Zigzag Idiot and the ladder of Objective Reason

[Zigzag Idiot]

There's a joke thats told among carpenters. Someone will say that if they ever fall out of an airplane that hopefully they would be holding on to an air hose or an extension cord because the damn things are always going to hang up on something,,,,,.  @MuadDib mentioning his becoming reinterested in skydiving made me think of that. My fear of heights has grown as I've gotten older. In 2013, I reroofed one of our old barns and climbing to the breathtaking height of 18-20 feet gave me panic attacks. At the time I had a 2 cd set of Rumi that was read by Coleman Barks. Playing it as I went about my carpentry seemed to help a little bit.

Still on the subject of me being nervous and highstrung. That weighted blanket I bought the other day seems to really be helping me get better sleep. The last couple of nights anyhow.  If you , the reader, have trouble with insomnia. I recommend trying one. The weight in the one I have comes from tiny glass beads that are sewn in between the layers of the blanket. It feels like sleeping under an armoured vest.

Amphetamines have always had a calming effect on me. (Except when used heavily, as I recently discovered, unfortunately), The calming affect has caused me to speculate that I probably could have been diagnosed as either add or adhd in childhood. In addition to my self-diagnosis as an adult of being on the autism spectrum.  A few people who know me well are possibly vigorously nodding in agreement,,, The trouble is ,, my age. Asperger's and ADHD diagnoses were not being made when I was a kid. It's probably a good thing. Chances are I would have played up being an unfortunate victim of those maladies and  rode them for all they were worth. Doing this might have prevented all those wonderful episodes in my life that were referred to as  being of a character building nature. Not that I've really ended up with all that much character, either, as it's turned out.  Oh well,,, 

Enough with all this self absorbtion. 

Time to read or to make some remarks on the forum until sleep  overcomes me. 

Goodnight,,,

 

 

 

 

 

[fridjonk]

10 hours ago, Zigzag Idiot said:

In 2013, I reroofed one of our old barns and climbing to the breathtaking height of 18-20 feet gave me panic attacks.

That's funny, the exact same year we re-roofed our barn and cowshed.  

I'm ok with heights as long as it's a supportive structure. Last year I was working on a new roof and we used a tractor shovel that was wiggling around with the slightest movement, now that was scary. 

[Zigzag Idiot]

17 hours ago, fridjonk said:

I'm ok with heights as long as it's a supportive structure. Last year I was working on a new roof and we used a tractor shovel that was wiggling around with the slightest movement, now that was scary. 

@fridjonk If you were working out of a front end loader bucket raised all the way up, I know what you’re talking about. Doesn’t take much for a front tire to roll over to create a huge sway 15-18 feet in the air. Not the best place to be running a chainsaw or power tools. Makes life exciting,,,huh

In his blog @Leo Gura states “PURE INFINITY. It is so perfectly self-aware that it does not even have a form. At this point you become the 100% Godhead. There is no more life, no more death, no more world, no more people or other beings. You rest as absolute ONENESS & LOVE, FOREVER. It is a degree of enlightenment so total that it deletes the entire universe. Only near this point do you finally understand what reality/God really is. LOVE.”  
This reminds me of Gary Renard’s book. Gary has been a longtime student/Teacher in A course In Miracles.

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

This morning I observed myself to be loaded up heavy with negative, nasty, angry thoughts. I wrote the following on a piece of notebook paper and thumbtacked it on the side of my house early today, where the driveway is.

My diplomacy in regards to establishing healthy boundaries is not very polished at all. That’s pretty obvious.

I feel fortunate though that I had this option today. Of just being a recluse and avoiding saying anything negative and reactive to someone. Anytime I speak out in anger or discontent, I always regret it later. 
I didn’t have to go to a job or take care of responsibilities that involved being around people today and for that I’m fortunate.  
That pissy inner dialogue is all gone this evening. It left about mid-day. As far as I know, there were no unexpected visitors to read my rude, crudely made sign. I took it down late in the day but saved it in case I need it again.

I would just rather not be around people when I’m emotionally off balance. 
I’m grateful to be back to feeling lighthearted this evening.

