The principles of stress

Today I'm going to write about the basic principles of stress. Stress and how you experience it is a key component of the mystical transaction (the subject of my previous post) and your life experience so I think it's best to write a blog post about stress and the basic principles of how stress works.

Homeostasis and equilibrium

Existence is predicated entirely on equilibrium, balance, harmony, flow, cohesion, symbiosis, and symmetry. Think of an old fashioned set of weighing scales, such as those pictured above, being in perfect balance and perfectly still. Think of the surface of a river, smooth, not a ripple in sight, flowing effortlessly from its source out to either the point where it becomes tidal or enters the sea. Or, alternatively, the surface of a lake.

In terms of biology equilibrium is known as homeostasis. Homeostasis is when your body is functioning in harmony, your natural energies are all in alignment, your body temperature is ambient, there is no pain, no discomfort, you're not conscious of your physical body and you are in a mental state of being completely mindful and aware of your environment.

Just like that old fashioned set of weighing scales pictured above, there is equilibrium and homestasis in your mystical transaction.

Trauma

So now we can start thinking about stress. But first we need to understand trauma, because stress is part of what trauma is about. As we're looking at the mystical principle first i'm going to fish out the Creative Law meme so we can remind ourselves of Creative Law which is the first universal principle from the second component of Qultura methodology. As you might be aware, the Creative Law meme looks very similar to the Taoist yin yang symbol. Only there is no yin and yang, there is only trauma and drama.

Trauma is force. Drama is the absence or negation of force.

Trauma is force, as in natural force, the point of which is to force change through chaos, separation, decay, death, destruction, division, sometimes violently. Most people assume trauma is something bad, negative or even evil, but trauma is benign and the starting point of a new karmic process which involves drama, connection, growth, healing, learning, and evolution. From a mystical perspective trauma and drama are mutually dependent and necessary just in the same way as life and death are mutually dependent and necessary to each other.

But the effects of trauma results in shorter energy waves and cycles and higher frequencies of energy and it is these increased energy frequencies and shorter wavelengths which is essentially stress.

Stress

Stress is a massive subject area which, like trauma, impacts on biological reality in many different ways, with both short term and long term effects. There's no way I could cover everything in just one blog post so I'm going to have to break it down into different blog posts. But no matter how stress manifests itself into reality there are generally three guiding principles which you need to be aware of.

The first thing to understand is that stress will always change in some way the mystical transaction and it will do in a way which disturbs equilibrium and homeostasis and equilibrium. Whether stress is an environmental phenomenon or a response to environmental reality is a matter of debate. There are usually environmental factors and also biological factors but here it's probably best to assume that it changes the relationship rather than a point in the relationship.

This is because stress always involves increased energy frequency and shorter energy wavelengths, so the relationship between energy and space is much shorter. Keep in mind here that relationship, all relationship, is defined by space rather than physical form or energy. Hence, very much like trauma, stress affects a relationship rather than either an individual or their environment.

Which brings us to the third guiding principle. Stress, like trauma, will also change the nature of the equilibrium or homeostasis. Keep in mind that there is no 'fixed' or determinism in existence. There is no such thing as normal or getting back to normal. Everything is dynamic in nature - hence all existence is change, all existence is relationship. Trauma in existence is totally effective at forcing change. For example if you experience say a mental health issue, any recovery process will take you to a new place when it comes to mental equilibrium and mindfulness rather than take you back to a previous mental state.

Hence the polar opposite of trauma - as per Creative Law - is always drama. For this reason in my healing work I recommend a process of individuation. The past is gone, finished, it's over. This is because your brain is different, your perception of your environment is different, and your mindset is different. However I realize for some what I'm writing here might seem like gobbledygook so it's probably best that we move on to some examples.

In the natural world

Generally speaking in the natural world stress is a short term phenomenon closely tied to environmental and biological reality. Both predators and prey experience stress when they encounter each other. I give you the example of an apex predator - the Western diamondback rattlesnake - which is a fairly highly venomous pit viper occurring in North America. Somewhere in the middle when it comes to stress responses. Not quite as chilled out as the African Gaboon viper, but not quite as paranoid as a North African puff adder or Asian sawscale viper.

Rattlesnakes generally prey on rodents and birds because as highly evolved reptiles their stress responses and movements are a lot faster than warm blooded mammals. But keep in mind that even despite speed and venom, an encounter between a rattlesnake and say a rat is not as one sided as you may think. Rats are highly intelligent, have very sharp incisor teeth, and often carry diseases. A bite or even an attack from a highly stressed rat on a rattlesnake can easily injure it and potentially kill it (rattlesnakes generally don't qualify for health insurance). Also please keep in mind that if the rattlesnake has been forced to defend itself, it may not have enough venom to kill its prey. This matters because just like most snakes, rattlesnakes fall into the highly efficient 'one shot one kill' category. While venom has evolved primarily as a means of killing and pre-digesting prey, it's also developed secondarily as a defence mechanism for physically weak, vulnerable animals.

