Worry is the conversation in your head that fear has with itself.

Really?

Maybe that’s why…

I tell myself not to worry, but I worry still.

I tell myself I do not worry; but then, that I should worry more.

I tell myself to stop talking to myself, too; but the talk in my head goes on.

Who am I talking to? I am talking to me.

So, how nuts is that?

Who just asked that question. Was it I, myself, or me?

Don’t be so smug, reader?

It’s no different with you.

And, neither of us is nuts.

Not yet.

Or, are we?

Maybe we are.

Could talking to ourselves just be an earlier stage of crazy?

Of course not, I say. Or, was that what you said?

Who said it?

I’m in my head still.

See what I mean?

I talk to myself incessantly.

What if…

Oh, stop it!

But I can’t.

Or, can I?

Can you?

Is this what Saint Paul meant when he lamented, “Oh wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me?” (Rom. 7:24-25).

I need some deliverance today.

But how?

The Buddha was once asked, “What do you and your disciples gain from stillness and meditation?”

“Nothing,” he responded.

“Then why do you do it?” asked the frustrated inquirer.

“We gain little,” explained the Buddha, “but we lose much…anxiety, worry, anger, fear of old age, even the fear of death.”

It is your spiritual practices, my friend, like meditation that enables you to lose what you don’t need – the madness of a mind that won’t stop worrying…fearing…refusing to let go and say, with Saint Paul, “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory in Jesus Christ” (Rom. 7:25).

Practice going within.

See what you lose.