Okay, so this isn’t directly about stress…though indirectly it is about stress. It’s actually more important than a direct communication about the more obvious forms of stress.
It is about the more insidious types of stress…the kind of stress that is a constant, every-day pressure to which we must accustom ourselves or die, or self-medicate, or worse, choose traditional pharmaceuticals to alleviate. Notice how I said traditional in relation to prescription drugs?
That’s really sad, and yet it is even sadder to know the numbers of people who are taking some sort of pharmaceutical drug, regularly. The figures reach almost 50% in the US. It’s sadder to know that now, it is traditional to take legal drugs that are more powerful than most illegal substances to live through any given week.
This is about the kind of stress we are evolving through. All of us. No one is exempt from this kind of stress, it’s simply a matter of choice as to the road we choose, how much awareness or consciousness we can muster along that road, and how we allow ourselves to finish. I don’t know what that really means, “finish,” but it could mean today, this life, or even how we will approach the remainder of eternity.
Forgive me for expanding (and maybe even projecting) my circumstances into your realm, but I believe at some level we are all experiencing challenges in sustaining higher vibrations right now. No matter who we are or what our private lives look like, we are in both similar and very different ways, relatively struggling to stay afloat. Ask anyone.
This is the stress we experience with each breath, each step taken. It is the stress of operating within the every day influences of established worldly constructs, all the while learning (for some anyway) to accept and release what is past and repressed, lying deep, at bone level. It’s not easy to swim in this poison and clean the pool simultaneously.
Last night I realized that the little (haha) inner battle I’m having right now is related not only to my personal, sticky, old, emotional stuff, it’s compounded by the many pressures to conform to trends and social “norms.” Yes, I mean the insidious ones that used to be more hidden. Lurking in the shadows of broad daylight, these ideas about how life ought to look entice us to take the pill that pushes it down further, rather than calling it up for exposure and release.
It’s the desire to be okay. That, right now, is sometimes stressful in itself!
When was the last time you noticed the image cage you’ve created…the one that someone else long ago suggested, or quite possibly, it wasn’t even a suggestion. “They” just built it for you, for your own good. Then you bought it and felt so incredibly free as you laid down your freedom in many dollar bills. This is the stress I’m talking about here.
I don’t know, maybe the stress I’m talking about is unnoticeable until awareness is piqued. When we are up against our own self-victimization, the feelings of helpless, hopeless desire to succumb to an easier route, look very good, indeed. Our awareness vanishes. That idea of a “nice life” is ever-present and often taunts us.
Here’s a link to a little fable my friend Laura posted today. It’s very important (and in this timing, both specific and broad) symbolism. It is especially potent as we walk that fine line between expression and self-indulgence, graceful vulnerability and collapse, or even ridicule and self-abasement. It has even more power when seen through the eyes of someone who is cognizant of the apathy required to allow the imprisonment in the first place.
Second, Lee Harris’ Energy Forecast: February