Therefore both rat and rattlesnake experience stress at different points of a potential encounter. Rats generally experience a lot of stress when they get bit in the form of a classic fight or flight response. Choosing whether to flee or to attack a rattlesnake to prevent further strikes (bites) is arguably the fastest possible reaction of the rat. But see even when it is envenomated by the rattlesnake, the rat may still choose to attack the rattlesnake. Keep in mind like humans rats are highly social, intelligent mammals and the rat may choose to attack the rattlesnake anyway to save other members if its family or community, even if it dies.

Likewise the rattlesnake also experiences its own stress. It may not have eaten for over a year and need food in order to survive, or may be about to shed its skin. It gets stressed when it seeks out its ambush location - rattlesnakes like most reptiles are ambush predators - simply because the location may leave it open and vulnerable, and rattlesnakes are generally not known for their friendliness or sociable natures, especially when hungry. Then there's the decision to strike in response to a heat signature - that second hole near the eye (in the illustration above) is the heat seeking pit which detects body warmth and temperature. So you see even when you're an apex predator and a highly efficient ambush hunter you're not immune to stresses.

Here I interject with some unsolicited advice for American readers. Always avoid any contact with snakes, especially rattlesnakes. You are not a cat. You are not a mongoose. In any encounter with a rattlesnake you're very much the underdog. Always heed a rattle. Stamp the ground in any undergrowth. Never ever approach a rattlesnake. Your typical rattlesnake can strike 20 times faster than you can blink. A rattlesnake can strike in any direction and always gets an accurate heat signature from you. A rattlesnake bite is extremely painful, potentially fatal, envenomation is nasty, and in defence rattlesnakes are generous with their venom. Medical costs for rattlesnake envenomation can reach $500,000. Furthermore a reliable way of developing a lifelong major depressive disorder is to get bit by a rattlesnake. Leave them alone.

Back on topic... In the natural world stress plays an ambiguous role in the animal kingdom. It could literally save your life, unless of course you're an African antelope enjoying a quick drink on the shores of an African river and Mister Crocodile comes out of nowhere to greet you. Generally speaking stress is a very short term experience. Short term stress is generally a positive experience.

Before we consider humans and long term stress

Before we start to get into stress from a human perspective and long term stress we need to get into how human beings perceive reality and their environment. Keep in mind I'm giving you a mystical rather than a scientific perspective.

Okay so let's start with the basics. The universe. the universe is so vast I'm not even going to try and explain it as a concept. But I don't need to. The universe is coming at you, via your environment, in a vast multi-dimensional continuum of sensation and experience. In other words everything is happening everywhere all the time. By contrast the human mind - which is essentially human perception - can only focus on one, two or possibly three variables or things at the same time without needing to sit down, write down lists and go through things sequentially one by one.

But see even if you were to live for a thousand years, and you go through actual reality thing by thing, you're still not going to understand actual reality - the reality of the universe, your biology or your environment - any better than you do now. So embrace the fact that neither you, nor me, or anyone else has any objective understanding of reality. It's just not possible.

But see there's a second flavour of reality, which is conceptual or cultural reality. This is the reality of human comprehension, human understanding, and the reality we can translate into human language. See all we have to understand reality is memory and language. That's it. Memory is also the basis of imagination, and due to our large forebrains and frontal cortex, and many other parts of our brain, we can create myths, concepts, laws and metaphors to explain reality and existence.

Therefore as per the Triangular Relationship, illustrated above, your perception of actual reality is filtered through the prism of your understanding of conceptual or cultural reality. What this means is your perception of reality is not exactly the same as my perception of reality, or anyone else's perception of reality. We are all functioning on the basis of our individual reality and a model of reality developed through education, upbringing and social/mental conditioning. Out of this we all have a unique and individual perspective on life and existence.

The basis of my understanding of the different levels of reality is what I learned from living a couple of years completely among nature isolated and cut off from human society. This is how I actually became a shaman. Most people struggle to differentiate the two basic forms of reality and as a result they confuse what is really real from what's only relatively real. There are different levels of reality defined by how much conceptual reality is involved. While I'm not expert - or a hermit - I see more of the differences than most people.

Therefore moving on, please keep in mind the Triangular Relationship and the different levels of reality you experience.

Human beings and stress

Generally speaking our relationship to stress and our architecture of stress responses, right down to hormones, is not much different from other species in the animal kingdom. Human beings didn't just appear magically one day on the planet. We evolved out of other species of humans and hominid apes, and taking into account reincarnation and biological evolution, we evolved out of other species. So many thousands of incarnations back you were once a reptile, a fish, a dinosaur, and so on. Just as you re born of a certain generation through parents and have biological ancestry, in meta-physical terms you've reproduced yourself through many different incarnations and biological forms and species.

