anxiety

99:4.6Dur­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cally un­set­tled times of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, amid the eco­nomic up­heavals, the moral cross­cur­rents, and the so­ci­o­logic rip tides of the cy­clonic tran­si­tions of a sci­en­tific era, thou­sands upon thou­sands of men and women have be­come hu­manly dis­lo­cated; they are anx­ious, rest­less, fear­ful, un­cer­tain, and un­set­tled; as never be­fore in the world’s his­tory they need the con­so­la­tion and sta­bi­liza­tion of sound re­li­gion. In the face of un­prece­dented sci­en­tific achieve­ment and me­chan­i­cal de­vel­op­ment there is spir­i­tual stag­na­tion and philo­sophic chaos.

48:7.2119. Anx­i­ety must be aban­doned. The dis­ap­point­ments hard­est to bear are those which never come.

137:1.6Je­sus was asleep when they reached his abode, but they awak­ened him, say­ing: “How is it that, while we who have so long lived with you are search­ing in the hills for you, you pre­fer oth­ers be­fore us and choose An­drew and Si­mon as your first as­so­ciates in the new king­dom?” Je­sus an­swered them, “Be calm in your hearts and ask your­selves, ‘who di­rected that you should search for the Son of Man when he was about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness?’” Af­ter they had re­cited the de­tails of their long search in the hills, Je­sus fur­ther in­structed them: “You should learn to search for the se­cret of the new king­dom in your hearts and not in the hills. That which you sought was al­ready pres­ent in your souls. You are in­deed my breth­ren—you needed not to be re­ceived by me—al­ready were you of the king­dom, and you should be of good cheer, mak­ing ready also to go with us to­mor­row into Gal­i­lee.” John then made bold to ask, “But, Mas­ter, will James and I be as­so­ciates with you in the new king­dom, even as An­drew and Si­mon?” And Je­sus, lay­ing a hand on the shoul­der of each of them, said: “My breth­ren, you were al­ready with me in the spirit of the king­dom, even be­fore these oth­ers made re­quest to be re­ceived. You, my breth­ren, have no need to make re­quest for en­trance into the king­dom; you have been with me in the king­dom from the be­gin­ning. Be­fore men, oth­ers may take prece­dence over you, but in my heart did I also num­ber you in the coun­cils of the king­dom, even be­fore you thought to make this re­quest of me. And even so might you have been first be­fore men had you not been ab­sent en­gaged in a well-in­ten­tioned but self-ap­pointed task of seek­ing for one who was not lost. In the com­ing king­dom, be not mind­ful of those things which fos­ter your anx­i­ety but rather at all times con­cern your­selves only with do­ing the will of the Fa­ther who is in heaven.”

165:5.2“Yes, An­drew, I will speak to you about these mat­ters of wealth and self-sup­port, but my words to you, the apos­tles, must be some­what dif­fer­ent from those spo­ken to the dis­ci­ples and the mul­ti­tude since you have for­saken ev­ery­thing, not only to fol­low me, but to be or­dained as am­bas­sadors of the king­dom. Al­ready have you had sev­eral years’ ex­pe­ri­ence, and you know that the Fa­ther whose king­dom you pro­claim will not for­sake you. You have ded­i­cated your lives to the min­istry of the king­dom; there­fore be not anx­ious or wor­ried about the things of the tem­po­ral life, what you shall eat, nor yet for your body, what you shall wear. The wel­fare of the soul is more than food and drink; the prog­ress in the spirit is far above the need of rai­ment. When you are tempted to doubt the sure­ness of your bread, con­sider the ravens; they sow not nei­ther reap, they have no store­houses or barns, and yet the Fa­ther pro­vides food for ev­ery one of them that seeks it. And of how much more value are you than many birds! Be­sides, all of your anx­i­ety or fret­ting doubts can do noth­ing to sup­ply your ma­te­rial needs. Which of you by anx­i­ety can add a hand­breadth to your stature or a day to your life? Since such mat­ters are not in your hands, why do you give anx­ious thought to any of these prob­lems?

