In the same way you know that a dog may bark and nip at you but not harm you, when you hear a voice that says, "you're out of time," or feel a pressure telling you, "you've got to run," one day you'll feel that pressure, that hypertension, that anxiety, and inwardly you will hear another certain kind of voice that basically says, "That's it. No more running for you. No more running for you."
And you will know the significance of that instruction because you will have lived for so long with the pain of running. The bottom line is that everything that you are and will be is right here with you right now. No exceptions to that.
Now does that mean that this present nature, this divided mind that's easily tricked, does that mean that's all there is? No, what that means is that you have to be there within yourself when these voices, when these feelings are pressing themselves into you, telling you that you must do something to protect yourself, or do what they say.
Because until you recognize that that's a lie, that the voice in those feelings belongs to ancient machinery, you'll mistake the machinery for yourself. It's ancient machinery, and it produced what it did in the past for a particular purpose. But for aspirants, the purpose has been spent, and it's time to put down these childish things. And negative states, whether you know it or not, are childish things, because they belong to a mind that is asleep to itself, trying to save itself.
The next time you start to feel that tension, that anxiety, if you could just even vaguely remember that what you need to do is be aware of the machinery -- not what the man in the machine is telling you to do -- then you'll have a chance to stand there and understand that all that this pressure and anxiety can do is threaten you. It cannot take anything from you, other than what you give it when you came under the influence of that nature.
Catch that voice, catch the feeling connected to it, and trace it back to this part of you that belongs to something that never served you but only stole from you when it promised that if you did what it said to do, you'd be set free. You are free. You're free to discover the truth of yourself, and in that discovery to be liberated from the false relationship you have with what's stealing your life now.