The Self Inflicted Pain of Worry

On The Beautiful Heresy Message Board we are doing a book study on A New Earth. Brian said:

One of the lessons from Buddhism that sticks out with me is the "second arrow". When we screw up or someone does something to us, that's the first arrow in us. We can't avoid that. It happens. But, the second and third and subsequent arrows are self-inflicted. When we obsess over something we've done wrong and wallow in guilt (even guilt over having the guilt), we inflict unnecessary suffering on ourselves. Those are the arrows I'm learning to avoid.

One teacher I know put it this way. "Pain is inevitable. But, suffering is optional."

Hmmmmm...and how about the self inflicted pain of worry...which seems to be related to the arrow theory. You could probably substitute the word guilt for the word worry in the quotes below and it would equally apply....or anger...or fear....etc.

As I've mentioned before, I've been spending some time at Oprah's web site....listening to or reading the transcripts from their discussions. Following are some quotes about worry that I thought were very good.

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Tolle said:
Now, something applies that we talked about the other week when we are talking about worry. Worry is another type of that kind of thinking, what you call obsessing. These thoughts, the way I put it two weeks ago was these thoughts pretend to be important and necessary. These thoughts want to draw in all your conscious attention. It's almost as if every thought were saying, "Give me your attention, this is very important, you must think about this, think, think. So these, the thoughts have the ability, they have a certain momentum behind them. This is the momentum of the mind. And so it's not easy to become free of that. But the first freedom is in realizing their futility in the moment they happen. And to realize that it is, they fulfill no useful purpose except to make your life miserable. It's like a little parasite. Egoic thought patterns are almost like a parasitic entity that lives in you, and it sucks up all your conscious attention.

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My daughter made referred to me as a glass half empty kind of person. That's me...the queen of the worst case scenario....a firm believer in Murphy's Law....even though my fears have not come to pass so many times. More scripture comes to mind....

"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow,for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.