Stress Free Living

A tree has many layers of branches and leaves and while they grow over time they all come for the same seed. Similarly, all our layers of stress creating beliefs and perceptions come from one 'seed belief', one core belief, one wrong belief. 'Fix' that belief and it fixes everything, so to speak. And that belief is about our self. It is the belief in who we think (believe) we are i.e. our identity.

We learn to identify with many things during the course of our life but we are mostly not aware that we do. It starts with labels like gender, nationality, race, profession, looks, status, religion etc. We know that we are identified with any one of these, the moment they are threatened or insulted, or there is the possibility of loss, and we feel either tension or anger, or some sadness as a result. In such moments it's as if we believe, albeit subconsciously, we are these things, these labels, these ideas. Nationality after all is just an idea, it's not a stamp on the forehead! We forget that they are just labels and that we, you and I are not a label.

We even learn to 'identify' with possessions, people, positions and places, even our pay. If we are uncomfortable in any way when something happens to any of them then it means we are 'taking it personally'. It means we 'believe' we are them, albeit for a few moments or a lifetime! Which of course we are not! It's a wrong belief but it becomes an automatic habit and a conditioned, stress filled reaction emerges from it.

That's where our stress is coming from.