By Lazaris

An excerpt from the personal growth recording, Inner Peace by Lazaris:

Note: In Part I, Lazaris discussed the beauty and necessity of achieving inner peace, and the ‘blockbuster’ emotions — anger, hurt, self-pity and fear — which prevent our achieving it. In this part, he turns to the ‘bugaboo’ emotions, the ones we overlook or don’t understand, and explores how to work with them and what to put in their place to create the inner peace we want.

The Bugaboo Emotions

We want to move on now and look at those ‘bugaboo’ emotions – the subtle, yet damaging and even destructive bugaboos that you deal with.

Anxiety

What is anxiety? Anxiety is a combination of any one of four things. First of all, anxiety is unidentified anger, hurt, self-pity, or fear. When you feel any one of those blockbusters, but refuse to identify it as such, then it’s anxiety.

The second thing that anxiety is, is expected error. You expect to make a mistake; you expect to do it wrong. It is also anticipated rejection or humiliation. And finally it is misplaced trust.

Now, you know you should trust yourself. But that has been watered down to the point that when in doubt, and not knowing what to say, you say, ‘Oh, you just need to trust yourself more. I’m sure that will fix everything.’ Basically, it’s just a way of saying, ‘I don’t have the foggiest idea of what’s going on. And since I never admit failure, I’m going to tell you to trust yourself.’ So it has become a throwaway term, a throwaway concept.

There are four conditions which must be met in order to be a potentially trusting situation. If you try to trust yourself when it’s not a trust situation, you’re going to feel anxiety. To be a trust situation there must be a positive and a negative eventuality. Secondly, that positive and negative has to be decided sometime in the future. The third condition, and the most critical, is that the potential harm from the negative that may result has to be more harmful than the potential benefit will be beneficial. And the fourth condition is that you have to honestly expect the positive.

Worry

Similarly, worry is four distinctive things. One: It is anticipated anger. Guilt is anger that you feel you do not have a right to have. Depression is anger that you think you’re going to get in trouble for. Worry is anger that you anticipate.

The second quality of worry is the obligatory worry you have as a way to prove that you are not taking your life for granted. ‘I’m so worried that things will go wrong. I’m so worried that things will screw up. It’s my way of showing God/Goddess/All That Is that I care.’ You don’t want to look cocky or arrogant. You don’t want to look like you’re taking it for granted and like you expect to create your own reality. When you worry in this way, you give a very conflicting message to your Unconscious Mind, which reads literally what you feel. Therefore, all of your programming and super-duper techniques go spiralling down the tube. You program with the belief and attitude that it’s going to work, and then you worry, which says, ‘I don’t think it’s going to.’ And then you wonder what your reality is going to be like.

The third component of worry is a lack of deservability. ‘I don’t deserve the reality I have. To compensate, I’ll worry.’ The perspective here is that God/Goddess/All That Is loves you. Your Higher Self loves you. Your Soul loves you. But you don’t. The arrogance is that you know better: ‘They’re fools to love me. I know better. I’m not lovable. I refuse to love myself.’ You have a certain obligation to love yourself. You can’t keep playing the game that you don’t in order to manipulate them into doing something for you. …

Finally, worry is a fear of losing control in the unknown. … So, worry is any one, or a combination, of those factors, and is distinctive from anxiety.

Confusion

Confusion isn’t really an emotion. There are also four things that confusion is:

First of all, confusion is overmagnified emotion. It is emotion that is so large you can’t identify it, like looking at a drop of water under a high-powered microscope. ‘Oh, my God, what’s that?’ It can also be a whole number of emotions that you’re feeling, and therefore you are truly overwhelmed by the size and the magnitude.

Confusion also may be a denial of feeling. Those who don’t want to feel or ever admit having a feeling will finally agree: ‘Okay, I’m confused.’

Thirdly, confusion is the ‘innocent face’ of victimhood and martyrhood. It’s that innocent mask of: ‘I’m being hurtful? Surely you jest.’ It’s the confusion that comes in there when you’ve been caught.

Confusion is also a refusal to be real, and a steadfast stubbornness to be shallow, to cling to the past.

