So many people throughout the world, especially right now, are having challenges overcoming fear and dealing with anxiety and depression.
Here’s how the “problem” of overcoming fear, anxiety and depression is typically perceived and addressed:
- Anxiety, fear and depression are negative, bad, and painful – “enemies” that must be attacked and defeated, just like the military attacks and seeks to defeat its enemies
- If you want to attack and succeed at overcoming fear, anxiety and depression, which means to “feel better,” you must find a way to make them dissolve, or disappear. That’s what “defeat” means
- The most popular “ways” for attacking and dissolving fear, anxiety and depression, for overcoming fear, anxiety and depression, include psychoanalysis, prescription drugs, herbs, other natural substances, meditation, and various “alternative” healing models
The “Attack And Dissolve” Strategy Doesn’t Work For Overcoming Fear, Anxiety, And Depression …
When the attack and dissolve approach is taken with overcoming fear, anxiety and depression, people sometimes get relief. But permanent relief, completely overcoming fear, anxiety and depression, is rare.
In general, here’s what happens when the attack and dissolve approach is taken with overcoming fear, anxiety, and depression:
- The symptoms don’t dissolve or disappear — the overcoming fear, anxiety and depression treatments simply fail
- Anxiety, fear and depression go away … temporarily … but come back, sometimes stronger than before
- Anxiety, fear and depression appear to go away, but they don’t really, they’re really just hidden from view, masked, or covered over
In virtually all cases, the True Core Cause of the anxiety, fear and depression isn’t discovered or addressed, even if certain superficial causes are isolated, discussed and addressed.
Why Don’t The Traditional Approaches For Overcoming Fear, Anxiety, And Depression Work?
Why is it that people don’t usually get permanent relief from their efforts in overcoming fear, anxiety and depression?
Why is it that even if someone appears to be overcoming fear in some ways, or succeeds at overcoming fear for a while, or appears to be dealing better with anxiety or depression, they still wouldn’t describe themselves as “happy”?
If you want the answers to those questions, and other ones related to overcoming fear, anxiety, and depression, you must be willing to take a brutally honest look at something few people ever look at, or if they look, they don’t SEE.
The Solution To The Riddle Of Overcoming Fear, Anxiety And Depression
The solution to the riddle is there’s a fundamental flaw in the traditional model for overcoming fear; a fundamental flaw in the attack and dissolve approach to overcoming fear; a fundamental flaw in the belief that there are “positive” and “negative” emotions in the first place.
Want to know what the fundamental flaw is in the traditional models for overcoming fear, anxiety and depression? OK, but prepare yourself. What I’m about to say probably won’t make sense when you first hear it. It’s likely your mind will resist and come up with all kinds of objections.
It’s The Truth anyway.
And it’s the absolute key to overcoming fear, and successful treatment of depression and anxiety. It’s also the key to the ultimate banishment of all negative emotions from your life — and to Experiencing True happiness, peace, serenity, bliss, or whatever else you want to call it.
The Only True Path To Overcoming Fear, Anxiety, And Depression…
Emotions are part of The Human Experience. They’ll never go away. It’s like an assembly line, where the parts just keep coming … and coming … and coming.
If you believe there really are positive emotions (which are good) and negative emotions (which are bad), then, since the emotional assembly line is always running, it will always deliver what appears to be “negative” emotions that need to be attacked and dissolved.
You know this already from personal experience. There’s always another “negative” emotion rearing its ugly head in your life. The only question is when it will appear, how strong and intense it’ll be, and how long it’ll last.
Just like the military will never have enough money, soldiers, weapons and equipment to defeat all its enemies, you’ll never succeed at overcoming fear, anxiety and depression, at defeating all the negative emotions … and … ultimately, experiencing True Happiness.
