The solution to all stress and tension is a mind that is made aware of itself as being the producer of that stress and tension. Stress and tension are products of an unaware, unawake mind wrestling with its own contents to free itself from struggle. Relief from that tension is not to struggle with more things or to become stronger than what stresses you, but to recognize the relationship between how you are involved in your own mind because of that interaction. It is so simple and wondrous: the mind made aware of itself is the beginning of the end of what the mind does to itself in its unawareness of self.
So if you can catch yourself starting to get wound up -- if you can see that you're starting to think about someone, or think about tomorrow, and to relieve yourself from the tension, you actually bring more elements into it -- you can do something you've never done before. You can say, "I see it. There goes that thought. There goes that feeling. And it's trying to get me involved to relax me, but it's really winding me up!" As the mind sees that, it becomes organically passive -- it is a relaxed mind. It is a mind that is not wound up so that it sits in its natural state. An organically passive mind is a mind that is spontaneously responsive because it is in a relaxed state. There's no stress, no tension; none of its energies are being squandered in fruitless pursuits. That means it's in a natural state of observation. It's not trying to do anything. Therefore, anything that passes into the mind, any activity that takes place, that same mind is spontaneously responsive to it. So it doesn't let someone walk up to a door carrying a box and allow that person to struggle with the door because it sees the need to respond. It's not wrapped up in its own self-wrecking tensions, so it can respond spontaneously.
One of the benefits of a spontaneously responsive mind -- a mind relaxed in itself -- is that it is naturally creative. It isn't bound by passive conditioning. It doesn't look at moments through what it has known is true. It's able to see the moment in its originality, in its uniqueness, and to respond in an appropriate and creative fashion, because true creativity cannot be separated from the moment that requests an answer to it. Being naturally creative, it has no part by which it measures itself to the moment.
That same mind is inherently sensitive, which is another aspect of a relaxed mind. And this is such a beautiful part because it means the relaxed mind isn't stuffed, packed, wound up to the point that nothing can get into it. It is able to continually receive the constant, beautiful, refreshing impressions that have to do with recognizing our relationship to the whole of the universe. It receives impressions that are new and refreshing because it isn't pressing itself to get rid of impressions that it never dealt with the first time. An inherently sensitive mind is like a lake when it's perfectly still. It beautifully reflects everything passing into it and upon it.
This organically passive mind is perfectly efficient, meaning there is no wasted energy. It's not caught up in trying to accomplish a way to unwind itself from something it wound itself up into. It has abundant energy, all the energy it needs to do what is set before it in its organic passive state. That mind, as it responds in its creative fashion, winds up and releases, and there's nothing in it to bind it. It doesn't resist anything because it has nothing in it that it has carried forward.
Lastly, the organically passive mind is effortlessly patient. Impatience is a mind that is wound up, waiting for the day it will be able to relax -- unaware that everything it names for itself by which it will relax is part of its tension. True patience has to do with participating in the moment as it is with an organically passive, spontaneously responsive, naturally creative, inherently sensitive and efficient mind -- a mind made aware of itself that doesn't destroy itself trying to create for itself a life that is an illusion.
So how do we begin to work to understand how we are self-destructive without recognizing it? Can you see that a person who is wound up is always pushing? You can become conscious of this pressure, and instead of doing what the pressure mandates you to do, you can participate in the understanding of the pressure. Instead of taking part in the pushing, you participate in understanding what it's about. You use awareness to undo what unawareness has done to you by pulling the plug on the pushing nature. This pushing is always trying to fulfill some image you have, trying to get rid of something that you're feeling: "If I can get rid of this then I'll be able to relax." So you push in order to relax yourself. But you cannot push against a part of yourself without creating more pressure, because what you're trying to obtain is in your own mind, and it can't be bought that way!
You have to work in your own way to understand this and become more conscious, but here are some examples. Find ways in which you use more energy than it takes to do what needs to be done. What does that mean? Maybe you're making notes right now of what you're reading. Are you pushing too hard with your pen? Are you anxious to get down every idea? When you brush your teeth, do you strain to put pressure against your teeth with your toothbrush? Try to find ways you use more force than necessary -- because that's evidence of being wound up. How about rushing? Whenever you rush, what are you rushing to do? Isn't it to get to the point where you can relax from all the things that you have to handle? If you're rushing to get done, all you're really doing is giving vitality to the image in your mind that tells you that you must do this in order to be free of it.
So find these little ways you can begin to relax your way through life. Everything that we want is already built into the natural movement that passes into us and through us of which we are a part, like breathing in and breathing out -- the natural tension and the natural release, the natural relaxed state and the natural state of winding up to achieve what the moment gives to us. This is a beautiful flow, a kind of constant turning point. And the ample evidence is that the world itself is balanced and never brings to itself that which doesn't produce something better than what was replaced in that movement. So it is in the human soul -- but not as long as we are trying (as we presently are) to bring to ourselves the thing that we hope will relieve us from tension when having named what that is... is the cause of that tension.
So do it right now. Relax your way to inner riches. That doesn't mean to act out what it means to be relaxed; it means to come wide-awake to yourself, become aware of what you were unaware of the moment before, and you will become conscious of some tension in you. Your awareness of the tension is the answer that tension is actually looking for -- not the answer your mind comes up with to address the tension that's an opposite of something it says caused that tension. Relax every moment you can by coming awake to yourself as best you can. And watch what happens to you. You will be transformed.