Doubt

Doubt is one of the most destructive of the bugaboo emotions. Doubt is a lack of trust as opposed to misplaced trust. When you should trust yourself but can’t, that’s doubt. Where you attempt to trust yourself when you should not trust, that’s anxiety. They’re quite different feelings, and it’s important to know that distinction.

Secondly, doubt is supporting the negative ego. In a reality where you know you create it, where you have dominion, where you are the creator of all things through your thought, to doubt yourself is to support the negative ego. Doubt is one of its greatest crowbars.

Thirdly, and perhaps most strangely, doubt is domination. Doubt produces the sense that ‘I must manipulate in order to create my reality. I must have power to control other people. I must get God/Goddess/All That Is to take care of me through weakness, supporting my negative ego in its contentions, living in a world that is scary. I must know all the contingencies before I dare step out into the world. I must take, and I must blame.’ Doubt supports every one of the contingencies of domination, and none of the contingencies of dominion. There is no sense of creating reality as a power, an ability. Doubt is the desire to dominate without really saying so.

Finally, doubt is an attempt not to be responsible. We stress that because there is no way you cannot be responsible. You lie to yourself. ‘I avoided responsibility.’ Where? You postponed responsibility. You can’t avoid responsibility.

So these are the four bugaboos. When you’re not sure whether it’s anxiety, confusion, or doubt that’s going on with you, the first thing to do is to see if you can delineate. Also, try to identify if it is a blockbuster rather than a bugaboo that’s going on. If it is a major blockbuster, then move it to that level and deal with it. If it’s not, then look at the payoffs. We’ll give you a running start on that one.

The Tonics

There are four critical payoffs that are going to be operative, plus you may add for spice a few of your own: One is going to be for the purposes of self-pity, the part of you that wants to feel sorry for yourself and wants to use that as a manipulation. Another is clearly going to be the part that wants to dominate, that wants to opt for domination rather than dominion. Thirdly, the part that wants to convince you that you don’t deserve to be happy, that you don’t deserve the very best. Finally, the part of you that wants to prove that metaphysics doesn’t work, that you don’t really create your own reality. You can use the truth I create my own reality to create a reality that looks ostensibly like you have nothing to do with it, that it is all ‘happening to you.’

If you look at these payoffs and see what you’re really doing here, then you can release these bugaboos and replace them.

For anxiety, the key tonic is dominion. If you’re feeling anxiety to the point where you’re just so anxious you can’t possibly sort out whether it is an unidentified emotion or whether you’re trusting at the wrong time, then the tonic is dominion. If you will feed yourself dominion, absorb it into your system, that will stop anxiety. Then you can sort out what specifically is producing it, and you can handle it.

Worry also has an overall tonic, and it is gratitude. If you will start feeling grateful for what you have created and what you have been given, the worry will stop like a rainstorm. It will stop and a clearing will occur for long enough for you to grab hold and to get back on top of yourself.

To the specific areas …

Worry that is anticipated anger: Your anger is like a reservoir and what you’re doing is oozing out anger. You don’t want the flood gates of anger to open up and destroy your reality, so you siphon it off through worry. The way to handle this particular activity is to bring the anger into the current time. Express it through one of the means, and you’re done.

If it is obligatory worry: The key here is that what you’re really trying to do is show that you are grateful. Why not just feel grateful instead?

To the extent that your worrying is tied in to your lack of deservability, we suggest you opt for willingness. ‘Look, it doesn’t matter whether I deserve to have this or not. I’m WILLING to have it. I’m WILLING to create it.’ Allow yourself to move in that direction. Once you start generating from that position, what happens is that you start feeling deserving. The other way is to ask and find out what you have done that is so unforgivable. That’s what your lack of deserving comes from. That will eradicate the lack of deservability, and thus eliminate the need for worry.

Finally, if your worry is connected to that sense of the unknown, surrender. Surrender to your own Higher Consciousness and to God/Goddess/All That Is. ‘I don’t know how to control the situation.’ Don’t try. Surrender and trust, and there won’t be worry.

