Trying to Fix the Finished Cake
For a long time I have believed that the source of all my health problems is fear. And that all I have to do is get rid of it and I will heal completely. This leads to control. If I just control my anxiety, learn more, read more books, find more techniques, I will be free. But, after years of doing what I am “supposed” to do, nothing has really changed. No wonder I’m so exhausted.
However, I recently stumbled across a video that changed my thinking entirely.
What if the thing I’ve been trying to release doesn’t need to be released at all? What if it just needs to be accepted? The constant need to control anxiety may be the problem.
Many years have been spent trying to “fix” my symptoms. But maybe symptoms are just messengers, the effects. What if I am looking at this all wrong. The cause comes first and I’m trying to change the effect instead of the cause.
The way I understand it now is that everything in this world begins before it’s seen. In your mind, your inner world, or subconscious. Whatever you want to call it. But everything starts in the “non physical”. This would be the cause. The physical, what we see, touch, feel etc., is the effect.
I like to understand this by thinking about baking a cake. I’m baking a chocolate cake, yum, and I forget to put in the eggs while mixing the ingredients. Now that’s something I would likely do knowing me. Anyway, I mix it all up, eggless, and pop it in the oven to bake. The result, a dry, crumbly failure.
Now according to my idea on how to “heal” this cake, I try to push the eggs in now, after it’s already baked. That’s not going to work. You all know where the problem started. It wasn’t the baked cake (effect), it was the missing eggs at the beginning (the cause).
I can’t fix the baked cake no matter how hard I try. I needed to change what went into it before it reached the oven. I hope this is making sense. The mixing of the ingredients is the non physical, and the baked cake is the physical.
So, I realised that this is what I have been doing with my life. I always focus on what I can “see”. What’s right there in front of me, and how I can change it, or fix it. All I see is the finished cake and try to control the outcome.
My finished cake is anxiety. I must control it, suppress the fears. Avoid what triggers it and that will heal everything. But, I don’t think healing works like that now. Maybe anxiety isn't the problem. Maybe it's a symptom. A messenger trying to tell me something. Listen to it and accept it.
I have heard about acceptance before, but I rejected it. I thought accepting meant giving up. And if I accept something that means I am stuck with it forever.
But maybe accepting it means I can stop fighting it. Stop trying to fix the effect and go back to the cause. Maybe start the cake again and not forget the eggs. The effect will turn out much better.
What does this mean? I’m not really sure. It could be as simple as listening to my inner world instead of trying to silence it. It could mean asking myself what I need instead of trying to fix myself.
I don’t know exactly just yet, but I think I finally understand that healing isn’t about becoming fearless. I think it’s about stopping the fight. Letting go of the need to control everything, and learning how to care for the part of me that created the fear in the first place.