Canned Stress

Although, contrary to public opinion, we must not—and indeed cannot—avoid stress, we can meet it efficiently and enjoy it by learning more about its mechanism and adjusting our philosophy of life accordingly.

Hans Selye

A recent quest has taken me into the heart of our country’s strange addiction to stress. You see, I am one of the few remaining souls who still craves decaffeinated cola drinks. For the past several days, I have been in and out of convenience stores, supermarkets and even the cafeteria in the hospital I work in trying to get my hands on a caffeine-free Pepsi or Coke. I would have even settled for an RC. I was that desperate. What I found, instead, was that not only are caffeine-free drinks hard to come by; store shelves are stocked with what I call “canned stress.” These super-charged, stay-up-all-night, “who wants to run around the block” elixirs point to our love/hate relationship with stress.

First, a wee-bit of science. Caffeine has the following effects on our systems:
1. Stimulates your heart, respiratory system, and central nervous system.
2. Causes messages to be passed along your nervous system more quickly.
3. Stimulates blood circulation.
4. Raises blood pressure.
5. Causes your adrenal glands to release their hormones into your bloodstream.
6. Causes blood sugar, or blood glucose, to be released from storage through the effects of the adrenal hormones.

Now here is what stress does to our bodies:
1. Nervous system responds by releasing a flood of stress hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol.
2. Heart pounds faster.
3. Muscles tighten.
4. Blood pressure rises.
5. Breath quickens.
6. Senses become sharper.

The difference between the two responses is how the mind labels what is going on. When the response comes because your boss just reminded you that it is time for your annual review, we call it “stress.” When it comes out of a nicely packed container with the promise of mental clarity and perhaps even sexual prowess, we call it “being juiced.”

Surely, there is a lesson here for us. If the basic difference between the good time of sitting around a table at Starbucks discussing the president’s economic bailout while jacked up on mocha lattes, and the not-so-good time of your stock broker explaining your personal bailout of declaring bankruptcy, is in the mind, there is hope. Perhaps we can take a cue from mass marketing and just repackage our notion of stress to make it more appealing.

I suggest that we stop calling stress the “silent killer” and give it a title worthy of our nation’s obsession with inner energy. We could even hip-hop it up in the same way the Republican Party has brought “street cred” to itself. Something along the lines of “killa stress,” seems fitting.

I would like to kick off a national campaign to turn stress from a villain into a “gangsta,” set to the following rap:

Yo, yo you with the heart beat thumpin’
And the blood all pumpin’
Ain’t you sumpin
With your brains all racin’
And your hormones chasin’
Ain’t nothing you be facin’
But stress
Killa stress…

Oh, well, it didn’t seem to work for the Republicans either. Perhaps we can just learn to accept the fact that the aliveness we feel when stressed is part of the tension of living. Sure, in huge doses, over a prolonged period of time, it can eat away at the fabric of your being, but so can Dr. Pepper. Maybe by simply choosing to rename the moments in our lives when we feel supercharged inside we can defuse the stress time bomb. Of course, that would be nothing more than a mental trick, a slight of mind, as it were. But so is telling ourselves that we are nothing more than ego-filled skins suits that need to fear life rather than celebrate it.

Why not turn the mind back on itself and go deeply into the stress of life, only without the distress? Heck, I’m so convinced I’m going go get a super-sized can of high energy Jolt and drink a toast to stress. Then I’m going to run around the block, take the dog for a walk, and maybe take up kick boxing . . .

Opposites Attach

Therefore having and not having arise together. Difficult and easy complement each other. Long and short contrast with each other; High and low rest upon each other; Voice and sound harmonize each other; Front and back follow one another. --Tao Te Ching

To find healing in situations that, at first glance, seem to only inflict suffering, we have to move beyond the Western notion of “either/or.” The Newtonian model of the universe teaches that everything has been put together like a machine and the parts are good or bad, working or not working, and desirable or undesirable. Once the mind bites this apple of the knowledge of good and evil, all hell breaks loose.