100:5.10The more health­ful at­ti­tude of spir­i­tual med­i­ta­tion is to be found in re­flec­tive wor­ship and in the prayer of thanks­giv­ing. The di­rect com­mu­nion with one’s Thought Ad­juster, such as oc­curred in the later years of Je­sus’ life in the flesh, should not be con­fused with these so-called mys­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ences. The fac­tors which con­tribute to the ini­ti­a­tion of mys­tic com­mu­nion are in­dica­tive of the dan­ger of such psy­chic states. The mys­tic sta­tus is fa­vored by such things as: phys­i­cal fa­tigue, fast­ing, psy­chic dis­so­ci­a­tion, pro­found aes­thetic ex­pe­ri­ences, vivid sex im­pulses, fear, anx­i­ety, rage, and wild danc­ing. Much of the ma­te­rial aris­ing as a re­sult of such pre­lim­i­nary prepa­ra­tion has its ori­gin in the sub­con­scious mind.

113:2.5The an­gels de­velop an abid­ing af­fec­tion for their hu­man as­so­ciates; and you would, if you could only vi­su­al­ize the ser­a­phim, de­velop a warm af­fec­tion for them. Di­vested of ma­te­rial bod­ies, given spirit forms, you would be very near the an­gels in many at­tri­butes of per­son­al­ity. They share most of your emo­tions and ex­pe­ri­ence some ad­di­tional ones. The only emo­tion ac­tu­at­ing you which is some­what dif­fi­cult for them to com­pre­hend is the legacy of an­i­mal fear that bulks so large in the men­tal life of the av­er­age in­hab­i­tant of Uran­tia. The an­gels re­ally find it hard to un­der­stand why you will so per­sis­tently al­low your higher in­tel­lec­tual pow­ers, even your re­li­gious faith, to be so dom­i­nated by fear, so thor­oughly de­mor­al­ized by the thought­less panic of dread and anx­i­ety.

48:4.62. Cur­rent hu­mor. The sense­less­ness of much that so of­ten causes us se­ri­ous con­cern, the joy at dis­cov­er­ing the unim­por­tance of much of our se­ri­ous per­sonal anx­i­ety. We are most ap­pre­cia­tive of this phase of hu­mor when we are best able to dis­count the anx­i­eties of the pres­ent in fa­vor of the cer­tain­ties of the fu­ture.

9:5.7Too of­ten, all too of­ten, you mar your minds by in­sin­cer­ity and sear them with un­righ­teous­ness; you sub­ject them to an­i­mal fear and dis­tort them by use­less anx­i­ety. There­fore, though the source of mind is di­vine, mind as you know it on your world of as­cen­sion can hardly be­come the ob­ject of great ad­mi­ra­tion, much less of ado­ra­tion or wor­ship. The con­tem­pla­tion of the im­ma­ture and in­ac­tive hu­man in­tel­lect should lead only to re­ac­tions of hu­mil­ity.

48:4.16The need for the re­lax­ation and di­ver­sion of hu­mor is great­est in those or­ders of as­cen­dant be­ings who are sub­jected to sus­tained stress in their up­ward strug­gles. The two ex­tremes of life have lit­tle need for hu­mor­ous di­ver­sions. Prim­i­tive men have no ca­pac­ity there­for, and be­ings of Par­a­dise per­fec­tion have no need thereof. The hosts of Ha­vona are nat­u­rally a joy­ous and ex­hil­a­rat­ing as­sem­blage of su­premely happy per­son­al­i­ties. On Par­a­dise the qual­ity of wor­ship ob­vi­ates the ne­ces­sity for re­ver­sion ac­tiv­i­ties. But among those who start their ca­reers far be­low the goal of Par­a­dise per­fec­tion, there is a large place for the min­istry of the re­ver­sion di­rec­tors.

48:4.17The higher the mor­tal species, the greater the stress and the greater the ca­pac­ity for hu­mor as well as the ne­ces­sity for it. In the spirit world the op­po­site is true: The higher we as­cend, the less the need for the di­ver­sions of re­ver­sion ex­pe­ri­ences. But pro­ceed­ing down the scale of spirit life from Par­a­dise to the se­raphic hosts, there is an in­creas­ing need for the mis­sion of mirth and the min­istry of mer­ri­ment. Those be­ings who most need the re­fresh­ment of pe­ri­odic re­ver­sion to the in­tel­lec­tual sta­tus of pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ences are the higher types of the hu­man species, the mor­ontians, an­gels, and the Ma­te­rial Sons, to­gether with all sim­i­lar types of per­son­al­ity.

