Hi,
This is Guy Finley,
And I hope that you are enjoying,
As I am,
The study of these principles that,
Once brought into our mind and understood,
Have the power to bring an end to the stress that our unawareness of these principles has produced.
We've talked about this law of attraction and how that produces a sense of separation,
In that separation,
A sudden sense of isolation,
And now we're going to look at how those things put together actually create what we can call a stress amplifier.
To amplify anything is to increase it,
But in this study of the mechanism of stress,
We are discovering that the only thing truly being enlarged in these circumstances,
When we're stressed and anxious,
Is our misperception of the event.
Add to this mistaken view,
Our subsequent certainty,
If you will,
That we are also a captive of that condition that we are resisting,
And what happens,
Other than our stress,
Strengthens geometrically.
If you've ever looked through a pair of binoculars backwards,
Then you have a good idea of how limiting and restrictive such a small focus on something can be,
Where ordinarily we'd look out and be able to see a vast forest.
If the binoculars are reversed,
All we see is a small part of one tree.
The exact same thing happens within us as thought isolates the partial from the whole,
So that now one small slice of reality is all we see.
This is how the thought-self completes the deception.
To us,
As we find ourselves ever deepening in considering the circumstances surrounding that cruel remark or unwanted moment,
It actually seems as though our view is ever widening.
But here's the truth.
Our view is not enlarging.
What is being enlarged,
However,
Are all the ingredients that that lower level of consciousness requires to justify the increasing levels of stress that are being brought to bear within us.
Let's look at the steps.
First came the so-called disturbance,
Again,
That remark by a thoughtless person or news of some kind,
Whose nature shakes us almost instantly.
In less than a heartbeat,
What is essentially a passing,
Neutral,
By nature,
Moment,
Becomes the center of our universe.
Why?
Because as we've seen,
We're drawn into it.
And then we're almost entirely isolated from any possible rescuing reality at that point because of a certain psychological condition that would be,
If you will,
Impossible under normal circumstances,
Begins to convince us that there is no other way for us to look at that moment other than through that ever shrinking gaze of some part of our consciousness that sure,
All there is is what we see and all we can do is what it is giving us to do.
And it's right here that we begin to experience what I'm calling the amplification principle.
In order to sustain this entirely false view of life and to keep it crumbling,
Which any illusion must do in the face of what's true,
This lower consciousness,
A thought self,
It must contrive a foundation to support its imagined conclusions.
And so it begins to build a case for itself.
For instance,
It's suddenly able to recollect everything that troubled person ever did or said to you so that you know in that moment not just what he or she is but their entire history with you.
At this point,
There's nothing about the character of the offender that's too inane to be deliberated.
No blemish,
Too small,
No minor infraction that doesn't fit perfectly into the fractured view of this thought self doing the so-called reflecting on the moment.
And as the case being built against the person reaches completion,
All we're able to see is how justified we are in both our judgment of him or her and for the unbearable stress that we must endure as a result of our own conclusion.
The cycle of stress drives itself from here on out.
No other fact exists and no interference is tolerated by anyone who would try to help us wake up to reality.
We believe we're alone or certainly that no one else quite sees the situation in the same clear light as we do.
And to support this delusion,
That same level of consciousness that has created and drawn us into its ever shrinking world has one more dark trick up its sleeve.
Because now,
Not only has it begun to amplify the stress by convincing us of the condition it sees responsible,
It begins all of it to draw us into what we are calling the unseen mechanism of stress,
The mechanics of it.
And when we can begin to put all of this together,
We will see the machine that makes stress as being just that.
And the clearer we are on that subject,
The freer we are to being stress free.
I'll see you in the next session.
