Part 1: Relax. Don’t Do It.

No Time, No Space

The thought that we are relaxed is not in itself the relaxation. It can be astounding how much more we are able to relax than our thoughts would let us believe.

Habitual, relative and context-dependent states of relaxation can actually be more subtle forms of stress. Relaxation is a process, not an end point. When we reach what we consider the floor of relaxation, it is possible to relax even more deeply into that floor. We can relax through the floor and fall.

This falling sensation is in itself an effect of relaxation. As we let go of all the particles of stress we have been needlessly carrying, it can give the impression we are falling through space. But when the stress is no longer visible, the impression of falling also disappears. We are stillness itself.

We could believe that relaxation depends on spatial conditions, when more truthfully, spatial conditions depend on relaxation.

In our organization of time and space, we tend to create alternative spaces of less stress. This could be designated as an imaginary sacred house in a guided fantasy, or as the time we sit down to practice meditation. It could be designated as the home of our parents, or our own private bed. It can also be designated as an area in the body, the memory of a relaxing experience, or in a set of conditions involving a substance such as alcohol or hashish, the right company, or the right kind of stressful show on TV.

We can allow relaxation in any space, in any moment, through relaxing unconditionally into what is appearing. We can even relax into our own resistance. All the space in the universe is available to us, and it’s free. 

We could believe that relaxation depends on temporal conditions, when more truthfully, temporal conditions depend on relaxation.

We also tend to make relaxation dependent on time. This is different from taking time for relaxation. Each movement with relaxation is a movement out of the gross forms of time and into more subtle and more expansive dimensions. An effect is a reclamation of the more timeless aspects of ourselves.

Time is elastic and our experience of its speed is subjective. When we begin to relax, we release the more constricting, slow rhythms of the controlling mind or the controlling circumstance, and access the more refined, expansive and faster rhythms. The effect of this faster vibration of the more subtle areas of ourselves is that regular time seems to slow down. Just one moment can have the quality of pure rejuvenation.

At any moment, we can let ourselves surrender into whatever is happening. This movement actually creates space and time, not the opposite.

Space is released from its mental restriction and time slows down. In both, there is a liberating expansion beyond local forms and conditions. The freedom that is always here gets revealed.

One breath can be stressed, contracted and panicked, or it can be an opening to the timeless and infinite aspects of ourselves. Same inhalation or exhalation, but a different degree of relaxation. One resists life directly through contracted breathing, the other allows it, through relaxing into that one breath. Technically, there is the same portion of space and time, but in relaxation, the portion can become a portal to freedom.

Part 3: From Stress to Depress

• Stress, Vitality, Consciousness & The Book of Life. Part 1 – Relax. Don’t Do It
• Stress, Vitality, Consciousness & The Book of Life. Part 2 – No Time. No Space
• Stress, Vitality, Consciousness & The Book of Life. Part 3 – From Stress to Depress
• Stress, Vitality, Consciousness & The Book of Life. Part 4 – Healing not Dealing