There are anxious times in every life. These are times of trembling. Your confidence and security evaporates. What lies ahead of you seems brooding and threatening. Because we live in space, anything can approach and assail us. Because we live in time, there is always an interim period between us and what is coming. When we grow anxious, we fill up that interim with every imaginable disaster. Our fantasy turns wild and dark. Then when the dreaded event comes, it is never as bad as we have imagined and we are hugely relieved. We find again our natural poise. Some people make a habit of anxiousness. Somehow, they have slipped into a mode of permanent worry. When they enter a room, they bring an aura of anxiousness that darkens the company and installs a certain gloom. If the others present attempt to continue their liveliness of presence, the anxious presence withdraws deeper into itself and looms in the room like an accusation. Such people may have great lives, but they feel little of their lives’ joy or happiness. It is so difficult for such people to find any inner distance from their anxiousness. To them, it is serious and ultimate. There is no humour or any sense of irony. Trying to force themselves out of it often only enforces it. Sometimes paying too much attention to it only confirms it as a condition for them. It is lovely to see a person liberate himself from this. Somehow it dawns on a person that it is not a condition at all, rather this anxiousness is something he does to himself. With this recognition already a huge breakthrough is achieved. When a person explores further and asks why he needs to punish himself in this way, he is already on his way to peace. He stops punishing himself and gradually the occasional smile begins to transform the anxious countenance. And laughter may not be far away!
There is great beauty in dignity; it is a special quality of presence. It is lovely to behold people who inhabit their own dignity. The human body is its own language. Every gesture you make speaks about who you are. The way you hold yourself, how you walk, sit, speak, and touch things tells of your quality of soul. Some people have a clear dignity of carriage and composure. You sense their self-respect and the ease with which they are at home in their own presence. There is no forcing of presence; they do not drive themselves outwards to impress or ingratiate themselves. Other people squander their dignity completely. They live a half-mile outside themselves, their personalities sprung in search of notice and affirmation. Your presence inevitably reveals what you think of yourself. If you do not hold yourself in esteem, it is unlikely that others will respect you either.
The beauty of dignity is its truth. When you were sent to the world you were given great freedom. This is a gift we forget. Regardless of how you appear to others, you are free to view yourself with affection, understanding, and respect. Although you depend on the affection and love of others to awaken your love for yourself, your sense of self should not depend on outside affirmation. When you have a worthy sense of your self, this communicates itself in your physical presence and personality. Outer dignity is gracious and honourable; it is the mirror of inner dignity. No one else can confer dignity on you; it is something that comes from within. You cannot fake it or acquire it as you would an accent. You can only receive the gift of dignity from your own heart. When you learn to embrace your self with a sense of appreciation and affection, you begin to glimpse the goodness and light that is in you, and gradually you will realize that you are worthy of respect from yourself. When you recognize your limits, but still embrace your life with affection and graciousness, the sense of inner dignity begins to grow. You become freer and less dependent on the affirmation of outer voices and less troubled by the negativity of others. Now you know that no one has the right to tarnish the image that you have of yourself.