This is just how it goes with me sometimes. I notice that people tend to mellow out more the older they get, as a rule and I believe that applies to me as well. When younger, I was most always wound up pretty tight. A heavy pain body as Eckart Tolle would say. Observing and strategizing to avoid compounding a problem. The inner conflict got started last night late. Just some mechanical negativity followed by a vague guilt. That old monkey that gets on my back unnoticed and usually by then my degree of being or state of consciousness is already in decline. 
Sometimes a deep sleep cycle does the job or other times a few hours of physical labor does the trick in returning to emotional balance.

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

Consulted the Oracle just now.

Received only one hexagram-

 

[MuadDib]

On 2/19/2021 at 3:18 PM, Zigzag Idiot said:

There's a joke thats told among carpenters. Someone will say that if they ever fall out of an airplane that hopefully they would be holding on to an air hose or an extension cord because the damn things are always going to hang up on something,,,,,.  @MuadDib mentioning his becoming reinterested in skydiving made me think of that. My fear of heights has grown as I've gotten older. In 2013, I reroofed one of our old barns and climbing to the breathtaking height of 18-20 feet gave me panic attacks. At the time I had a 2 cd set of Rumi that was read by Coleman Barks. Playing it as I went about my carpentry seemed to help a little bit.

Haha, good one. I decided skydiving is probably not such a good idea for a few more months at least. I need to use my bad arm to reach around my back to deploy my chute. It's kind of hard to do that at the moment. It's funny, quite a lot of people with a fear of heights do it and say it doesn't affect them at all. The earth is just so far away it feels like you'll never hit it. It's probably like looking at the sun and being scared you are going to fall into it, quite irrational when you think about it.

Hope you're doing alright. Apparently, my man Gautama was a bit of a craftsman himself.

Quote

Well-makers lead the water wherever they like; fletchers bend the arrow ; carpenters bend a log of wood ; wise people fashion themselves.

- Gautama Buddha

[Zigzag Idiot]

Thanks @MuadDib  ?

I appreciate the quotes,,,,

 

Learning Your Way Out of a Problem
by Dr. Jim Rosen
©2021 Dr. Jim Rosen
 

     When you want to overcome a problem and you want to grow and learn, you can do it by applying four steps. Your awareness is the first step.  You become an observer of yourself; you take notice, and become aware each time the particular problem comes to the surface.  The problem may express itself in your emotions (e.g., anxiety, guilt, anger, insecurity), or it may show up as depression and physical symptoms, or it may come out in conflicts with a loved one.  The second step isresponsibility.  This is where you look in the psychological mirror and realize that the problem belongs to you.  You are its rightful owner.  While it's not a matter of "blame," responsibility means that the source of the problem is within you.  Acceptance comes next.  You practice accepting yourself as a whole person.  Having the problem doesn't make you bad or unworthy; it just means that you’re human, and the problem is a mistake to be corrected.  And now it's time to make a conscious choice, the fourth step.  You stay focused on your personal radar screen.  When the problem expresses itself, you notice it, and you make the conscious decision and the conscious effort to respond differently.  Then each time the problem begins to appear, you have another opportunity to practice what you’re learning.

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

I’m still reading Eye of the Heart by Cynthia Bourgeault. It’s about the Causal Realm and our relation to it as well as our potential relation to as she terms it, imaginal causality. Using Gurdjieffs ‘Hydrogens’ and The Ray of Creation I’ve already mentioned that she identifies the ‘Kingdom’ as being World 24. Interesting table she gives here in Her new book.

Jim Marion’s Putting on the Mind of Christ has many inspirational passages regarding specific states of consciousness which relate to the causal realm.

It seems kind of funny that he places a full non dual state as being above Christ consciousness.

I’m getting too many books going at once which I’m prone to do. I’d forgotten Marion’s mention of Yogananda here. I’ve just began a re-read of Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi. It’s more than just interesting,,,

I feel like a hypocrite reading such high minded books considering that I’m a rather coarse individual. I need all the good influences I can get though.

 

 

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

A friend I recently shared my journal with just told me how phony I am. So I share this opinion with you,,,,

Chance and Choice - A Compendium of Ancient and Modern Wisdom Revealing the Meaning and Significance of the Myth of Science.  It was co-written by Austrian Philosopher and Professor, Arnold Keyserling -- a student of George Gurdjieff and Ramana Maharishi -- and by Keyserling's student and long time friend, R.C.L., now an attorney in the U.S.