The real solution is to abandon the attack and dissolve approach to overcoming fear, and open into a direct Experience of The Truth. What does that mean? It means Seeing, really Seeing, Experiencing, really Experiencing, that there’s no such thing as positive and negative emotions, no such thing as feel good emotions and feel bad emotions, no such thing as fear, anxiety and depression.
There’s just emotion, what’s often referred to as an “inner movement of energy,” — and ALL emotions can be Experienced as “positive.”
All emotions can be Experienced without judgment, names, and “polarity” (good–bad, comfortable–uncomfortable, painful–pleasurable, etc.).
This Is What True Happiness Is …
This is the True Path to overcoming fear, anxiety and depression.
This is not some airy-fairy or woo-woo idea and concept. I’m talking about actual experience. This Truth can actually be experienced 24/7.
I know I just dropped a big bomb in your pond and it’ll take some time for the ripples to work their way out, especially about overcoming fear, anxiety and depression. But I wanted to plant the Seed Of Truth about overcoming fear right here, right now.
I’ll be going into more detail about Truth, emotions, overcoming fear, and True Happiness in future posts. Stay tuned. Or, if you can’t wait and you want all the answers to overcoming fear, anxiety and depression now, click on this link:
How To Overcome Fear, Anxiety And Depression, And Experience True Happiness
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Since overcoming fear, anxiety and depression is such an important topic, and since what I just shared above is rarely discussed, please share this post about overcoming fear, anxiety treatment, and depression treatment in all the ways available to you, including using the social media options you see below …
Thank you for this post. It is something I have been dealing with and have done just what you mention. I finally gave up the fight and now when those emotions come up I just immerse myself in them which allows them to move on, instead of staying. If I give those emotions permission to be real, then they get to hang around instead of flowing through and out.
Thanks!
Richard Mathiason
I agree with your description of the situation, but you left out one key solution that in my experience works every time to dissolve fear, anxiety and depression in myself and others. TAKE ACTION, we dwell on our fears, anxieties, and depression and make it look to be far worse then things actually are. Every time I face my fear by taking action, I instantly realize things are not nearly as bad as I thought. Every time I get depressed, taking action towards achieving something always pulls me out of it. I agree that we can not get rid of our emotions as they are apart of life, but I do not think people need some fancy new drug, or philosophy to deal with them. This is just my opinion though. I am curious if my opinion works out in your paradigm.
Stephen: In your narrative above, as I see it, there’s still:
1. An acknowledgement that the fear, etc. is real, it actually exists
2. A quieter but still present intent to attack and dissolve it — i.e. “If I take action, as a technique, I can make this bad feeling go away.”
It’s very subtle. You do say that when you do that you can see things aren’t as bad as they seemed, etc. — but in my language, a lot of lies, illusions and stories are active here.
The opportunity I’m inviting people to look at is taking a different path than attack and dissolve.
No problem with any of this. I’m not being critical. But if Experiencing The Truth about emotions is your goal (and it may not be), I invite you to look a bit more deeply into this.
Robert, I read your first book around 2006 while living in the island of Cyprus..been processing ever since….Thank You…thought you might enjoy this…’True Joy’…
“Within many indigenous societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions. When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?”
Whole Lota Love,
Kat
This has so much support in it because they are often the things that override the depressing persona. Great thank you.
Thank you Robert for your message and passion for Truth. I love the gentleness and profound release or freedom I feel when I fully embrace the experience or moment, it is such a powerful and miraculous power…..
Thank you to the LOVE or SILENCE that we are I can embrace it all. Love and gratitude to you!
Right on, Robert! There are no negative emotions only energy and how we respond to it.
Thanks for that perspective Robert. As I read your post I thought of two energies which I could describe as yin (so called negative emotions) and Yang (the postive ones). However they are variances of the same basic energy that runs through all of us. I have spent years playing with the game of suffering and at times depression and I have come to the conclusion to embrace it all without making too big a deal of it. Also its not about getting rid of these states but feel them out as and when they show up.
