Hi Charlie,
Thank you for your meditation teachings, I've taken all your courses. One main fear that I have is constant worrying about something bad happening, dying, or becoming sick. This is usually triggered by hearing about someone young getting sick and passing away quickly, or someone got into a car accident and died so unexpectedly. It makes it hard to live the day to day life in this calm state when I have this underlining thought of what if something bad happens to me or a loved one. I understand we all die and the exciting part of life is the adventure of the unknown but how can I live a life of calm adventure of the unknown? How can I use meditation or practice a way to not have these constant thoughts interrupt my day to day life?
Feeling Existential Angst Repeatedly From Unrealistic Lessons
Hi FEARFUL
Think about this as though you are baking an apple pie.
1) The first thing to do is stop using disgusting ingredients. Stop watching the news. If you have friends who post on social-media about car crashes, sickness, children getting kidnapped, crimes etc. either unfriend/unfollow them or if you value other parts of the friendship, mute their feed. When people start gossiping about all these topics politely excuse yourself. You don't have to do this forever but you have an unbalanced set of thoughts coming into your head so until you reverse that trend you can only expect unbalanced thoughts to come out of your head. This apple pie is going to taste awful if you keep putting rotten potatoes into it.
2) Start getting good ingredients. Read things that are positive and up-lifting. Read about great people who you admire. Talk about health and feeling radiant with people. Practice thinking thoughts that make you smile and then keep smiling about these things. Don't worry if people look at you strangely. Just smile at them and smile about how odd you are to be happy in this world. These are the apples, sugar, and (gluten free) flour that you are using to bake your apple pie.
3) Put the pie in the oven. This is what meditation is. It is a time to cultivate your best self and allow all the ingredients that you have gathered to simmer and congeal into something greater than the sum of the ingredients. When you come out of meditation the pie will be absolutely delicious but only if you follow steps 1&2 in the recipe.
With fearless love,
Charlie