Hi,
This is Guy,
And now it's time to take what we've learned,
The ideas we've studied together,
And weave them all together in such a way that we are literally empowered to step outside the circle of stress.
At first glance,
It appears that these usual stressed sensations are within us because something has gone wrong,
Something happened outside of us that needs to be corrected outside of us,
And our life is full of that chasing around of what we believe is the world that needs to be changed when really it's our own thoughts and feelings struggling with a conclusion they've reached by accident.
So we have to remember that this view of life belongs to a stressed self through whose eyes we are now looking at the event,
Much in the same way as Paul looked at the world around him through green-tinted glasses.
So we are looking at the world around us through thoughts and feelings whose tendency it is to see things to be stressful over.
And so any time that you begin to feel the onset of some kind of stress or anxiety,
Remember what we learned just in the last session.
As I am,
Now is not the time to try to be someone other than I am.
Now is the time to see myself as I am.
In other words,
I must use the moment to shake myself awake.
Now what does that mean?
It is in unawareness that we are filled with stress.
It is because we are unaware that we believe in stress.
So the solution to the stress is a new order of awareness.
That means to understand the actual nature of the pressure within us.
As we've described instead of blindly seeing and accepting what our thoughts are describing to us as the truth of this moment,
We must use our awareness of these anxious or stressed thoughts to come wide awake,
Mindful as we can possibly be,
And to see them and what they are showing to us as something to be understood instead of obeyed.
You are not a captive of some stress-producing condition taking place outside of yourself.
Rather,
What you are in these moments is someone who can begin to break out of that circle by practicing something that we can simply call coming awake.
Let's do it together even as we're sitting here.
Take just a moment and bring your full attention to all the parts of yourself as best you can see,
Feel,
And sense them.
This kind of awareness is inclusive.
It is a unifying witnessing of the whole of ourself in the moment.
The value of such a practice is that we have learned that the reason that stress comes over us the way it does,
That we are attracted to it,
Drawn into it,
Isolated,
Separated by it,
And ultimately given a sense of self that is defined by it,
The cancellation of that circle of stress begins with entering into the circle of awareness that shows us the truth of ourself in that moment.
I cannot stress strongly enough,
Excuse the pun,
The power that belongs to a man or a woman who begins to understand they are not powerless in the moment of stress.
Instead,
They have given up the true authority they have over their own thoughts and feelings in exchange for a familiar sense of self.
And when we no longer want that sense of self,
Are no longer drawn to it,
No longer want to feel apart from the world that we blame our stress upon,
Then in that same moment through that awareness we enter into a completely new relationship with life where we have learned how to step out of the circle of stress because we have learned to understand it so completely at its moment of inception.
