existential anxiety when the self loses its sway

I woke up from a dream about losing my company. Was it a rational fear? Definitely not – business is the best it’s been in eighteen months. Yet I woke up overwhelmed with anxiety. “Is work really the source of my anxiety?”I wondered.

The mind is phenomenal at creating and solving problems. When times are good, the mind searches for future issues to ward off. When I woke up this morning, my mind was racing. I felt like I was missing opportunities left and right – from integrating AI into our workflows to completing an office redesign. I worried about the future. “Yet again, I have not navigated the world successfully,” the mind said. Then a bit of space opened up, and a realization dawned: this is just the typical pattern of the mind seeking pleasure and avoiding pain (psychological being the dominant form of pain most of us, including myself, face).

So what was the source of my anxiety and it’s eventual reprieve?

Something is shifting as I’ve become more aware of the ephemeral nature of thoughts, mind, and the character I play in the world. Historically I would jump straight into problem-solving mode but today, I inquired, “Who is fearful?” My self-inquiry practice has matured and I am no longer a slave to the mind’s whims. Now I see through that which is transient, including self-referential thoughts (the separate “I” or “me”). Random thoughts no longer hold lasting influence over my experience. It’s not because I’m “seeing thoughts as thoughts,” it’s because I’ve seen clearly the interconnected nature of reality. I know that I am not a subject in a world of objects. The notion of the character (me) existing independently from the world is comical. Yet there was fear…why?

The individuated self is fighting for relevance. Its days are numbered, and with each passing moment, and each inquiry into the “I-thought,” the egoic activity is diminished. With each glimpse of nonduality, the ego loses a bit of steam. Now more than ever, emotions bubble up and seize every cell in my body but then…a great release. It’s truly like waking up from a dream, or a nightmare in today’s example.

This is the self’s last stand. The character will remain, but without continually reifying itself through constructing games, problems, solutions, wants, needs, and concepts, the self loses its sway. The small self should be anxious – this is a separate anxiety from general “character-related challenges,” such as paying the bills and making it to my next meeting on time. The current anxiety is existential.

I’ve always been the main character in a video game, the subject who must navigate a series of challenges and battles. The best way to describe it would be that my small self, individuated person/subject is like a video game character. It knows that the game is being unplugged. Now that character is fighting to remain relevant.

The character has worked hard to build up the attributes for success in the game and knows it could all be over soon. All the progress that “I” have made stands to be lost. The game, as “I” have always known it, is ending. The character doesn’t want to die, so it keeps telling me I must attend to urgent matters. That’s the character’s way of keeping the game going. The character tells me that I must continue to fight the good fight. But that’s not the path.

When the character dies, freedom and play remain.