From the introduction of Chance and Choice

“Wisdom is the ability to live coherently in a chaotic world.”,,,,,,,

,,,,,,,,,,

The Path of Wisdom essentially has four steps:

(1) know your body,

(2) create your energy body,

(3) create your meaning in life, and

(4) participate in a global network of friends where your meaning can be fulfilled in history. ,,,,,,,,,

,,,,,,,,,

A word of caution here, don't be too intellectual or take yourself too seriously, have fun with this material, play with it as a kind of "glass bead game". People who are too serious are not really mature.

http://www.chanceandchoice.com/course-overview/introduction/

 

[The voice]

 you didn't have to tear me down on this forum

 I ask for forgivness. I want to become strong and have courage to work.through my problems. To gain wisdom from.other intellect people global wide. I carry a full plate at this time in my life I'm not immature,  just scared and experience pain most generally on a regular basis because of the fear of watching my parents slip further away each day

[Zigzag Idiot]

I wasn’t calling you immature. Only the first sentence pertained to you and I didn’t identify you.

You just outed yourself. Chill out,,,, watch a You tube and try to get some sleep.

[Zigzag Idiot]

Just trying to mind my own business and It feels like I’m chest deep in bat shit crazy around here. 
A lot of projecting going on. I’m not naming any names,,,, 

The more you stir it the more it stinks kind of thing.  If it continues to accelerate I’ll request a moderator to intervene.

Theres no need for any of it,,,,

[Zigzag Idiot]

I appreciate @Shunyata ‘s comment on the notion of psychological projection. Also to be truth loving to the extent that he was willing to out himself on a personal experience he had regarding some negative projection. That willingness to admit it and see it fully when shortly after it happened, it’s obvious his frame of awareness expanded as a result of his willingness to observe his own actions objectively.

We all project. Every single one of  us here. Both negative and positive in nature. I didn’t really comprehend the extensive ness of projection among all of us until my early Forties but more disturbing, the number and the reality of my own projections. I still catch myself projecting something onto others quite regular. I’m not far enough yet the this path of transformation that I’m on that I’m absent of this phenomena. So I have to stay practiced up on this thing of seeing things about myself that are less than flattering and maybe eating crow. On of the payoffs in putting efforts towards objective self observation is a reduction of negative emotions. Even though I’ve been at this awhile and have received a few of these payoffs, on occasion I’m still capable of acting like a prick. It hurts to see these things but I thank God and the Universe that I do see them a times.

Science of Idiotism is very helpful in this not so easy work. By returning to Ordinary Idiot and starting again in beginners mind, it suddenly gets a little easier again and the weight is lifted somewhat. I’m happy to be an Idiot.

 

Glossary of Spiritual Wisdom

Excerpts about Projection 

Believing Your Projections

To the ego, freedom means being able to do whatever you want whenever you want to do it. Because this isn’t often possible, you come to see the universe as constraining you and limiting your freedom. But from the perspective of Holy Freedom, freedom is wanting whatever the universe wants. When you are aligned with the universe, what you want and what is happening are the same thing. This is true freedom. This is why the Idea of Holy Freedom is fundamental to the methodology of the Diamond Approach, in which a basic part of the practice is to be present with whatever happens to be your state. If you react to it, interfere with it, or try to change it, then you can’t see it objectively but only through the screen of your projections. If you don’t see your condition or the situation in its natural state, you will continue believing your projections about it and won’t be able to penetrate its true nature. If you don’t see its true nature, it won’t unfold and expose itself as the Holy Truth that everything is. Fundamental to our understanding is that while you might have projections upon whatever you are experiencing initially, if you don’t interfere with it, the tendency of the universe is to reveal its own nature through your experience. This, of course, requires basic trust.

Facets of Unity, pg. 136 

Our Projections Determine Many of Our Actions

Our projections, of course, determine many of our actions, our feelings, and even our life plans. Paranoia is one of the most well known forms of projection but projection is very prevalent in other forms. Sometimes you project your fear or your jealousy, so that you won’t have to experience them and admit that you yourself are feeling these things… Projection is actually one of the first defensive mechanisms developed in infantile life. Its basis is what is called the “merged state.” The child is in what is called the symbiotic stage, between the ages of three and nine months, when he does not experience himself as separate from his environment. He feels that he and his mother are one thing… However, that early merged state, that state of being the same as the other, remains as the basis of projection. So if you feel angry, you may feel someone else is feeling angry. The child is feeling angry and he doesn’t know his mother is different from him, so he thinks she is feeling angry, or vice versa. So we see how this is the deepest source of projection.

