The Jitters Again

I’m “jittery” again, anxious, tight throat, difficult breathing. I can take something homeopathic for it and it usually helps. But I’m wanting to manage it from a spiritual perspective. I’m wanting to acknowledge the physical conditions, know they’re only temporary, like clouds passing across the sun, not judge them or take them so seriously, ask spirit for help and go past the jitter stuff to the light, joy and peace that I know, abide in me. This takes practice and God knows, I’m getting plenty of practice! It’s a process, the Course says, got to remember that, and take one step at a time.

I used to think, and kind of still do, that the jitters meant that there was something wrong with me. It sure feels like there’s something wrong and its very uncomfortable, too. Now I try to think that the jitters are actually covering up my light, joy and peace, like a cloud passing across the sun and that if I stop dwelling on the jitters, then I will experience my light, joy and peace. Yes, experience the jitters, but don’t dwell on them, nor look for reasons and explanations. Simply acknowledge them, look at them with spirit – but I can’t get to spirit, ‘cause I’m jittery - and let my birthright of light, joy and peace replace them. But, as long as I ask the body to tell me what reality is, I’ll have the jitters and won’t be able to reach spirit.

Having the jitters is feedback and means I’m identifying with ego, with my bloated nothingness, not spirit, and think I’m stuck in the body. What I’ve got to do, only for an instant, is relinquish all thoughts about who I think I am, a body, and allow the ‘other’ reality, my reality as a spiritual being, to express. Once I believe I am separate from spirit, I can not see anything but projected shadows of my own nothingness, the fearful ramblings and rantings of my ego. Naturally I’m anxious! Believing I’m separate from spirit and reliant on the ego’s pathetic, limited, paranoid version of the world is scary.

So I can’t get there from here: understand truth [spirit] from the perspective of illusion [the body]. It’s either/or: either spirit or the ego. To get to spirit, I’ve got to give up ego. Doing this is a process and the jitters are part of that process; so, in a perverse way, from the ego/body’s perspective, the jitters are a useful good thing.

Remedies for the jitters include saying to myself, “Oh, there I go again,” instead of worrying, judging, feeling anxious and being afraid; remembering to ask to see things differently, with spirit instead of ego; and identifying the thoughts that I’m judging against, release them and realize they’re only thoughts, and like the clouds that hide the sun, will soon be gone, revealing the light that was always there. It’s only when I take the thoughts and conditions seriously, as right and wrong, life and death [which they are to the ego], that I make them real and able to bother my body. I want to be able to as Byron Katie says, “love what is” both inside and outside me.