It is amazing what tiny events can trigger anxiety. Even a slight physical discomfort can do it. We (some of us, sometimes) go to the doctor, here comes the needle, and we instinctively recoil, just like an amoeba who has been gently poked. What Rx would you prescribe? (I’m not going to try to render the spontaneous fullness of the 14:39 video or the podcast episode, but I will be clearer on a key thought about the second type of anxiety.) We can reframe it: God the infinite upholder, works also through the world wide team of health care givers; and we can cooperate with that upholding by our attitude as patients, taking the positive, active attitude of giving our arm to the one whose job it is to draw some blood.
The second kind of anxiety that I consider today is performance anxiety. As artists, performers, we have a certain vanity—we care how others see us. We can embrace that vanity and transform it by caring more about the cosmic truth that we are communicating or about the idealistic beauty of character and soul that we intend to exercise, and above all about the divine goodness of what is to be done. Jessica Somers Driver in Speak for Yourself prescribes staying fully absorbed in the truth that we are communicating, such that we forget about what others think of us. When I think of Jesus as a strong, positive, beneficent personality whose ministry banishes fear and destroys anxiety, if I focus on what his ministry banishes and destroys, I miss the service-discovery and ministry-revelation of the goodness of God, which I am beginning to discover and aspire to reveal.
I see performance anxiety as perfectionism that fears others’ seeing one’s imperfections, and thereby short-circuits the happiness of the child who falls down and gets up laughing. That is how a child can be like God.
Thank You Jeff for all your teachings . They touch our hearts in the exact moment we need it . As an artist I can agree in both kinds of anxiety . The quarantine has made me realize I have nothing to be anxious of because Our Father has made me perfect as I am and with what I have . My life is always in His hands and it’s My will that’s His will be done in my life . I have learned to trust through this hard times . Even they have been hard there has been a huge evolution in my soul … thank you because you have been a cornerstone in my spiritual journey . Blessings !
Dear Evy,
Thank you for manifesting in this venue. It means a lot!
Even though we’re in the midst of a conversation about your art and experience, and I wish I could show people the wonderful works that I recently saw, at least I can share your website with the group: http://www.evypineda.nl
For the rest, today, I would like to propose a qualification to what you said: “I am perfect.”
My interpretation is that each of us is a work in progress, an evolving soul, having a mind and body with their pluses and minuses. But two things we have and are that are not evolutionary: the personality and the spirit of God within.
As I clarify in Living in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness (56-58),
Mystery and personality
Philosophy interprets meanings, but mystery goes beyond what we find meaningful, what we can comprehend. A philosophy of living remains open to that which transcends philosophy . . . .
Every personality is a mystery; we can never completely understand even those we know best. A physician could describe the body, a psychologist the mind, and a theologian the soul, but their descriptions cannot define the person we know and love. In the beloved there is something unique and indefinable. When the grandmother says to the grandchild, “My, how you’ve grown!” she does two things: observes change and recognizes continuity. The word “you” refers to what is constant through change. Body and mind change; character grows; yet she identifies the child as the same one she knew earlier. Year after year, we go through changes, yet we are the same person.
Wisdom does not try to reduce mystery to something explainable, but neither does it fall into permanent silence in the face of mystery. For example, there are some things that we can say about personality. An adequate philosophical concept of the person had to await the tradition of personalism, which upholds the primacy of persons and tends to regard human beings as including body, mind, and soul. In addition to these components, it recognizes that unique, indefinable, and unchanging mystery in all of us; personalist Nikolai Berdaiev (1874–1948) called it personality. He associated several characteristics in his concept of personality:
• Each personality is unique.
• Personality is mysterious, never fully predictable or comprehensible.
• Personality is “the unchanging in change, unity in the manifold.”
• Personality has free will.
• Personality is beyond everything worldly that can be treated as an object by biology or the human sciences.
• Personality transcends itself by relating to God, to other people, to supreme values, and to the inner depths of the world.
• Personality has the potential for victory beyond merely belonging to a particular hereditary or social group—success in effort and conflict, triumph over slavery, mastery of self and world.
• Personality includes reason but is not governed by reason.
• Personality is not the soul.
• Personality encompasses spirit, soul, and body. “Personality, which is not a sum of parts, acts always as a whole . . . on the way to perfectly accomplished unity and wholeness.”
I would now add this. If personality is constant through change, and would enable us to recognize each other in the next life, then it is not something that evolves and changes (unless we think of personality as the system of components that includes body, mind, soul, and spirit). If personality is good for all eternity, then it comes straight from God.
It seems to me, therefore, that there are two very important grains of truth in the idea that a human mortal is perfect, despite my objection to that conception of self. Spiritual experiences in which we are conscious of no gap between self and the divine are not reliable indicators of the cosmic truth of our place in the universe.
Again, thank you for participating, and especially for your stimulating and provocative self-affirmation.
Jeff
Thanks for those recently blogged wise words concerning “performance anxiety”. I had been in a state of avoidance for a long time regarding getting up to speed on some technical applications. SOME old dogs recoil at new tricks. Digital applications and building the infrastructures necessary for a podcast and a website had alluded me and overwhelmed me. But your blog confirmed my recent realization that the Father has also put tutorials and simple step-by-step skill-building trainings in my path when I felt most overwhelmed and bewildered and…lacking trust. Your blog hit the nail on the head for me. (and I feel like I’ve acted like such a blockhead). Deep down I succumbed to fear when I might have chosen to give in to having faith that I could accomplish what I needed to do, with a little help – and forge ahead in baby steps. A typical BLOCKHEAD in need of a trusty nail from a trusted source.
And so it goes, from my initial excitement, to overwhelming debillitating anxiety, to reconfirmation (thanks to you) I am certainly now on the path I need to be.
The Beatles, in this particular case, now seem to have chosen the wrong song title many years ago. .Because, in actuality, in their song “All You Need Is ____(love?) It really should be sung as, ” Faith / Faith / faith / faith is all you need. Faith is all you need./ faith is all you need.” Today I’m singing it out loud and proud. Thanks again for the spiritual boost. You’re a fine spiritual coach, indeed. CHEERS ! Jeffrey
And so it goes.
Sounds like you’re had a good time with the video.
Knowing your interest in the arts and diversion, you may want to see Part II, Walking in Beauty, in my Living in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. It’s philosophically heavy enough to slow down your enthusiasm (please smile), but you may find more fun with that. All good to you, D.J. and thanks for manifesting here and contributing to the conversation.