Absolutely. This may be our one and only life ( yes lots of debate there) and the fact we are here at all in this vast universe is nothing short of an ongoing miracle. Every moment is truly an amazing miraculous spectacle. And whether we are losing our house, or running our bank account dry or losing a lover or in pain from Cancer or in the bliss of sexual union…each moment of that is an experiential miracle. After all what’s the alternative.
Just the fact of having consciousness ( whatever that actualliy is) is a daily adventure. You are correct Robert that emotion is neither good or bad…its the perspective from our individual contexts we attach to the energy that makes it good or bad. It is our cultural conditioning which defines our emotional rollercoaster ride.
Yes there is pain and suffering in this world, but those of us who can understand on a dialy basis the absolute wonder of being a conscious being can help ease the suffering of others by not being so attached to our own.
Thanks for the comment, Christopher. As I see it, and you and everyone else reading this is welcome to disagree, is that when you experience The Truth of things, there’s no such thing as suffering, there’s no suffering in the world at all.
What appears to be suffering, negative emotion, etc., is all just what I call a “Mind Machine story merged with the pure, raw experience that’s Happening.”
But when the pure, are happening is experienced by itself, there is no suffering, no negative anything, etc.
This is not an idea or concept. It is something that can be experienced, just to sue that word (it’s not really an “experience” it’s behind that).
Getting to and living in that “place” is what my life and latest work is all about.
Hmmm. Ok. I see you are going deeper than I first thought. Sounds very Buddhist and I hear what you are saying. It undoubtedly has a great deal to do with attention and intention. Thnaks for getting me thinking this morning.
I love this. “the place behind the experience”. I’m pretty sure I know what you mean but I would love further elaboration for the heck of it. Thanks!
yes! sometimes I get a nano glimpse of that place I certainly have intellectualised it. So cool.
Hello Robert,
Thank you for this post. I know what you say to be the Truth. I wish I could say I know it through experience. Ironically, despite my mental acknowledgement of the Truth of what you say, in ‘reality’ I’m on several medications to treat what at the time (5 years ago) was diagnosed as major depression and severe anxiety. The medications make an enormous difference and I would never advise anyone to abandon their treatment. This contradiction has bothered me enormously. Knowing the truth yet living seemingly devoid of it’s (the Truth) reality in this particular area of my life.
Living with, with what feels like a gross contradiction, has caused me to look differently at the emotional torment I struggled with for 15 years before seeking treatment. I was very arrogant, I felt that I deserved to have it all go smoothly. It was a sense of entitlement and when I became ill, I slowly opened to others who struggle emotionally, and was willing to accept improvement (no matter how small) as worthy and good.
Before that improvement and progress felt like regression and feeble.
Medication, although it helped enormously did not bring the happiness and joy you speak of. And I understand that as long as I am ‘plugged’ into the belief that I have mental illness and that that’s something I need to ‘overcome’ or ‘destroy’ I will not experience true joy. And at this juncture, lies the catch 22. How does one, seeking freedom, embrace a ‘solution’ without an intent to free oneself? And the intent to be free is founded on the premise there is bondage, which in itself is the belief the ‘solution’ essentially highlights as the cause of the bondage to start with.
Thank you for being a proponent of Truth. It is revolutionary and despite my ‘struggles’, intuitively I know (as many others I’m sure) that nothing short of experiential knowledge of the freedom you speak of, will suffice.
Best wishes
Nic
What you state is the biggest challenge in mainstream self-help and also in spiritual development, non-duality, enlightenment, awakening dynamics, etc. — how to move from understanding something at the idea and concept level to actually Experiencing it?
I struggled with that same dilemma for most of my life.
What I offer in my “Being In Truth” program, a 24 week program, was how I made the leap into actual experience, and how I help others to do it.
It doesn’t generally happen overnight, but it is doable by everyone if it fits into their personal journey and story.
