Relax, don’t do it.
The opposite of stress is relaxation. Consciousness has no opposite.
Relax. It can sound prosaic, which masks the tremendous spiritual and creative power of physical relaxation. From one perspective, spiritual liberation begins, continues and ends with relaxation. In relaxation, there is an opening. In opening the Book of Life, the opening is critical. The opening is more important than any single book.
We all know what relaxation is. It might seem unexciting, simple and obvious. But how could the unexciting, simple and obvious ever be excluded from the Book of Life?
We all depend on relaxation as a fundamental, gross and subtle aspect of being here. We know it as a relative degree of release.
Relaxation is the release of something. It’s a letting go. Its feeling has a direct relation to the stress that was there before. For example a tired leg, with contracting muscles, will experience relaxation in resting in an elevated position, letting it sink so that the energy caught in the contracted muscles can release.
Chemically and physically, stress and relaxation are in a dance of form. The stress hormone cortisol is as important to our functioning as the endorphins released through relaxation. The central nervous system is whole through the efficiency of both the sympathetic nervous system (linked to survival and stress) and the parasympathetic nervous system (linked to nurture, procreation and relaxation).
Getting on our own nerves
We are formed in an environment in which the sympathetic nervous system is in overdrive. We run from A to B with a basic drive to survive. Most of what we are trying to survive is life itself. When the governing drive is to survive life, then the only reliable, final relaxation would be death.
Imagine the destruction inherent in this misconception – the misconception that we need to survive life. Consider further that while death might be a great transformation – the end of individual physical form, it is not necessarily the end of individual consciousness.
The physical and chemical impact of belief systems based on personal survival is high. Stress levels are increasing exponentially in the Western world. 10% of strokes are attributed to work stress. In America, three quarters of doctor visits are reported to relate to stress-related ailments. Stress is cited as the cause of a forty percent increase in the risk of heart disease; ten percent in the risk of heart attack and a fifty percent increase in the risk of stroke. Forty percent of stressed people over-eat or eat unhealthy foods. Forty four percent report sleep disturbance.
In addition, stress has been shown to literally shrink the brain. Extreme stress events such as divorce, job loss or moving house reduce gray matter in regions related to emotional and physiological functions – a forerunner of psychiatric distress.
Yet all this stress is (right now) a ubiquitous part of the Book of Life. Our partner can scream at us: “RELAX!!!!” but that’s not really going to help, is it?
We can flagellate ourselves with the thoughts “I am stressed, I need to relax.” But the feeling behind these thoughts could be spiced with self-rejection, inner condemnation and isolation. Those feelings are clouding our pure awareness.
Relaxation is not something we can do. It’s not an active movement, but a receptive one. It’s about agreeing to let go – even for a microsecond.
We can make time and space for relaxation, but the relaxation itself is a movement that needs to be allowed. The return to the lax state of being – beyond borders and beyond conscious control can be fearful. Just the thought of relaxation can create more stress.
Within the competition between stress and relaxation is more stress and the potential for more inner split and division. The deeper magic can be found in the relaxation into the stress itself. Here, relaxation and stress merge, becoming one, and allowing a conscious receptivity beyond the conditions of space and time. It stands up to inquiry? What needs to relax? What part of ourselves needs the relaxation? That which is stressed.
Stress is beckoning to the energy of relaxation “come”. We only need to agree to that. But to give this permission, we need to be at a third point, beyond the dance of stress and relaxation, a conscious space which is here irrespective of the activity occurring through the central nervous system. This conscious space is not a thought and not a feeling. It doesn’t depend on either, although both thought and feeling depend on it.
Relaxation is an effect of the release of agenda. It comes with the abandonment of striving. Not just mental agenda and striving, but also energetic agenda and striving, grasping and pushing away. Relaxation is the natural effect of the silence of mind as the living, causal source of all thinking and agenda. This peaceful, living silence is here, irrespective of any thought.
Relaxation is found in the release of conscious will, conscious control, and conscious form. The letting go of these three orders of illusion is made possible through a direct connection to what is real in the here and now. In deep relaxation, consciousness dissolves in feeling awareness and in the vast, unrestricted, familiar emptiness beyond that.
In the initial stages of relaxation, the transient impressions arising and fading in the moment begin to pale in comparison to the light of unburdened consciousness. Our consciousness becomes disentangled, unhooked from the energy of holding, resisting, clinging or rejecting. It just is, and as such it has the possibility to relax still more deeply beyond itself.
Part 2: No Time, No Space
- Stress, Vitality, Consciousness & The Book of Life. Part 1 – Relax. Don’t Do It
- Stress, Vitality, Consciousness & The Book of Life. Part 2 – No Time. No Space
- Stress, Vitality, Consciousness & The Book of Life. Part 3 – From Stress to Depress
- Stress, Vitality, Consciousness & The Book of Life. Part 4 – Healing not Dealing