Diamond Heart Book One, pg. 118 

Positive Projection Happens When You Become More Aware of Your True Nature

Positive projection happens when you start becoming more and more aware of your true nature, your Essence. Before this happens, what you know best is your personality, and that’s what you project. After a while, when you start to experience your value, your love, your essential self, your compassion, you begin to project these qualities. All kinds of issues will arise from the unconscious then, barriers against experiencing Essence, which will make you want to project it outside. It’s the same process as falling in love, except that now the expansion is coming from the intentional work.

Diamond Heart Book One, pg. 122 

Projection of the Superego 

The negative experiences with the mother gradually coalesce; become one big thing, which is isolated from the positive part of experience. This forms the basis for the superego, for the negative judgments of the superego. You project your superego outside because in the beginning there was no difference then. So now when you experience the negatively merged state, you cannot separate what is real inside from what is real outside, and your preference is to believe it's outside. So you can see that in order to work through your superego you must get all the way down to that pre-verbal, chaotic, hellish, negatively merged state. As you experience this fully, without defending against it, certain essential states will arise to move you through the negativity and the hell.

Diamond Heart Book One, pg. 119 

Projections of the Positive and Negative Merged States

Just as the negative merged state is the basis for the projection of negative aspects of ourselves, the positive merged state forms a basis for our projection of the positive aspects of ourselves. And what is that that but our Essence? The negative merged state is the basis of our personality. It is our personality. The positive merged state is our Essence. However, because of the developmental state of symbiosis, the “dual unity” that happens in childhood, we associate our Essence – along with all the positive qualities of love, value, fulfillment, satisfaction – with the merged state, the positive merging with another. There starts the big search: the search for the perfect merged state with the good mother who will give you love, value, approval, pleasure, satisfaction.

Diamond Heart Book One, pg. 120 

Three Varieties of Projection

Projection, displacing something somewhere else, seeing something that doesn’t exist, is obviously for the purpose of defense. There are generally three levels, or three varieties of projection in relation to the merged state, depending on the depth at which you’re operating, or at which the unconscious is functioning. The first level is the level of the actual merged state itself, when you can’t tell whether it’s you or somebody else, when you experience one big unity, which is all wonderful. That’s when the actual merged state itself is activated. The other person might be participating with you, or might not be. In the merged state, it doesn’t matter… The second aspect, which comes a little bit later with more differentiation and separation, is called projective identification. Instead of being completely merged, what you do in this case is project an aspect of yourself, such as value, onto somebody else. You see that value in someone else and then you want to merge with it. You project it and then you identify with it… The third level is just projection: you don’t identify with the projection, you just project something… you do this whether what is projected is something you want or don’t want.

Diamond Heart Book One, pg. 123 

We Plaster Our Projections Over All Manifest Forms

Recognizing the nonbeingness of Being does not lead to the disappearance of the individual soul; it leads to understanding that the individual soul doesn’t exist the way we usually think it does. Then we discover that emptiness of Being is true not just about the individual self, but also about the perceptions of the individual self. In other words, all that we perceive can be liberated from the ordinary conception of existence as a solid something that is really there. We plaster our beliefs and our projections over all manifest forms, all the world, all the universe that we see. And when the world is free from our ideas about it, we see it in its beingness, we see that everything is a manifestation of beingness in its purity and presence and luminosity. The thoroughgoing understanding of emptiness reveals not only that the world and the individual soul are manifestations of Being, but also that the manifestation of Being doesn’t have the kind of existence we attribute to it. Being, in all its forms, is in complete eternal, inseparable embrace with its eternal partner, nonbeing. When we recognize the intrinsic emptiness of everything, then the beingness recognizes not only that the world is a manifestation of Being, but also that the world is a manifestation of emptiness. We recognize that Being is the radiance of emptiness, and that this radiance has variegated colors and multifaceted forms that we experience as the world and as all the content of our experience.