Most of us understand that the world comes at us in waves of opposites. We know that there are “good times” that are often followed by “bad times.” We know that coins have two sides, and we get the concept that once you climb up a mountain you have to come down again. Stress shows up because the mind thinks it can, and needs to, gain mastery over the world by eliminating one of the opposites. We see the polarities of the world and think, “I like this end of the stick, but I’m not really happy with the other end.” Thus, we spend untold energies trying to rid ourselves of some thing in order to get this other thing.

This act of separating the world is so entrenched in our collective history, and so deep within our personal psyches, that most people genuinely do not know there’s another way of looking at things. Educated and indoctrinated into the cult of “this or that,” many people cannot even imagine a whole unified world, let alone a complete sense of self.

So much of stress is the result of trying to pry apart things that actually compliment each other. It is the mind that sees contrast and competition and it sends the ego—the false self created to meet the challenges of the material world—out to do its dirty work. The reality is that there is no split, except in our heads. We are all, to greater or lesser degrees, schizophrenic—torn between reality and fantasy.

To discover the healing power of stress we simply have to heal the split within; no longer tear ourselves to pieces in an attempt to find the good bits among the ruins. We are only in our “right minds” when we’re whole. When we stop carving up our lives into what seems like easily digestible pieces, we will begin to feel holy—free of wound or injury—again. Once we realize that opposites are not truly in opposition to each other, that they actually support each other, we will no longer feel the deep sense of dread when we find ourselves at one pole or the other. When we say “yes” to the natural order of things, life stops saying “no” to us. By simply blessing the ups and the downs, we turn struggle into surrender and resistance into acceptance.

Nice to Meet Me

The inside information is that your self, as “just little me” who “came into this world” and lives temporarily in a bag of skin, is a hoax and a fake.
Alan Watts

I have been living with me all my life and, I must confess, I have not always been good company. Sure there have been some good times; the summer of ‘77 immediately comes to mind, as does my wedding night, but there has been more than the occasional rough spot. The time I talked myself into wearing a lime green leisure suit to ninth grade “class night” still stings. All of this leaves me wondering just who is this me I have had as a companion ever since I was able to call something “mine!” (As in, “That lime green leisure suit burning on that garbage heap over there? That’s mine.”)

If the Buddha was right, and the self that we create and come to think of as me is in fact only an illusion, it’s one hell of trick. It’s right up there with sawing a woman in half, levitation and bipartisanship in Washington D.C. Me sure seems real when in the throes of ecstasy, as in when my team wins the Super Bowl. And equally real during times of deep heartbreak, as when my team loses the Super Bowl. Four times in a row. Not that I’m bitter.

During an extended episode of anxiety I was so lost in the sense of me that, in an ironic twist, the world around me took on a very unreal quality. Nothing could penetrate the panic shield my mind had created. So it was that days of warm sun, caring family and curious pets were all deflected away, like bullets bouncing off of the chest of Superman, only this Superman was afraid to sleep, eat and . . . well you don’t need to know all of the gory details. The deeper I fell into the endless pit of “self" the more it seemed that my mind was the only hope of getting out. As my faithful readers now know, this was the opposite of what would save me. So it was that every thought sent in as a rescuer turned into a victim and would call back, “its much worse down here than we imagined.”

It seemed that I had come to the breaking point and that if there was going to be any peace I was going to have to get over myself. This initially seemed like a daunting challenge. Bookstores are overflowing with titles pointing the way out of dysfunctional relationships with others. But where does one find the tome “I’m Just Not That Into Me”? Fortunately, for the soon-to-no-longer-be me, a means of having a civil divorce from one’s self had already been mapped out. Not only were there pointers showing the way, there were detailed descriptions of what to expect, what to avoid and most importantly where all the rest stops were along the way.

It was exceedingly comforting, and remains so to this day, to find that the who’s-not-who list of those who have overcome the self includes Jesus, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Ramana Marharshi, Nisagardatta Maharaj and Krishnamurti, to name a few. Their collective fingers have pointed the way to a life without the burdensome me. With their help, I stopped the frantic search for my sanity. With great relief, I put away the science of mind in favor of the silence of the mind. Whether it is called mindfulness, meditation or spiritual seeking, this Zen-quest leads one out of the wilderness of the ego and into the wide open space of non-self. It is surely this wide open space that the poet Rumi referred to when he wrote:

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

It is in this very field where me and Self meet and live mindfully ever-after.

