Anxious to Create?

We humans are the product of 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution. As far as we know, we are the most intelligent and advanced species on the planet. We have more control over our environment and our subjective and objective experience than any other living creature and yet we seem to be one of the most anxious. However, unlike any other animal, we know that we’re anxious, but we are not always sure why.

We can think and believe we are anxious about many things but for many of us anxiety is a free floating feeling that can get attached and projected onto people, places and things that may not be the true cause of our anxiety.

Take for instance phobias. Most phobics suffer with an irrational fear of things that most of us wouldn’t even notice. Psychologists like Dr Jeffrey Shwartz have devised some interesting therapeutic solutions for people suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. They have discovered that, in some cases, anxiety can be re-routed using mental will power to rewire the neurological pathways in the brain. However, even though one’s anxiety can be released and redirected away from an object, it will often and eventually attach itself to something else.

For some of us anxiety is an ever-present sense that something is wrong, that we are in danger. Or the feeling that there is something missing; that we are somehow incomplete, something within us has not been fully realised or expressed. We can engage in behaviours to distract us or even numb the feelings with alcohol and drugs but anxious feelings are rarely relieved for very long.

I would like to propose that this is because anxiety is a primal drive and is present and persistent even before birth. More than this, it is possibly the first cause of anything existing at all.

In other words, I suggest that the original impulse that began creation was born out of a 'proto- anxiety' caused by the tension of an infinite energy trying to manifest itself but only able to bring itself into existence temporarily in finite forms. We could describe this tension as an anxiety of creativity.

Human creativity might then be described as an expression of anxiety. Driven by the desire of beings that innately know they are, at source, infinite but are only able to manifest and express themselves temporarily in finite forms. The infinite and finite self seeking union and full expression. The 'Primal Anxiety'.

So, if and when you feel anxious but you don't know why, try reframing the feeling and think of your anxiety as a potentially creative state of mind. Then use it as an opportunity to focus your thinking on solving a problem and bring something new into the world.

Whatever that might mean for you.