A small story:
A mother was preparing a meal for her young son. She emptied a tin of beans into a saucepan and put them on the stove to cook. Just then the phone rang. She was expecting the call and wanted to take it, but she was concerned that her son would be left alone for those few minutes while she was out of the room.
She firmly told him, 'Stay here while I answer the phone. I'll be back soon. Don't misbehave, and whatever you do, don't put those beans up your nose …'
We always worry about what is happening and what might happen, also! The boy might not have even thought about putting beans up his nose! Now his mother has planted the idea in him. Worry infuses life into many things that never existed in the first place. Now, when the boy puts the beans in his nose, her worry turns out to be true! She concludes that her worries are always right.
If you look into worries, you will observe that they arise out of deep ignorance of the truth that Existence is running the whole show. If you look, you will see that all worries are mere illusion. You can understand this by observing what happens at the time of death. When you are alive, you may have one hundred worries, but suppose you are dying. At that moment, how many worries do you think will dominate you the way they did earlier? Surely only one worry will be foremost – that you are going to die. None of the earlier worries will exert any great influence. All the outer world situations remain the same, but still the worries disappear! Only loving thoughts remain for the people around you who are dear to you.
How is this possible? It is possible only because your worries were never a part of you in the first place. They were merely a part of your mind. They were nothing solid. If they were solid, they would definitely exert some amount of influence over you at the time of your death as well.
The nature of worry is such that it always goes behind something that is not present. If you have wealth, it will go after relationships, if you have relationships, it will go after education, if you have education it will go after good looks. If everything is present, it will suspect what is present!
When you clearly understand that you are part of the grand plan of Existence, no worry can take root in you. Existence is a live energy being. It has tremendous intelligence with which it runs the whole show. We are all part of it. The same intelligence that conducts Existence is available to us too. If we tune in to it, our actions will be fluid and spontaneous like the happenings of Existence. If we don't tune into it, we will harbor worry and fear and remain closed.
There is so much to learn from Existence! Take animals for example. Have you ever heard of worried sheep or cows? No! They conduct their lives like you; they are born, they reproduce, they find food, and they face death – just like human beings. You may say, 'They don't have to face the challenges that we have to face.' What about their other activities like reproduction, facing death, etc? Are they worried about all that? No! But these things happen to them too. So understand that Existence is running this whole macrocosm. It can surely take care of you as well!
Surrendering to the laws of Existence is the greatest relaxation from worry.
The Ego in disguise
If you seriously analyze every worry that arises in you, you will see that ninety nine percent of your worries are baseless. But the problem is that the ego is not willing to accept that. The ego has invested too much in worry. Worry can't be discarded just like that! Just try telling someone that his or her worries are not worth anything. They will get very offended. You would expect that a person would feel happy if you tell him his worries are not true. But it won't be so! He will feel offended. The ego feels offended whenever its worries are not acknowledged with due respect.
The ego is what sustains the worry. The worry is created out of ignorance, but sustained by ego. Worry becomes an axis around which the ego revolves. If worry is taken away, the ego suffers. The worry of work and the worry of responsibility are classic examples of this.
If you watch some people, they simply magnify their situation to prove that they have the greatest worries on planet earth! If you try to oppose them, they feel very hurt.
Even worrying about what others will say about us is a problem of the ego. The ego is constantly worried that its self-image might be spoiled by someone. It is because of the ego that we feel we want to be somebody special all the time. We spend considerable time just worrying about our self-image. Understand that the greatest blessing is being a nobody and yet being blissful. That is the greatest specialty. It is said that the most extraordinary thing about an enlightened being is that he thinks he is ordinary! So, understand that enlightenment itself is a journey to relax into yourself. You are someone special all the time, only when you drop worry and ego.