48:4.18Hu­mor should func­tion as an au­to­matic safety valve to pre­vent the build­ing up of ex­ces­sive pres­sures due to the mo­not­ony of sus­tained and se­ri­ous self-con­tem­pla­tion in as­so­ci­a­tion with the in­tense strug­gle for de­vel­op­men­tal prog­ress and no­ble achieve­ment. Hu­mor also func­tions to lessen the shock of the un­ex­pected im­pact of fact or of truth, rigid un­yield­ing fact and flex­i­ble ever-liv­ing truth. The mor­tal per­son­al­ity, never sure as to which will next be en­coun­tered, through hu­mor swiftly grasps—sees the point and achieves in­sight—the un­ex­pected na­ture of the sit­u­a­tion be it fact or be it truth.

48:4.19While the hu­mor of Uran­tia is ex­ceed­ingly crude and most inartis­tic, it does serve a valu­able pur­pose both as a health in­sur­ance and as a lib­er­a­tor of emo­tional pres­sure, thus pre­vent­ing in­ju­ri­ous ner­vous ten­sion and over­se­ri­ous self-con­tem­pla­tion. Hu­mor and play—re­lax­ation—are never re­ac­tions of pro­gres­sive ex­er­tion; al­ways are they the echoes of a back­ward glance, a rem­i­nis­cence of the past. Even on Uran­tia and as you now are, you al­ways find it re­ju­ve­nat­ing when for a short time you can sus­pend the ex­er­tions of the newer and higher in­tel­lec­tual ef­forts and re­vert to the more sim­ple en­gage­ments of your an­ces­tors.

146:2.1615. And then Je­sus said: “Be not con­stantly over­anx­ious about your com­mon needs. Be not ap­pre­hen­sive con­cern­ing the prob­lems of your earthly ex­is­tence, but in all these things by prayer and sup­pli­ca­tion, with the spirit of sin­cere thanks­giv­ing, let your needs be spread out be­fore your Fa­ther who is in heaven.” Then he quoted from the Scrip­tures: “I will praise the name of God with a song and will mag­nify him with thanks­giv­ing. And this will please the Lord bet­ter than the sac­ri­fice of an ox or bul­lock with horns and hoofs.”

86:2.1Anx­i­ety was a nat­u­ral state of the sav­age mind. When men and women fall vic­tims to ex­ces­sive anx­i­ety, they are sim­ply re­vert­ing to the nat­u­ral es­tate of their far-dis­tant an­ces­tors; and when anx­i­ety be­comes ac­tu­ally painful, it in­hibits ac­tiv­ity and un­fail­ingly in­sti­tutes evo­lu­tion­ary changes and bi­o­logic adap­ta­tions. Pain and suf­fer­ing are es­sen­tial to pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion.

140:8.3Je­sus made clear to the three the dif­fer­ence be­tween the re­quire­ments of apos­tle­ship and dis­ci­ple­ship. And even then he did not for­bid the ex­er­cise of pru­dence and fore­sight by the twelve. What he preached against was not fore­thought but anx­i­ety, worry. He taught the ac­tive and alert sub­mis­sion to God’s will. In an­swer to many of their ques­tions re­gard­ing fru­gal­ity and thrifti­ness, he sim­ply called at­ten­tion to his life as car­pen­ter, boat­maker, and fish­er­man, and to his care­ful or­ga­ni­za­tion of the twelve. He sought to make it clear that the world is not to be re­garded as an en­emy; that the cir­cum­stances of life con­sti­tute a di­vine dis­pen­sa­tion work­ing along with the chil­dren of God.

