's all we have to keep remembering and that's all I want to say today.
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But thank you very much for listening.
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Please like this video, please share this video and namaste to you all.
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