Hello Robert,
It’s enormously heartwarming to receive replies from you. Thank you SO much.
Based on what you and others have written here. Two points, in particular, stand out to me. 1. Experiencing a 24/7 life that reflects the Truth can take time. 2. Using the ‘tools’ should be motivated by a love of the Truth rather than a set intellectual outcome or goal.
Thank you for bring the 24 week ‘being in truth’ program to my attention.
There’s a beautiful and exciting meaning in that for ‘me’.
Talk to ‘you’ soon
nic
This is SO true. After reading Robert´s books and busting loose, I´ve experienced several “critical” experiences but my new outlook has meant that there´s no suffering, there are just emotions.
Shortly after busting loose, my mother died. The grief I experienced was totally different than when my father died ten years earlier. I just observed it, experienced it and carried on with my life. Neither good nor bad, it just happened.
A few months later, I nearly died from an allergic reaction to a painkiller, going into anaphylactic shock. Again, my predominant thought was “how interesting, I´m dying!” Sounds weird, but that´s how it was. (as an afterthought, I recovered fully in 24 hours, much less than it normally takes and with no hospital).
Then the foundation I run almost had to close from a dramatic drop in donations for no apparent reason. I lived through the anxiety as just an emotion, without labelling it as bad, and everything was OK! I even imagined myself with no money and a mountain of debts and thought it was just “interesting”. (a few months later, for no apparent reason, the donations started coming in again).
I know it sounds incredible, but as Robert says, when you realise the truth, that´s the way you feel 24/7.
I haven´t got the hang of it completely, and curiously small things still generate labels (computer hanging, stubbing my toe, losing stuff etc.) but when I ride out the initial labelling process, the feeling of “this just doesn´t matter” takes over again.
Hope this helps.
Where’s the Like Button when you want one?… Hehe. I know just my story… I like your story John.
Like button is at the top of the post above the title.
Thank you John for sharing your experience. I feel that I benefit a lot from seeing how other people “apply” the TRUTH to their actual experiences. It reminds me and inspires me to look at and feel about things that (I make) happen in my life the same way.
Thank you Robert for another fantastik post. I do my best to switch from “understanding an idea” mode to the “experiencing it”. Yes, it’s not so easy.
Great article Robert; I’m totally with you there. This has been a hard lesson for me to learn, and I’m still getting it. I think the compounding problem is that when we push unpleasant emotions away or down, they intensify in order to get our attention. So we push harder. It doesn’t occur to us that the solution is to stop avoiding how we feel, and actually dive into it. This feels overwhelming at first because we have a backlog to process and a society with a sense of shame around feeling unpleasant emotions.
Thanks for putting this out there. For me, emotional mastery is the core component of true self-confidence. I’ll be tweeting this to my followers.
Cheers,
Graham
Cheers, Graham! Thanks for the feedback and tweet. Both appreciated.
For 5 years I suffered sever depression and panic attacks and spent most of that time trying to fight and fix it. Then one day I woke up still feeling like crap and decided rather than keep doing the same thing maybe, just maybe, there was another way, so I decided to play with it knowing I really had nothing to lose.
My first experiment was just to accept the feelings as another feeling and then do what ever it was I was going to do or not do that day. That simple decision changed my life forever.
It was not until I found your work that I realised what I had done, I had removed all the labels from what I was experiencing and allowed myself to just experience it with no or very little judgement. After doing you work I also realised I could apply this approach to the other areas of my life and have experienced the same results.
I have found this approach to life to be the most profound work I have ever done and have total appreciation for your on going teaching and promotion of it.
Thrills me to hear that, Gavin.
For me, big negative emotions used to be anger and frustration, and a few variations on those themes I used to call “futility” and “victimhood.”
When the opening into Truth happened, wow …
Thanks for the share.
It takes courage to face our “negative” feelings head on and once we do we realize they are almost never what we thought they were!. thanks for your insightful post
Peter
Hi Robert & Friends,
Great article and fantastic reply posts here! I’m almost through the Busting Lose From The Money Game book, and I’ve been implementing teachings like this for a while.
