NECESSARY INFORMATION
to Complete Your Meditation Experience
Stress:
A physical, chemical or emotional factor (as
trauma, histamine, fear) to which an individual fails to make a satisfactory
adaptation, which causes physiologic tensions that may be a contributory cause
of disease . . . stress is technically applied to the force exerted when one
body, or a part of one, presses upon, pulls upon, pushes against, or tends to
stress, compress, or twist another body or part of one . . . Webster's Third
New International Dictionary.
Stress has become one of those scapegoat words upon
which we heap the ills of the twentieth century: "If only we could
eliminate stress, our problems would disappear”, "A stress free life in
the country is the answer”, "Eliminate stress and you'll eliminate heart
disease, ulcers, etc...”, because of this erroneous popular usage, connotations
of fear and ugliness have gathered around the word, obscuring its basic
meaning.
As you can see from the above definition, stress is
nothing more than a factor, a force. When applied to people, it is a factor to
which an individual fails to make a satisfactory adaptation. You see, it is not
stress that causes suffering and problems but the way in which one reacts to
it. Stress is not to be confused with suffering, although the improper response
to it can cause suffering.
Stress is so completely associated with suffering in
the mind of modern man that he blames it for much of his misery. Fearing its
harmful effects upon his health, he is consumed by the unhealthy desire to
eliminate it from his life, determined to keep peace and security regardless of
the cost.
He fails to realize that true peace and rest are a gift
from God bestowed upon us as we respond to the Light of Truth within us. Only
by following this Light can we recognize and apply the delicate principle which
converts stress from a destructive factor into a joyous, constructive force
which heals and tempers our souls.
The idea that stress has healing power is one of the
recurring themes in ancient myths, whether the story be the journey of Odysseus
or the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts or the wanderings of Moses and the Israelis in the desert. The hero embarks upon a symbolic quest for life, a
search which is fraught with danger and filled with adventures that test his
courage and strength and sharpen his mental and physical faculties. Eventually
he finds what he has been looking for, but only after encountering seemingly
insurmountable obstacles,
"... Narrow is
the gate and hard is the way, which leadeth unto life and few there be that
find it" - Mathew 7:14.
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