Diamond Heart Book Five, pg. 366 

We Tend to See What is Best in Us Outside

We see here that we not only project our superego outside, we also project our Essence. We tend to see what is best in us outside. That doesn’t happen all the time, of course, but it usually happens when you are in love… People fall in love because if they begin to expand, they start to get close to their Essence; then the unconscious, the personality, gets in the way. It is threatened by getting close to Essence. So you project your Essence outside onto someone else and fall in love with it. What this means is that you still cannot tolerate your own expansion. If you recall back to when you fell in love, it was at the height of some time of feeling good, of expansion. Suddenly, the right person shows up, and you’re in love.

Diamond Heart Book One, pg. 121

[Shunyata]

@Zigzag Idiot hi, do you remember your first love? And do you agree that first love is the only true love one will ever experience ?

[Zigzag Idiot]

I’m not sure if I do remember.  I understand the question but I can also see a gradient of somewhat subtlies hooked to levels of abstract thought. I would probably need to ponder it a for a bit and then communicate in person or at least in video conference. I’ll ponder your question for the time being, though.

[Zigzag Idiot]

Maurice Nicoll has so much good quoteable material. I guess it stands to reason though. His Psychological Commentaries  number nearly 2000 pages. This has been distilled down fairly recently to 130 page book called Gems of Wisdom.

https://inner-world-books.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Gems_of_Wisdom.pdf

 

BEING PASSIVE TO REACTIONS
“Now let us come back to the meaning of being passive. In the full sense it means being passive to the personality, and this, in turn, means being passive to oneself. Can you be passive to your mechanically arising objections for even five minutes? Well, I advise you to observe how your personality reacts every moment to everyone and everything...Notice when you begin to object inside—notice what reactions arise in you—and try to be passive to them, not to the people who cause them to arise. Is this clear? You must make yourself passive to your own reactions, not to the people you are reacting to.”
V. 1, p. 276

JUDGEMENTS
“Mechanical criticism of others produces a great many psychologi-
cal difficulties in the person who criticizes—that is, wrong ‘I’s which hinder their own inner development and freedom...After a time you will learn that you cannot afford to sleep too much and to talk and act mechanically and let your life be in the hands of wrong ‘I’s.” V. 1, p. 150-1

INNER TALKING
“When you come into the Work one of the things that the Work teaches you is to try to stop inner talking because it is very danger- ous...The first thing that we must do in regard to inner talking is to observe it and notice what this inner talking is saying...A great deal of inner talking is connected with self-justifying—namely with the attempt to put yourself in the right. You feel, for example, that some- one has not treated you rightly. This will start off inner talking.
. . . Inner talking is never dialogue but is always a monologue. Inner talking is always negative in character.” V. 2, p. 774-5
INNER TALKING II
“Now we have to cancel all sense of people owing us anything at all. This is extremely difficult. But it is one of the few things mentioned in the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Cancel what we owe as we cancel what others owe us.’ When a person allows inner talking to go on and on in him- self he is losing force all the time...When you are in attention your inner talking stops.” V. 2, pp. 775, 777

INNER TALKING III
“In this Work you cannot go far with pleasing self-made pictures
of your own nobility or value. When you begin to observe yourself deeply enough, these pictures, these fantasies, begin to change. You know that you yourself are just as bad or worse than the other person. Then I am quite sure from my own experience that a great deal of your inner talking will stop. You do not seek to justify yourself.”
V. 2, p. 776
49

YOU HAVE A RIGHT NOT TO BE NEGATIVE’
“Now the Work says you have a right not to be negative...To be able to feel this draws down force to help you. You stand upright, as it were, in yourself, among all the mess of your negativeness, and you feel and know that it is not necessary to lie down in that mess. To say this phrase in the right way to yourself, to feel the meaning of the words: ‘I have a right not to be negative,’ is actually a form of self- remembering, of feeling a trace of real ‘I,’ that lifts you up above the level of your negative ‘I’s which are all the time telling you without a pause that you have every right to be negative.” V. 1, p. 161

BEARING UNPLEASANT MANIFESTATIONS
“One sign of Being is the capacity to bear the unpleasant manifestations of others. Why is this a sign of greater Being? The answer is that you cannot do this unless you have seen in yourself what you dislike in others...When you have just criticized someone, go over what you said carefully and apply it to yourself. This neutralizes poison in you.” V. 1, pp. 168, 176

