When You Experience Stress: Understanding the Mind's Mechanism

When you experience stress, fear, or anger, have you ever paused to examine what truly caused these feelings? What actually triggered them? Is it the external event, or something deeper?

The Hidden Mechanism of Stress

Let's examine the mechanism of the mind:

First - I don't like what I see.Then - I don't like what I feel.

Next - I get into reaction and stop meeting what is.

Finally - I try to change what is (what was) and control what will be.

This sequence reveals something fundamental: the CAUSE is the thought.

The emotion, the feeling, and the sensation are the EFFECT.

The cause creates the effect, and that effect then becomes the cause for a new effect. An endless chain of reaction.

Transforming the Effect by Working with the Cause

When we work with the cause, we can change the effect. The cause is always within the effect, but the effect is not within the cause. Often, the cause lies hidden—covered up by the effect itself.

Consider this metaphor: clay and a cup. The clay is the cause; the cup is merely the shape we make from the clay. If we break the cup, what remains? The clay.

To change any effect in our lives, we must see where the cause arose from. When we work with the cause directly, we naturally transform the effect.

Seeing Beyond Conditioning

When you hold a glass cup and ask people what they see, they'll say "a cup"—but that's not accurate. What they're seeing is glass, formed into a particular shape. We've been conditioned to recognize effects rather than causes.

What do you truly see when you look at your experience?

The "I" as the Ultimate Cause

The ultimate cause is "I" and the effect is the me, you, them.

If I struggle with myself, with you, or with others, I must work with the "I" and discover what this "I" has created.

The process works like this:

• "I" creates an idea

• "I" forgets it created the idea

• "I" believes the idea to be true

• Now "I" reacts (often in fear) to sustain the idea

This "I" needs ideas to exist. It depends on thoughts and concepts to sustain its existence. Without thoughts to define the "I", who would you be?

When "I" awakens to reality through self-inquiry, it recognizes itself as awareness, not as the idea. This recognition transforms everything.

The Practice

Be still and notice who you are—beyond thoughts, beyond reactions, beyond the stories you tell about yourself and others.

In this stillness lies the power to transform cause and effect.

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Website: www.theessencecommunity.org