People drink. They drug themselves. They pour alcohol into their bodies. They get involved with lots of kinky sex. They spend time with people they don’t like. They do all kinds of things just to break out from the stress pattern, none of which work. They just make you feel a little bit worse the next day.
To overcome stress you have to find out something: you have to do some research and homework, and it is very enjoyable research and homework. You need to find out who you are today, what it is that you would like to do today, and what things you really don’t want to do today. This is called self-knowledge; you need to consider yourself in a new way.
People like to think of themselves as being fixed. You were born at a certain time, all of the experiences that you had between now and then – feelings, emotions, education, and basic personality traits and characteristics – are what make you, you. You will always be you. You may change a little bit between now and the time you die, but you are you. This is an erroneous assumption. It’s false. This is a very poor way of seeing life. You are not any particular way. You have passed through experiences; you have had a certain type of education. You’ve been taught a certain value system. These are only ideas. They have nothing to do with the essence of who and what you are.
Think of yourself for a moment as a computer. A computer is a machine that does a lot of fascinating things, but the computer runs on software. Now let’s suppose that we have a very powerful computer. But we have a software package that isn’t too powerful. We have, let’s say, a word-processing package, or a data base package, or an accounting package, and we put it on a very powerful IBM computer. While the computer may be capable of working very fast, the word-processing software doesn’t move that quickly; so then, we will never get the full effect of the computer.
Within you there is an amazing computer, and that’s you, your essence. You are capable of incredible things. Your mind is the computer. When I say mind I don’t simply mean the analytical function of thought or simply brain cells. You are mind, pure mind. Your mind is made up of light, and that light is pure intelligence. It is always in a state of flux. It is always changing, and it is in touch with all of the Universes. That’s what your essence is. Some call it the soul. Whatever you might want to call it, that’s what you are. That part of your being is not dependent upon your body or the brain. The body and the brain modify and give form to the experiences of that which you are, but you are life itself. The problem occurs in identification. As you grow up, you begin to get an idea of your self, and you hold these things in your physical mind. The more you collect and define your self, the less you really see your self.
A koan: Life doesn’t change, but you do.
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