RESPONSIBILITY FOR NEGATIVE STATES
“If you are in a negative state, it is always your own fault, from the Work point of view. No matter what happened, what someone said, what someone did, we have to become responsible for our negative states—ourselves. . .When you feel the presence of negative emotions in you, as a foreign substance, as acutely as a stomach-ache, then youwill seek, for your own reasons, to work on yourself and transform your inner state for your own inner health...But this takes many years and requires a certain inner courage, an inner bravery, an inner determination, until something new is born distinct from life.”
V. 2, p. 695

ON ‘NOT FIXING’
“As long as you externally consider another person with a view to trying to change him or her—that is, as long as you think the other person should be different—you are not externally considering, but internally considering. The basis of internal considering is that others should be different, and from this comes ‘making accounts’ against others...One thing is quite certain, and that is that the more sincerely we observe ourselves and what is in us, the less smug we shall be. And from this it follows that we shall be less satisfied to think that we know what the other person should be like.” V. 1, pp. 268-9

THE FEELING OF NOTHINGNESS
“When the Work says that a man must come to realize his own nothingness before he can be re-born, it does not mean that he must humble himself and so on, but that he must by long self-observation actually begin to realize that he is nothing and that there is no such person as himself. The object of this is to get into a position, psycho- logically speaking, between the opposites...Why is it so important
to get somewhere into the centre of the pendulum and not swing to and fro? Because here, between the opposites, lie all the possibilities of growth. Here influences from higher levels can reach us. Here, in this place where one can feel one’s own nothingness (and where one is therefore free from contradictions), influences and meanings com- ing from higher centres, which have no contradictions, can be felt. Not regarding yourself as good or bad, not priding yourself on being just or otherwise, not thinking you are well-treated or badly-treated, not being caught by either movement through identifying, you come into this mid-position. This is not easy! With personality active, it is impossible.” V. 1, p. 329

[The voice]

I've not studied any of Maurice Nicolls work,,,,,the post you shared had such profound shuttle wisdom that speaks volumes to someone sincerely wanting to work on one's deficits and flaws of the character of the being we are.Very inspiring raising a  curiosity to want to read more of his work.   

[Zigzag Idiot]

                 Meditation

 

Two good points I needed to hear as reminders, in this short clip from Hameed Almaas.

 

Anyone new to Zen or practicing Zazen might find some helpful ideas from Zen Master Warner. I’ve enjoyed reading most of his books. He’s been very dedicated but you’ll see no spiritual egotism with this guy, He keeps it real. If not this podcast then maybe another from his channel.

[Zigzag Idiot]

On 2/23/2021 at 5:48 AM, Shunyata said:

@Zigzag Idiot hi, do you remember your first love? And do you agree that first love is the only true love one will ever experience ?

@Shunyata In pondering your question the following odd experience happened to me at quite a young age. The feeling of love was one of the key components of this really vivid dream. This is an experience I shared here on my journal just shortly after I began it.

When I was 7 years old I awoke from a dream and knew without any doubt at all what the world felt like from a girl's perspective. Although being just a prepubescent girl in the dream, there was a nonspecific boy whom I felt great love for.

Whenever in the past I've tried relating this dream, it was always twisted by others into a sign of repressed homosexuality. In my local culture there is a lot of polarity thinking. It's either this or that.

In spite of the dream, as Ken Wilbur puts it, I'm a hard wired heterosexual.

 

So far as the first love being maybe the only true love, as you phrased it. That just doesn’t ring true with me. My first ‘loves’ were probably more infatuation on my part than anything.

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

Think About Anxiety
by Dr. Jim Rosen
©2021 Dr. Jim Rosen
 

    Think of anxiety on a scale from 1 to 10 with 1 being completely comfortable and relaxed.  Most people can experience a 2,3,4 and still function pretty well and get themselves under control.  It is normal to experience this level of anxiety pretty regularly.  It’s part of being in human skin.  Even an occasional 5 or 6 is a normal human experience.  And in this very stressful year, 5’s and 6’s have become more frequent for many people.

    There is good news here.  These normal levels of anxiety are not an indication that you’re falling apart or that something is terribly wrong.  They are not a sign of anything awful.  So you need not magnify it or “awfulize” it in your mind.  In fact, do just the opposite.  “Normalize” it.  Be aware (and remind yourself as often as needed) that the anxiety is normal and human.  This will make it a lot easier to keep your emotions under control.  So here is another example where acceptance of what is can go a long way toward easing your life.