Confusion: The overall tonic is gaining perspective. Back off to get a better view of it. There’s no problem too big to run from. Although you face your fears by going toward them, back away from them to gain perspective. If it is the magnification, take each emotion you feel and handle it separately. If it’s a matter of refusing to feel, then start feeling anything. Some people are so numb to any emotion. Those people who are so totally numb will eventually do something to make themselves feel — either being so hurtful to other people that they will finally feel what they are doing, or hurt themselves through excruciating situations because ‘at least I’m feeling now.’

If you are dealing with numbness as a mask for self-pity, switch it to the blockbuster it is and start dealing with it. To the extent that it is wanting to remain shallow, confront that. This is where the mirror technique can work very clearly. Sit down in front of the mirror and look at the person there. Spend about five minutes really studying that face as though you want to remember it for a lifetime. Then talk to that person about how shallow and unreal, how totally connected to the past they are. Start feeling what that feels like. That will burst you through it. Maybe you won’t be the deepest, most feeling person on the planet, but you will begin. And there won’t be any need to use confusion for the purpose of remaining shallow.

With doubt, develop trust. The tonic to doubt is self-confidence. As you are doubting yourself, develop that self-confidence and the doubt will be gone.

If the doubt is there to support the ego, then admit it. Face the truth. Bust that negative ego. See where it really wants to take you. See that it is your enemy and that it is attempting to destroy you. Your negative ego is not your friend. We say that quite frequently.

To the extent that doubt is your desire to dominate, move toward dominion. Admit the truth, recognize it, acknowledge it, forgive yourself for holding so desperately to domination, and change it.

To the extent that doubt is an attempt not to be responsible, perhaps just let yourself in on how you plan to do that. Lay out your strategy for never being responsible. Then maybe you’ll realize you can’t. You’re going to be responsible, so why not do it consciously? Why not do it powerfully? That can reduce and eliminate doubt.

Work primarily with dominion and gratitude. Put yourself in perspective. Take yourself a little more lightly and feel that confidence within yourself. These are the four major tonics to these particular bugaboos. It’ll work.

It’s not enough to release, however. You have to replace.

You can dig out all your anxiety, and all your worry or doubt, and all your confusion, but if you don’t put anything in its place, then it’s going to fill back in with exactly what was there before.

So, what you do fill it in with? You fill it in with love, trust, expectancy, and enthusiasm.

Love

You hear these things a lot: ‘Your problem is you don’t love yourself enough. Love yourself more.’ You read books: how to, how to, how to. There’s always a chapter on self-love. And you read it, and what it basically says is: ‘People don’t love themselves enough. To be happy they should love themselves more. So do that.’

End of chapter. Next chapter. You look back for the pages that must have stuck together. No one really bothers to tell you how to feel self-love. They’ll tell you beautiful phrases …

We are talking about loving yourself, but also about loving others. This is part of what you need to fill in to have that inner peace.

Basically, love is a function. It is something you learn how to do. At one time you did automatically do it. But you talked yourself out of it. To support a negative ego, you convinced yourself that humanity was unloving. Now it’s time for humanity as a whole to start realizing, ‘Hey, we can love.’ But you need to know how. There are ways, things to do, functions.

Those functions specifically are: To give. To respond, to be responsible. To respect. To know. To have humility. Now humility doesn’t mean groveling around on your hands and knees. Humility is the sense that each moment is brand new, that just because things went that way before, they don’t have to go that way again. ‘I am open and willing to have each moment be brand new.’ The sixth element of love is courage, and the seventh is to care for someone or something.

We say giving, but to what end? It’s not giving just to give. It’s giving in order to provide something. Here again, there are seven particular things that can be provided:

Giving to produce security, pleasure, honesty, vulnerability and trust. Giving in order to produce caring and intimacy. Giving in order to reduce the fear of loss. Giving with these specific purposes in mind is a loving act.

And if you are responsible toward yourself and another in order to give security, pleasure and so on — if you respect that person so as to produce security, pleasure, trust — if you have that sense of humility to produce these qualities and care so as to produce these seven qualities, then that is how to be loving. That is the first factor: In order to have that inner peace, you need to love yourself and others.