I continue to be fascinated by this life-game that we’re playing. Every moment we have an experience. For the most part, the vast majority of us(myself included) are resisting our momentary experiences. This resistance to what-is is a habit/pattern. When we resist what-is, we suffer(using a human perspective word here).
While it’s counter intuitive to invite, allow and experience emotions/energy such as depression and anxiety, doing so is the exact solution that allows us to feel alive, free, flow, joy or whatever you want to call it. Becoming relatively proficient with being present and experiencing whatever arises within me has had very positive impact on my stress/anxiety level, health and life experience.
Here’s what I’m wondering about your philosophy and experience Robert…Along with implementing “The Process” habitually, do you apply Focusing On What Your Higher Self Wants, Intending What Your Higher Self Wants and Aligned Action With Your Higher Self’s Wants? Or do you believe these co-creating with Source tools/habits are bunk? If so, please provide a bit of insight. I’m so curious about this.
Thanks for your giving nature and obvious dedication to the experience of True Joy.
After using the tools you’re discovering for 6+ years relentlessly, I knocked out a lot of cloud cover, and was then taken deeper into an experience of Truth in very unexpected ways.
I stopped using the tools at that time and everything continued to expand and transform (although I don’t use those words anymore) in extraordinary ways.
For me, even before what I just said, it was never about “aligning” with anything. There’s no way to ever be “out” of alignment with “Higher Self,” life plan and mission, etc. That’s just a Phase 1 myth.
You can find out more about what all that means by checking out the “Being In Truth” information on the site.
Blog post comment areas aren’t the place to have this sort of discussion or for me to provide support of this nature. I’m sure you understand that.
Thanks Robert for spreading True Good News!
I totally get your point of not judging our moment of the ride as good or bad… just enjoy the ride thing… you Teach about. Maybe too many times that principle is in my head but it doesn’t become “real”… real, as when I feel it. Other times, few times, I just get it in my head and it becomes instant joy… just by thinking about that reality… it becomes real.
Thanks for your response Robert. I’ll let the points you made marinade and go from there.
I apologize if my post was in any way inappropriate. For clarification to you and your readers, I was simply sharing my thoughts and asking a question to gain an answer that I feel will help me feel if I’m compelled to further explore your teachings/offerings. My intentions came from an honest place of pure curiosity.
Of course, I’m a guy who’s transitioning from Phase 1 to Phase 2, so some of my cloud cover may be what’s showing up here.
I look forward to learning more during your webinar.
With respect.
Nothing ‘”inappropriate” at all. Just need to draw a boundary, as it were, as I get so many requests for support through channels where it doesn’t work. Cheers…
Your hologram must have communicated with me via consciousness because I was just thinking about this topic earlier. Your book Busting Loose from the Money Game showed up at the perfect time in my life. Loved ones suffering and dying, poverty, potential homelessness, however, I just kept applying the process, and believe it or not, in the midst of extreme fear, anxiety and depression, I was even happier than the happiest people I know. I looked back on this today, and saw those strong emotions, as simply a lightening bolt of energy charging through me. I have really been working on “experiencing” as opposed to “analyzing”, and so your blog today, is a very healthy reminder on how to stay on course experiencing energy without labeling it good or bad. Thanks Robert!
The thing to remember here is that you can’t think or intend or self-discipline yourself into an experience of Truth. The cloud cover must be knocked out and then it will reveal itself naturally, automatically. All intellectual or willpower efforts are doomed to failure.
I caught myself! I caught myself thinking, collecting, analyzing, how I must get past all the intellectualism, willpower and self discipline, and thinking about ways to accomplish this. At this discomfort on how to “hurry up” and do this, I simply decided to break out cloud cover, and “do the process” to my discomfort. I think your work should be on the bookshelves of EVERY psychologist. Thanks Robert!
dear Robert,
I toltally agree with you and all that you wrote makes sense to me! Not because I am smart enough to understand everything the first time you hear it,but because I am on of those people who have been searching,and fighting, and losing for all my life,(I am 55now.
