So many of us are feeling stressed! …. especially during these times of covid and social unrest. Many people are doing double duties ….. parents working from home and simultaneously schooling their children! Some of us have been been laid-off but still have mortgages and bills to pay.
We’ve become stress, if we weren’t already, but stress blocks us from our peak performance! It’s a habit of survival mode! We don’t purposely become addicted to stress, but it’s something known to us ….. familiar. We may even believe we should be stressed …. it’s our reputation on the line after all! Yet ….. stress is actually abnormal.
And though stress has physical symptoms and even produces hormones like cortisol that can make us physically ill and fat ….. stress is a mental consciousness issue. Calm, collected and confident is our natural state, which puts us in top performance condition. And we can return to our natural state with conscious intent.
Relaxation will give limited relief of stress, but we must get to the source of stress ….. which is emotional ties like anger, fear and resentment ….. in order to rise above it.
Consider these 4 simple methods to get relief!
# 1 – The simplest thing to do when we are tempted to get stressed is to do the opposite. Breathe in the calm and loving energy of Universal Life Energy. Mind is unable to stop itself from circling in thoughts and feelings even if we tell it to “stop thinking!” We need higher help.
If you felt the pressure of stress come from someone else, like your boss, coworkers or partner, send them Light filled with loving, compassionate thoughts. And mentally negate stress by saying and aligning with something like, “Stress has no power over me. I am calm, collected and loving.”
#2 – Do something else physically: Move ….. walk to a quiet place if possible ….. preferably in nature. Pause ….. take a deep breathe …. several. Deep breathing naturally induces relaxation ….. and calms the mind and emotions. Moving the body and coming into it mentally by breathing takes the energies from thoughts and feelings.
#3 – Contact Universal Life Energy. IT is a great gift of Our Father. It can help us surrender to Unconditional Love that is within us before we may even remember it.
#4 – Move into a higher level of consciousness with sincere intent from pride into courage ….. by mentally envisioning dropping stress ….. release stress like you would a pencil from your hand, or like a block you burn in the pure fire of Unconditional Love of Universal Life Energy.
And to release the deeper emotional causes of stress consider the method below.
We have been unconsciously programmed …
like a computer and conditioned to stress because of our mental naivety …. perhaps for thousands of years. We’ve seen adults experience it when we were children. We’ve seen co-workers experience it. It may be programmed in our DNA and cell memories that still causes us “fight, flight, freeze” reactions. This is when contact with Universal Life Energy is invaluable because it naturally harmonizes fear, the deeper emotion.
Even though others, our boss and co-workers can become stressed, remember …… no-one can make us stressed ….. just like no-one can make us mad….. it’s what we allow. Be conscious of emotional contagion! The energies of stress can enter the subconsciousness to grow unconsciously making us feel uneasy most of the time!
Questions to get to the bottom of it!
If we face it ….. the job or issue at hand itself doesn’t cause stress ….. it’s the meaning we give to it! It’s our own internal feelings about it. It’s personal! And we feel personally obligated to fulfill expectations.
The mind created this problem of stress ….. but can’t control it. We can’t control our thoughts ….. our feelings! One emotion can cause a thousand thoughts! We want to get to the bottom of the emotion that causes all the thinking ….. recognition, release and surrender ….(RRS … 🙂
To begin recognition: Take a deep breathe, relax, go silent and make the Mental Contact. Come into the present moment and observe in a detached state ‘the thinker’ before questioning.
These questions are more of what rather than why ….. mostly because why questions are abstract and we can get blogged down in memories and associated feelings. What questions can lead back to the base emotion without entanglement!
Questions like: For what? So what? Of what? Then what?
What does it feel like? What are the physical symptoms? Sometimes simply observing the physical symptoms or sensations and labeling it like ‘pressure around the heart’ or ‘difficult to take deep breathes’ (the one I often experienced) makes it easier to recognize! Pressure for what? For what purpose?
The primary question: What’s the payoff?
The ego will fight tooth and nail at this point! It feeds on the belief of stress and hyped up emotions to keep it alive and kicking!
What’s the payoff for feeling stressed? …. To feel better about ourselves? …. To feel like we’re at least doing something?
Does it fill the hole of low self-esteem? What for? To compensate for insecurities, shame, guilt, fear?
Fear of what? ….. Fear of not being good enough ….. not being fit to be loved, lovable?
Staying in self-analysis and question mode is not the objective and we could circle and get trapped there if we dilly dally ….. so consider moving to more beneficial steps!
Try this …..nothing has any meaning other than what we give to it!
It may helpful to look at A Course in Miracles which is viewed by most spiritually minded people, It has Christian connotations, but can be used by anyone! You can listen to YouTube explanations to learn what the coarse is all about.
There are 365 lessons …. one practice for each day of the year. Hence, I am sharing the first 10 lessons in the workbook, which I found to be very helpful to release arrogance and ‘know it all’ attitudes which are related to stress: so practice thinking and realizing as per instruction several times a day!
– Lesson 1, Day 1 – Look at any object in the room or outside and say/realize – “Nothing I see in this room (on this street, from this window, in this place) means anything.” …. page 23 of workbook.
– Lesson 2 – “I have given everything I see in this room (on this street, from this window, in this place) all the meaning that it has for me.”
– Lesson 3 – “I do not understand anything I see in the room (on this street, from this window, in this place).”
– Lesson 4 – ” These thoughts do not mean anything. They are like the things I see in the room (on this street, from this window, in this place).”
– Lesson 5 – ” I am never upset for the reason I think.”
– Lesson 6 – ” I am upset because I see something that is not there.”
– Lesson 7 – “I see only the past.” (It takes at least a split second for anything we see to travel to the brain and process! Hence …. a true statement. And stress and expectations are based in the past!)
– Lesson 8 – “My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.”
– Lesson 9 – “I see nothing as it is now.”
– Lesson 10 – “My thoughts do not mean anything.”
It may be helpful to write these down and keep a journal to record realization of release of subconscious conditioning programmed from the past.
Release and surrender
Recognition of stress and release of emotional causes are essential processing, yet the primary one is surrender ….. surrender ourselves ….. our thinking and emotions ….. our expectations …… to Unconditional Love. When we allow ourselves to recognize, release and surrender to Love …… we discover our innate courage and real security!
There is sureness and gentleness rather than hurry when we release stress because we are conscious that there is always plenty of time to do what is essential. We trust in the Great Law!
What we gain
We can view stress, or any other emotional issue, by finding the value in it …. by giving it new meaning …. by viewing it as an opportunity to learn and grow.
The release of stress gives us the opportunity to surrender to Unconditional Love ….. and regain our peace of mind. This is a great gift ….. because we have also lightened the burden of defensiveness, resentment anger, and self-punishment. We are less vulnerable and fearful.
We are calmer, happier and more powerful.
In the hope You find Love close at hand, PortiaSLB
“Whenever you feel the impulse to indulge in some negative inner call, school yourself to bring out instead the exactly opposite and positive quality.”
Eugene Fersen, Lesson 12 in 27 Lessons in Science of Being, page 255.
This entry relates to Lesson 12 in 27 Lessons in Science of Being. Kindly use link.
Science of Being 