The Way Out

Since the dawn of human history, people have experienced stress.  True, I wasn't there in this particular envelope, but having a Saber Toothed Tiger breathing down your neck would definitely have been stressful.  Although, there was enough of this same Soul there to recall I was stressed to the max from being yanked around by my hair at spear point by a male intent on exercising the rites of mating.

I would define stress as anything that takes you off the track you must travel to survive, including momentary, intermittent or long term, extreme  derailments.  It is invisible, the kind you experience in your mind concerning some personal situation, so ethereal, fleeting or ambient ... it is almost always unrecognized as stress, rather than some of the myriad mainstream unpleasant conditions people cling to like thumb suckers' blankies.  The marketing departments of the Pharmanatical personhoods tell us stress is a disorder - for which they have copyrights on the curing agents, all of which will riddle you with addictions if you continue to pursue the lifestyles of Present Shock, but stress is not a disorder, it is the contagious, infective and exacerbating agent for all disease.  Cure, by the way, is not the same as Heal.  Cure only suppresses symptoms, to Heal is to cleanse the body entirely of that which causes symptoms in the first place.

At its root, stress is a diversionary tactic performed by the representative-self against some deep, meaningful insight you were closing in upon when something negative bursts in unannounced, pushing aside your Higher Intelligence.  You have to watch out for that if you are trying to get somewhere. Some stress free somewhere.  Invisible, internal stress and its accompanying side effects will wrack your body and soul making it impossible to get anywhere at all.

That place we really want to be is the place where you float along calmly throughout the entirety of your suns and moons, adding or subtracting by choice input from external forces, wanting for nothing, at odds with nothing, in awe at the wonder of it all and driven with right purpose while performing natural acts of compassion and seva wherever it comes across your radar.

We wonder why it is that this isn't always the goal of our species.  We wonder how it is such a species exists in this world alongside us, while the entire reason for us to be here is revealed as soon as the representative-self disappears out back for a smoke. 

We marvel at the extent of misery caused by that other part of the species, the shocks and upendings this other (they look like us, sort of, common language, sort of, common physical issues, sort of) species has wrought and continues, rapidly diversifying and expanding the misery playbook at the speed of light as we speak, with no plans to call it a wrap. OH NO, never, its real goody lies directly at the heart of the exponential economic growth mission as the basic requirement for superpower supremacy . You've noticed rather recently numerous peace loving nations who would never go to war are being quickly drawn into the ring.

It occurs to me we are seeing not only too many wars (Hey, now, why war at all! C'mon!), we are seeing the frenzy of escalation building towards the superpowers' war to end all wars.  And this escalation appears as something we may have secretly suspected all along, likely never spoken aloud, but thought "No, that can't be it, that's absurd, these are grown men and women, elected officials" ... Yes, I am speaking of the unspeakable, The Superpower Testosterone War.  Isn't that why this petty, diabolical phase is called cold war?  And hot war would then be when blood flows in the gutters?  Unh huh.  This long drawn out cold phase is classic softening the target.  We've seen it before and before that.  The problem is superpowers and Wannabe superpowers resist softening which brings out all manner of insane, conflicting reports made more insane by comments from the trolling lost tribes of the Walking Dead.

The planet is certainly large enough to support numerous empires, it is incredibly self-destructive to expend the extremism required to undertake being the sole empire and most especially when in order to actually achieve such an unnecessary goal, they place all nations at extreme risk for annihilation.  Perhaps this is how they like to live. Perhaps they have no idea what to do with themselves if not this? 

Wouldn't that be a stupid way to go ... paranoid and immature,  high on stress, blind to the bigger picture.  Taking sides was never a thought, born and raised on one side only, where curiosity and intuition were blunted in the womb.  Disastrous from the get go.  Even in our own lifetimes we've seen it over and over, enough so that the "lone nuts" all tatted up and pierced, have grown so comfortable with mass slaughter the media uses these lost souls as cover for the real thing playing out on another level.

We pray they all undergo an extraordinary religious experience immediately and get hip, their stress melting away like Lao Tzu riding his horse off into the forest. It could happen, too, as our abused Mother Earth buries, drowns, starves and bakes her inhabitants.  Mother Earth certainly knows how to handle abusers.
Anything could happen.  At any time ...

There is no such thing as "too late to turn it all around".
 
If you are carrying stress around your neck like a burning tire, just take it off, stop, look and listen.  The minute you lighten your load and cast out the representative-self you will be free.  It really is that simple. If you can envision yourself without the waterboarding of consumerism, popular thought, musts and shoulds, your self-imposed life sentence is instantly commuted to join the natural world absent the Illusion and their nightmare fantasies.

After that, my suggestion is to stay out of the way. 
Far out of the way.

At first the Tao had no name. Words are not eternal.
Let me describe these distinctions.
Because of words, there are distinctions.
There is left, and there is right; there is relationship,and there is duty;
there is discernment and there is discrimination;
there is competition, and there is struggle.
These are called the eight virtues.

Beyond the six realms of heaven, earth, and the four directions, the wise accept but do not discuss.
Within the six realms, they discuss but do not pass judgement.
In the Book of Spring and Autumn, the chronicle of ancient kings, the wise pass judgement but do not question.
When there is division, there is something which is not divided.
When there is questioning, there is something beyond the question.
Why is this?
The wise keep their wisdom to themselves while ordinary people flaunt their knowledge in loud discussion.
So I say,"Those who dispute, do not see.

-Chuang Tsu, Chapter Two