Stress Management or Enlightenment?

The phrase “stress management” gets more popular by the month it seems. I guess between the economy tanking and the normal hassles of modern life, people just aren’t handling things too well. I am interested in the similarities between what we say about stress management and the traditional sense of Daoist or Zen enlightenment. The two are nearly synonymous to an extent. Enlightenment, of course, goes much farther than most people take stress management, but they share the same root.

In both stress management and enlightenment we find the need to stay centered and not get carried off by our emotions. Emotions are good when they are responses to reality. They are not good when they are responses to what we think about reality. Our emotions are stirred up by what our minds tell us. Our minds take in all the information from our senses and create thoughts based on that input. Those thoughts then stimulate our bodies. When that happens, we feel an “emotion.” Emotions are us feeling our minds in our bodies. We need the mind to be a transparent operator between our bodies and the world around us. We need for our minds to feed us accurate information. With accurate information, our bodies can respond appropriately. When our minds second-guess reality, or make up their own reality, our emotions are stirred up by false information.

Our minds are capable of creating amazing stories; this is wonderful for entertainment and education (mmm….Star Wars….), but not for everyday life. For our everyday lives, we need to be responding to reality. Our minds can create stories that stir up our anger, fear, joy, sadness….and all the other emotions. When we think we might lose our jobs, we stir up fear. When we think someone might be cheating us, we stir up anger. The key word here is “might.” None of these things “are” happening…they “might” happen – huge difference. No matter how eminent an even seems, it is not happening until it happens. This doesn’t mean we should stick our heads in the sand until something actually happens to us; it means that we don’t need to be swayed by the emotions generated by our predictions of the future.

We can know that something might happen, and consider our options as well as the likely consequences without letting the emotions stirred up by that process influence our thinking or our actions. We have to know which emotions to listen to and which to ignore. If I sit down and imagine a horrible event in my future, I will stir up fear. If I then act on this fear, I’m taking action based on fantasy; not reality. I have to be able to say to myself, “This is only one of infinite possibilities.” I can take action based on what I think is likely to happen without involving the emotions. If I feel my tire go flat my mind will naturally calculate that I might crash. Slowing down and pulling over would be actions taken based on reality (i.e. the tire going flat). If, on the other hand, I had a wreck ten years ago but still freak out every time I get behind the wheel and drive neurotically out of fear, then I’m taking action based on fantasy rather than reality.

I find that this differentiation between our direct experience of reality and what we are thinking about that experience to be the single biggest key to both stress management and enlightenment in my own life and the lives of my patients. The best way to get better at making this distinction is meditation. With a strong meditation practice you come to better understand the relationship between you and your mind. Your mind is something that you are doing. You can find the contrast needed to make the distinction by simply not “doing” anything. When you stop the doing of the mind, you can experience reality directly.

My suggestion is to meditate your ass off; if you don’t want to do that, at least play with this idea. Pay attention to how you are reacting and what you are reacting to with the next thing that happens to you today.