160:1.6When men dare to for­sake a life of nat­u­ral crav­ing for one of ad­ven­tur­ous art and un­cer­tain logic, they must ex­pect to suf­fer the con­se­quent haz­ards of emo­tional ca­su­al­ties—con­flicts, un­hap­pi­ness, and un­cer­tain­ties—at least un­til the time of their at­tain­ment of some de­gree of in­tel­lec­tual and emo­tional ma­tu­rity. Dis­cour­age­ment, worry, and in­do­lence are pos­i­tive ev­i­dence of moral im­ma­tu­rity. Hu­man so­ci­ety is con­fronted with two prob­lems: at­tain­ment of the ma­tu­rity of the in­di­vid­ual and at­tain­ment of the ma­tu­rity of the race. The ma­ture hu­man be­ing soon be­gins to look upon all other mor­tals with feel­ings of ten­der­ness and with emo­tions of tol­er­ance. Ma­ture men view im­ma­ture folks with the love and con­sid­er­a­tion that par­ents bear their chil­dren.

160:3.5This new gospel of the king­dom ren­ders a great ser­vice to the art of liv­ing in that it sup­plies a new and richer in­cen­tive for higher liv­ing. It pre­sents a new and ex­alted goal of des­tiny, a su­preme life pur­pose. And these new con­cepts of the eter­nal and di­vine goal of ex­is­tence are in them­selves tran­scen­dent stim­uli, call­ing forth the re­ac­tion of the very best that is res­i­dent in man’s higher na­ture. On ev­ery moun­tain­top of in­tel­lec­tual thought are to be found re­lax­ation for the mind, strength for the soul, and com­mu­nion for the spirit. From such van­tage points of high liv­ing, man is able to tran­scend the ma­te­rial ir­ri­ta­tions of the lower lev­els of think­ing—worry, jeal­ousy, envy, re­venge, and the pride of im­ma­ture per­son­al­ity. These high-climb­ing souls de­liver them­selves from a mul­ti­tude of the cross­cur­rent con­flicts of the tri­fles of liv­ing, thus be­com­ing free to at­tain con­scious­ness of the higher cur­rents of spirit con­cept and ce­les­tial com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But the life pur­pose must be jeal­ously guarded from the temp­ta­tion to seek for easy and tran­sient at­tain­ment; like­wise must it be so fos­tered as to be­come im­mune to the dis­as­trous threats of fa­nati­cism.

23:2.12The con­fu­sion and tur­moil of Uran­tia do not sig­nify that the Par­a­dise Rulers lack ei­ther in­ter­est or abil­ity to man­age af­fairs dif­fer­ently. The Cre­ators are pos­sessed of full power to make Uran­tia a ver­i­ta­ble par­a­dise, but such an Eden would not con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of those strong, no­ble, and ex­pe­ri­enced char­ac­ters which the Gods are so surely forg­ing out on your world be­tween the anvils of ne­ces­sity and the ham­mers of an­guish. Your anx­i­eties and sor­rows, your tri­als and dis­ap­point­ments, are just as much a part of the di­vine plan on your sphere as are the ex­qui­site per­fec­tion and in­fi­nite adap­ta­tion of all things to their su­preme pur­pose on the worlds of the cen­tral and per­fect uni­verse.

143:7.3Wor­ship—con­tem­pla­tion of the spir­i­tual—must al­ter­nate with ser­vice, con­tact with ma­te­rial re­al­ity. Work should al­ter­nate with play; re­li­gion should be bal­anced by hu­mor. Pro­found phi­los­o­phy should be re­lieved by rhyth­mic po­etry. The strain of liv­ing—the time ten­sion of per­son­al­ity—should be re­laxed by the rest­ful­ness of wor­ship. The feel­ings of in­se­cu­rity aris­ing from the fear of per­son­al­ity iso­la­tion in the uni­verse should be an­ti­doted by the faith con­tem­pla­tion of the Fa­ther and by the at­tempted re­al­iza­tion of the Su­preme.

