The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that by the year 2020, both Coronary Artery Disease and Depression will be the two major causes of disability, low life expectancy, use of medical care and mortality. Although these might seem like two independent diseases they have a very strong correlating factor; stress. I believe it to be one of the biggest issues in our modern day societies and the cause of many (or even most) physical and mental pathologies such as psoriasis, ulcers, PTSS, panic disorders and even a recently found possible linkage with cancer, not to mention that stress hormones impair the immune system causing a whole variety of illnesses. Many people have lost touch with their homeostasis (stability) and are in a chronic state of allostasis (trying to regain stability) causing the body and the mind to be in a continuous state of fight-or-flight, with all it’s nasty consequences. So how are we gonna solve this? Again, I believe the human ego to be the biggest player in this game. In huge corporations there is usually a lot of top-down pressure, fueled by the people who run these companies, having money on their mind instead of the well being of their employees. But how do you deal with it if you are one of these employees? Of course fighting for better working conditions is important to better the external conditions, but still there maintains an internal problem, namely that we have lost touch with our healthy mind, our homeostasis. I think it’s more important than anything to get to know yourself, your mind and above all; to befriend it. We can take strong roots in our own minds, unwavered by external events, but still be in total heartfelt communication with this world. I believe and I know that there’s is such a thing as a mind in optima forma, unconditioned and open. It’s like a movie screen; we see the film it displays, be it horrific or ecstatic , but the screen itself is white, spotless, flawless. This also applies to the mind; underneath our conditioned blathering lies a mind that is clear, compassionate and wise in full connection with the heart. When we start accepting what is being displayed on the screen, we can more and more see that the movie that is being displayed is not the screen itself, but that which lies underneath is stable and has no beginning and no end. We can start resting in this nature of the mind and become more and more familiar with it. It feels like coming home again and again. As long as we don’t loose touch with it in our daily lives we can start synchronizing our companies, our schools and our societies according to this healthy mind, with the external reflecting the same qualities as the internal. Stress is just a warning signal that we have lost touch with it and we have to go back to it.
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