I am very well now,just for having ceased the (infinite) war within myself.Very relaxing!!!
Thank you,Raffaella
Thank you for this post yes! sometimes I get a nano glimpse of that place I certainly have intellectualised it. So cool
For those who post here-
The Truth (as well as the source of lies and illusions)
become obviously clear when you participate in Robert’s “Being in Truth” program. Check it out!
The experience will “Blow your Mind”
Don’t wait- it is a powerful experience of “The Truth”
A previous BIT participant-
I don’t know scientific name for state I am in. Robert call it the TRUTH, some people around me call it “crazyness”, and I call it “me”.
About 3 years ago something changed inside of me and I emerged as diferent person. By that I mean judgement disappeared and with that all other “negative” emotions such as fear, anger, hate etc. I felt that the world and everything in it just is, not good or bad.
With that realisation anything that does not serve me just fell away and still does (food, beverages including alcohol, overdoing something, news and politics, fear etc). The bigest fear a person has is a fear of death, and even that fear fell away when I realised that I am just playing a human game and when I had enough I will just go back where I come from. That was a turning point.
We don’t realise but whole system is revolving around fear:
1. Fear of punishment: There are rules, and there are consequences
2. Fear for future: saving account (for rainy day), retirement plan (worrying how am I going to live in 20 years time), various insurances (disability, trauma, funeral and other nonsense) etc.
3. Fear of social interaction: appearance, acceptance, prestige, identification, power etc
Just to name a few.
We first in our mind have to create horrible things happening, then we buy insurance against it, without realizing damage we are doing to ourselves in the process. Robert calls it Dooms Day Scenario. I don’t have any of those problems.
We even tell our children: “You better start worrying about (school, exam, job, future etc).”
When I interact with the people, sometimes I call the period before the awakening – my previous life. Some laugh it off, and those who know me long enough do realise that I am different in my approach to them, to life, to world – but in a good way. I don’t try to explain because I know they wouldn’t understand.
I am somewhat confused about this whole idea of support and inspiration. Since both of these are aspects of the hologram, they seem to be part of the illusion of cause and effect. If someone reads the article they will experience support. The support will help them grow. All cause and effect ideas. I’ve been pondering this one for awhile now.
You’re way over thinking this.
We’re all the stars of our own unique stories. In those stories, things appear to happen. There does appear to be cause and effect, including support and inspiration. It’s not :”really” happening, but ti appears to as part of the story.
Harry Potter isn’t real. He doesn’t really have any magic. But in the stories he appears to be able to work spells. It’s just the story.
– Robert
30+ years ago my husband (at that time) and I were on a camping trip. On the way home we had stopped at a beautiful spot for a little break, and while just hanging out, I had an intensly vivid thought/experience that (simply put) ‘life was just a game; we’re simply here to amuse ourselves’. I wish I had found Roberts teachings then; I would have avoided so many unpleasant experiences over the next 30 years! I think that I transformed in to Phase 2 so quickly and easily (starting as as a completely disabled person, chock a block full of fear, anxiety, depression – having had a total and complete emotional breakdown 2 years ago) because of that experience so long ago, and, remembering it so vividly after starting work with Robert’s teachings. Now I believe that my ‘breakdown’ was a great big “Hello, it’s time to break free of this ridiculous game you’ve been playing and to find the ‘truth’ again, girl, and … you already know what it is!” Roberts teachings is my creation to bring all that back in to focus – and my life has changed DRAMATICALLY in a very short period of time! Like you say, the TRUTH is out there. It just gets hidden and/or we just don’t pay close enough attention to the clues as we play the ‘human game’.