196:0.10Je­sus brought to God, as a man of the realm, the great­est of all of­fer­ings: the con­se­cra­tion and ded­i­ca­tion of his own will to the ma­jes­tic ser­vice of do­ing the di­vine will. Je­sus al­ways and con­sis­tently in­ter­preted re­li­gion wholly in terms of the Fa­ther’s will. When you study the ca­reer of the Mas­ter, as con­cerns prayer or any other fea­ture of the re­li­gious life, look not so much for what he taught as for what he did. Je­sus never prayed as a re­li­gious duty. To him prayer was a sin­cere ex­pres­sion of spir­i­tual at­ti­tude, a dec­la­ra­tion of soul loy­alty, a recital of per­sonal de­vo­tion, an ex­pres­sion of thanks­giv­ing, an avoid­ance of emo­tional ten­sion, a pre­ven­tion of con­flict, an ex­al­ta­tion of in­tel­lec­tion, an en­no­ble­ment of de­sire, a vin­di­ca­tion of moral de­ci­sion, an en­rich­ment of thought, an in­vig­o­ra­tion of higher in­cli­na­tions, a con­se­cra­tion of im­pulse, a clar­i­fi­ca­tion of view­point, a dec­la­ra­tion of faith, a tran­scen­den­tal sur­ren­der of will, a sub­lime as­ser­tion of con­fi­dence, a rev­e­la­tion of cour­age, the procla­ma­tion of dis­cov­ery, a con­fes­sion of su­preme de­vo­tion, the val­i­da­tion of con­se­cra­tion, a tech­nique for the ad­just­ment of dif­fi­cul­ties, and the mighty mo­bi­liza­tion of the com­bined soul pow­ers to with­stand all hu­man ten­den­cies to­ward self­ish­ness, evil, and sin. He lived just such a life of prayer­ful con­se­cra­tion to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will and ended his life tri­umphantly with just such a prayer. The se­cret of his un­par­al­leled re­li­gious life was this con­scious­ness of the pres­ence of God; and he at­tained it by in­tel­li­gent prayer and sin­cere wor­ship—un­bro­ken com­mu­nion with God—and not by lead­ings, voices, vi­sions, or ex­traor­di­nary re­li­gious prac­tices.

140:6.13And then Thomas asked Je­sus if they should “con­tinue hav­ing ev­ery­thing in com­mon.” Said the Mas­ter: “Yes, my breth­ren, I would that we should live to­gether as one un­der­stand­ing fam­ily. You are in­trusted with a great work, and I crave your un­di­vided ser­vice. You know that it has been well said: ‘No man can serve two mas­ters.’ You can­not sin­cerely wor­ship God and at the same time whole­heart­edly serve mam­mon. Hav­ing now en­listed un­re­servedly in the work of the king­dom, be not anx­ious for your lives; much less be con­cerned with what you shall eat or what you shall drink; nor yet for your bod­ies, what cloth­ing you shall wear. Al­ready have you learned that will­ing hands and earnest hearts shall not go hun­gry. And now, when you pre­pare to de­vote all of your en­er­gies to the work of the king­dom, be as­sured that the Fa­ther will not be un­mind­ful of your needs. Seek first the king­dom of God, and when you have found en­trance thereto, all things need­ful shall be added to you. Be not, there­fore, un­duly anx­ious for the mor­row. Suf­fi­cient for the day is the trou­ble thereof.”

108:6.2No mat­ter what the pre­vi­ous sta­tus of the in­hab­i­tants of a world, sub­se­quent to the be­stowal of a di­vine Son and af­ter the be­stowal of the Spirit of Truth upon all hu­mans, the Ad­justers flock to such a world to in­dwell the minds of all nor­mal will crea­tures. Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of the mis­sion of a Par­a­dise be­stowal Son, these Mon­i­tors truly be­come the “king­dom of heaven within you.” Through the be­stowal of the di­vine gifts the Fa­ther makes the clos­est pos­si­ble ap­proach to sin and evil, for it is lit­er­ally true that the Ad­juster must co­ex­ist in the mor­tal mind even in the very midst of hu­man un­righ­teous­ness. The in­dwelling Ad­justers are par­tic­u­larly tor­mented by those thoughts which are purely sor­did and self­ish; they are dis­tressed by ir­rev­er­ence for that which is beau­ti­ful and di­vine, and they are vir­tu­ally thwarted in their work by many of man’s fool­ish an­i­mal fears and child­ish anx­i­eties.