Originally posted January 20th, 2013
By Michael Konik
Certain amorphous concepts exist only in the theoretical realm: truth, justice, beauty. Time. Yet we “know” (or think we know) they’re there. Indeed, we’re the ones who manifest them. By observing, say, a ravishing Southern California sunset, or the blossoms of a cherry tree, or our lover’s face, we feel quite sure that Beauty is not merely an amorphous concept but something tangible and present. And in those moments it surely is.
Quantum physics suggests that this thing we call consciousness exists only in our Mind Reality, where we observe – and categorize and quantify – what seems to be the passage of time, our hurtling journey through space. In the Cosmic Reality, time does not trudge forward (or slip backwards). It just is.
Stress is one of these strange phenomena. It doesn’t really exist in any measurable form. We only know it’s there when someone tells us it’s there. Still, many of us are convinced that stress is a real and powerful thing, lurking, hovering, waiting to envelop us like solar radiation. We envision it as a kind of weight, a pressure that squeezes us with vise-like power, or as a kind of infection, a disease that eats us from the inside. Or a dark cloud that blots out life’s shine. Stress, we convince ourselves, is all around us, like air and light.
We labor mightily to relieve it. Many of us go out of our way to avoid it. Some of us thrive on it.
Few of us, though, acknowledge the essential nature of Stress, which is that it doesn’t actually exist until we manifest it. There is no such thing as Stress; there are only human beings pretending it exists.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Manifest Stress, or don’t. The choice is yours.
Luckily for Barack Obama, news of improper shenanigans at the IRS stole attention from the week’s biggest story: that the President’s Justice Department had secretly seized call information from at least 20 phone lines belonging to Associated Press reporters, including personal cell phones and the main switchboard of the AP’s Washington bureau. While Obama thundered on about “inexcusable behavior” at the IRS, he said he would “make no apology” for his latest foray into Nixonian…
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Certain simple ideas have the power to transform humanity (for the better). Creating an organic community garden is one of those life-changing concepts. The forward-thinking nonprofit, EnrichLA, builds gardens at schools, using students, parents, and community volunteers to construct irrigated planting beds, trees, flowers, and vegetables. In the tradition of Habitat for Humanity, it all happens [...]
Certain amorphous concepts exist only in the theoretical realm: truth, justice, beauty. Time. Yet we “know” (or think we know) they’re there. Indeed, we’re the ones who manifest them. By observing, say, a ravishing Southern California sunset, or the blossoms of a cherry tree, or our lover’s face, we feel quite sure that Beauty is not merely an amorphous concept but something tangible and present. And in those moments it surely is.
Leave stress behind. It’s deadly.