Trust

You need to trust. It’s not just a hit-or-miss kind of thing. Trust is based upon the limited selves: your physicalness, your mentalness, your emotionalness, and your psychicness. If you look at it that way, you don’t have to rely upon a psychic flash that it’s all going to work out. Look to all of the trust: what your body, your intellect, your feelings and your intuition say. Put them all together, and out of that combination comes an exponential that is the basis of trust. You can practice trusting yourself. What does your mind say? What does your body say? What does your psyche say
You can try it on inconsequential situations. Practice on what’s going to come in the mail today, on what a friend will be wearing for dinner. What happens here is that your Higher Consciousness will become involved when you start working with it. You see, your Higher Consciousness sort of sits up there and looks down at you: ‘How are they doing? Oh, they’re doing all right. They’re kind of standing still. They’re staying out of trouble.’ The Higher Consciousness will interfere to clear up that trust, but you’ve got to start using it.

Expectancy

Californians are going to have more trouble with this than other people because they have been so brainwashed in the hype of expectancy. ‘Expect a miracle’ is a wonderful concept. But when it’s on every bumper sticker, it has no meaning any longer. It’s become so much a part of the PR that you haven’t really thought about what it really means to expect something. Often what it means is a bravado, a bullying: ‘If I say it loud enough, somebody will hear it and give it to me.’ Often it is used to calm people.

A lot of you have been taught not to expect: ‘Don’t expect it to work out, because you might be disappointed.’ So, what you do is lower your expectations. In truth, you either diminish your expectations by some childhood experience, or you are so hyped-up in it that it has lost its meaning.

Expectancy is a marvelously wonderful thing, and we suggest always expect the best. Then it is more likely to happen. If perchance it does not, you are in a much stronger place to handle your disappointment.

Expectancy alone isn’t going to produce it. But having high expectations is going to make it more likely to happen, and it prolongs your joy. Let yourself feel that sense of honest expectation — not the hype and not the denial — but the sense of honest expectation.

Enthusiasm

With the love, trust and expectancy, you’re on the way to enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is, first of all, a happiness, feeling happy, which is being harmonious with the now. It is being harmonious with the way your reality is right now. That’s a state of being. Enthusiasm involves that state of being, but also involves a state of doing. There must be action associated with this happiness for it to become enthusiasm.

It combines a sense of happiness along with humility. Again, humility is that sense that each moment can be brand new.

The third component is hope. Hope is also very much confused: ‘Cross your fingers, take a deep breath, and hope to God it works out.’ Hope as some kind of blind faith. We’re not talking about that. What we mean by hope is that you look at your current reality, and in it you see the gems of the future. You see the possibilities of what can be out of what you are right now. That’s what hope really is.

You combine happiness, humility, and hope, and then act upon it. Do something with it. That’s enthusiasm. That’s what true enthusiasm is about. …

As you will allow yourself to feel the love for yourself and others, trust yourself and those significant others, have high expectation and grand enthusiasm, you will know inner peace. You will feel that sense of inner peace. It is a quiet solidness in the core that radiates out into great activity, great involvement, great productivity. An interesting factor here is that these four components that are necessary to replace the bugaboos are the most powerful motivators you have. As metaphysicians, they are the four most powerful tools you have. It is curious here that each of the four has — by your ego individually and by the collective unconscious societally — been watered down. Allow yourself to see that, and understand that, and start developing them for yourself.

We’ve talked about trust so many times as being an important key, an important tool. As spiritual beings, it is there as one of the most important tools you’ve got to establish dominion.

Really love in a way that you can identify, and not just identify as a warm, toasty feeling. And as we talk together then, to share, to grow, to laugh together, to be a friend with you, you can open up to being loved as well as loving.

When you open up and starting loving yourself enough, then you will open up and let us love you. Love is the most powerful tool, but you have to do it and be it, and let it be done to you to have its full impact. It’s not just a hug you squeeze hard with. It’s really opening and letting these things happen.

Let yourself explore your bugaboos. Work with them to open that door to inner peace. Once you’ve opened that door and feel the confidence of knowing that you can continuously reduce these bugaboos to non-existence, filling the void and having that inner peace, you can be that spark that you want to be. You can be that inspiration that you are.

With love and peace …
Lazaris