A New Look

We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. -- Einstein

If I were a gambling man I would bet that the idea of “healing stress” sounds strange to you. I would also guess that a part of you really wants to believe in the healing power of stress, but another part really wants to brush it aside and replace it with the “cold, hard truth”—life can hurt at times. You may find yourself in a stressful situation again and say, “See, there is no healing in this. It sucks and that’s that!” Or, you may find yourself heading back to the bookstore to finally buy that copy of Ten Reasons Why There is Nothing You Can Do to Feel Better.

I want to assure you that things can be different. I want you to know that when you look at stress mindfully, rather than thoughtfully, you will cut off the fuel that your body needs to create a full-blown panic attack.

The power of mindfulness is not in forming new thoughts, but the transformative power of simply looking. Jesus did not say, “Go gather up some lilies and figure out how they manage to live such a carefree life.” He simply said, “Consider the lilies.” One could almost imagine him saying, “Quit worrying and go meditate on the lilies. They hold the secret to living.” With mindfulness, the focus of your attention reflects back your true nature.

From the great ancient teachers right on up to modern-day physicists, the message is that you are a watcher, a witness entangled with the very essence of what you are watching. When you think of yourself as separate from that which you see, you suffer. Stress is simply a reminder that you have lost the whole and are focusing on its parts. When you practice nonjudgmental acceptance of this fact you will have a new look at life.

You have an alchemical power within you, and if the sages and mystics are correct, to unleash it you only need to recognize that it is there. That seems like a no-brainer to me. So give your mind a rest and go into your stress totally and see if you can find the seed of a new understanding. Get out of your head and take heart, which is where you were meant to be all along. Every stressful event you’ve ever encountered had its place, and all the ones you will meet have a role to play in the unfolding mystery that is life. Forget about trying to find the source of your stress; find your source and stress will take care of itself.

News Flash

The less people know, the more stubbornly they know it.
Osho

“Stress could save your life.” This was the cover story of the February 23rd edition of Newsweek. My initial reaction was, “My God, they stole my idea!” My second thought was “I’ll sue and be rich.” My third thought was “I’m going to get a bigger boat.” After I came down from this litigious high I went to the internet and read the article. What I found was a relief and a disappointment: they had not stolen my idea but, therefore, I was not going to get a bigger boat.

The general message of the article was that despite dire warnings that stress can kill you, or at the very least shrink your brain cells, it can also be beneficial. The author pointed to the fact that stress often helps create the energy necessary to take on new challenges, overcome obstacles and motivate us to do better at jobs we care about. The article even quotes my favorite stress researcher, Hans Selye, and references his concept of “eustress,” which is a term for good stress.

The author even went on to dip his toes into the Zen waters. He mentioned that research has shown that meditation can help the brain recover from the negative impacts of prolonged stress. But then the wheels fell off his “let’s look at stress in a new way” bus.

The author quickly dismissed the benefits of both mindfulness and meditation by stating “not all of us want to or can become monks; not all of us can spare even eight weeks for a course at the Center for Mindfulness.” He further turns out the lights on the healing power of stress by stating that the core issue of stress is control: that when we feel that we have no control over our lives, we feel stressed. The antidote is neatly prescribed as “We're going to have to figure out what parts of our future we can control, and we'll need to engage with them thoughtfully.”

At this point I slumped in my chair, no longer worried about the gleaming fiberglass fishing boat that would never be, and thought “this is the same old idea.” The notion that we need to look to the future for stress relief is how we got into this mess in the first place. “Stress isn’t about not being in control,” I shouted at my computer screen, “it is refusing to let go of control that keeps us stressed.” The screen simply stared back at me as if to say “what are you yelling at?” In a more relaxed state, I added, “this article is one small step forward from the present moment and a giant leap backwards from mindfulness. I sighed, and I’m sure I heard the computer screen giggle.

So, in the style of Stephen Colbert, a tip of the hat to Newsweek for putting the idea that stress may need a second look on their front cover. However, a wag of the finger for suggesting that the only way out is the way we came in—through thinking.

One final note, if you read the article online (see hyperlink) make sure that you check out the comments from readers. Many of those who responded were apoplectic about being asked to consider that stress is anything other than a plague upon mankind.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/184154