You Need Stress

You Need Stress

Industrialization and technology have led civilization down the path of lazy decay of mind, body and Spirit.  While chronic stress can break down a body and/or psyche, healthy stress does provide a way of overcoming stasis and promoting adaptive changes.  Biologically life forms on Earth require stress to develop, grow, evolve, reproduce, and in general adapt to change which is a constant in life. In most cases, stress promotes survival because it forces organisms to adapt to rapidly changing environmental conditions. Stressful conditions stimulate evolutionary change and explain evolutionary patterns.  The interaction between organism and environment is central in evolution. Extinction ensues when organisms fail to change and adapt to constantly altering stressful environmental changes as documented in the fossil record. Extreme environmental stress causes extinction but also leads to evolutionary change and the origination of new species adapted to new environments.

Many illnesses and mood disorders arise from stasis as much from (or perhaps more so) bad or extreme stress.   This has been noted with pets as well humans (especially with children and the aged. When confined to a small, unstimulating indoor environment people and pets get dull, depressed, and fat. In extreme cases muscle atrophy, metabolic dysfunction, and altered brain chemistry and hormone production arises.  The medical and psychiatric industries gain another cash cow as people and pets are treated with medications in an attempt to offset the problems arising from a sedentary, unchallenging lifestyle.  Once on medication, you will definitely face stress as you learn to manage a lifestyle of pharmaceutical side effects. The path to a healthy balanced lifestyle is to create good, healthy stress for yourselves and your pets. With all your physical needs so easily cared for in modern society (if you are economically well off that is) you need to purposefully insert good, fun, healthy challenges and stress into your life. You can do this via exercise, taking on intellectual challenges (deciding to read a non-fiction book a week), fasting to help your body and taste buds re-set, trying something new (overcoming your shyness or fear), etc. 

This is also true regarding Spiritual development.  People want to “progress,” expand, move forward. Sadly what they are often looking for is a new, fun, exciting metaphysical cool events, preferably events they do not have to make any effort other than pay some money and show up.  Spiritual development grows under stress.  With “bad” stress, prisoners find Jesus, and many people only turn to Spirit when they are in painful dis-stress and then typically leave Spiritual development (other than throwing money at a pastor or healer of some kind) once their Earth plane life is satisfactory again (food, fun, sex, job, etc).  

Those who have discovered and want a deep connection with Spirit and truly want to progress (not just use Spirit to escape unhappy circumstances or events) need to learn to challenge themselves, not just be challenged by their Teacher, if they truly want to progress.  What would this look like?  Small efforts yield big changes. Learn to sit up straighter. An erect spine increases energy flow and unifies the relationships of the chakras.  Breathe more, deeper, and with more mindfulness when doing any Practice (meditation, chi qong, tai chi, brocades, etc). Practice MORE. Add minutes, increase the number of times you choose to meditate throughout the day. Take notes during classes; track your progress, your insights and epiphanies, your questions. Practice what you are learning including mudras, crystal work, and energy practices. Be willing to put in the time to make mistakes, learn, get familiar and comfortable with what you are learning. With true, deep Spiritual work, one cannot progress until your energy field expands. Each expansion makes you capable of receiving new transmissions from Spirit and your Spiritual Teacher. Esoteric, Mystery School teachings simply cannot be comprehended by the mind, only by a cultivated energy field. If you want to be Harry Potter, or Buddha, you need to be proactive about learning, practicing, and taking risks.  No Teacher can “make” you do this. And no Teacher will spend years trying to motivate students. While motivation is offered in the beginning to new students who need encouragement, ultimately motivation needs to be internalized to become self-motivation.

Create stress and challenge for yourself so life doesn’t have to hit you with a hammer to do it for you (cancer, divorce, accidents etc). Dare to fast 12 hours (stop eating at 6 pm or so),  tear yourself off your phone and exercise, read something to make your brain work again, meditate 5 minutes 5 times a day instead of 3 minutes 2 times a week. You will discover the joy of self-motivated expansion. Your body will sing, your mind will breathe, and your life will blossom.