What I'm hoping that you'll grasp (whether or not you dig reincarnation) that our ability to handle stress and process it isn't that much different from pretty much the rest of the animal kingdom. It's still the same biology.

However - and this is also relative to the Triangular Relationship principle - we respond to stress in two main ways:

• Biological (natural)

  A biological stress response is a natural response to a short term physical crisis arising from a stressor in the environment. This is no different to other species and includes both 'us and them' thinking and the well known 'fight or flight' response. Something in your environment poses a threat or you have a major biological need. You're taken out of your mindfulness, equilibrium and homeostasis and naturally respond to either the threat, sense or other stressor. Once you've done what you have to do and the crisis is over, you return to your equilibrium and homeostasis.

  Given the fact that there's been tens of thousands of years of human evolution since the hunter gatherer stage I'm assuming you don't forage for food in long grass or walk round with a pointy spear to poke up some wild animal's arse. But there are situations such as when someone is trying to attack you, you accidentally slip and fall on ice, you over balance, you need to pee, or eat, and your natural biological stress response gets triggered, hormones get released into your system, and you respond.

  Another good example is say you come across a flock of pigeons in the street. You get too close to one pigeon and the entire flock of pigeons immediately take flight and fly away to a safe distance. It's the exact same biological stress response and it exists both in humans and animals.

• Cultural (psychological)

  But then there's another type of stress response which is psychological and it's an additional ability specific to humans (and a few other highly developed species). You see we don't always have to wait for an environmental stressor to trigger a biological stress response. We can trigger an anticipatory stress response independent of what's going on in our environment.

  There's pros and cons with this specific ability. Say you're being charged by an animal, such as a big, snarly, angry dog, all growly and teeth flashing. You don't have to wait until the dog gets too close, but you can trigger an anticipatory stress reaction. If the dog runs past you then okay, you're good to go. If not you can do something else to fend the dog off already biologically prepared for the confrontation.

  But see too what can often happen - and it often does - is that you can trigger an anticipatory stress response excessively or unnecessarily. If you're triggering excessive anticipatory stress responses in response to different stressors in your environment then you might want to consider that your environment is too stressful. If however you're triggering anticipatory stress responses unnecessarily or prematurely, or in response to environmental stressors which actually don't exist, then we have a number of words to describe your behaviour or you in the context of your behaviour. You're being sensitive, you're highly strung, you're paranoid, you're fearful, you're being antagonistic, you're being 'difficult', you're being confrontational.

  But see grab hold of your dog or cat and try to explain to them the stresses of your job description, your boss, or the struggles of poverty or deprivation and all you're going to get in response is a blank stare. However we are not talking about the same stress responses as a wild animal being hunted by a predator. We're doing the human thing of turning on our biological stress responses for social, economic, political and cultural reasons and you see the whole point here is that our biological stress response was never designed or evolved to deal with social, economic, cultural or political (conceptual) - and often imaginary - stressors.

  Furthermore if you are repeatedly and unnecessarily turning on your biological stress responses in response to perceived stressors from your conceptual or cultural reality sooner or later you're going to end up developing a mental health issue. No amount of positive thinking, mindfulness training, meditation or yoga is going to prevent this just as no amount of prayer or faith healing is ever going to cure your cancer or heart disease. If your overuse or even abuse of your biological stress responses have reshaped your brain so much that it has to shut parts of itself down to prevent further damage, which is essentially what a mental illness is - a protective mechanism for the brain - then you need to start making environmental, social and lifestyle changes to facilitate the automated healing and recovery process of your brain.

  Stress is the key difference between most other animals and humans. For the vast majority of animals stress is a few minutes of extreme emotions resulting in either getting to eat or being killed and eaten. Humans however have turned stress into a repeated or long term experience which usually ends up doing irreparable damage to either their bodies or their brains (or both).

Non-attachment & individuation: the principle of stress management

There was once a tyrannical king who committed a great and terrible genocide among his people, particularly among his critics and those who dissented. He came across a sage, a wise man, who the king wanted to execute but the sage appealed and offered the king a magic ring. The king relented and agreed that if the sage would give him a magic ring, he would spare his life. So the sage had a golden ring forged which bore the inscription on the outer band 'This too shall pass.' and gave it to the king. The sage lived on as his life was spared.

My point here is that generally, in life, because we no longer live in the wild and the hunter-gatherer phase is ancient history, our biological stress responses are only really good for short term, mild or moderate stressors. You're going to need some kind of stress management or technique or skill to get you back to mindfulness.

Now this is where I'm going to leave myself wide open to criticism, but in our current social conditions what you need to be aiming for isn't happiness, fulfillment, a sense of inner peace, when it comes to mindfulness and stuff is despair. Why? Simply because this is your default emotional experience from modern living conditions. Trust me, if you approach life constantly seeking fun, pleasure and happiness you're going to be brought back to despair. If you go through life expecting trauma and the worst case scenario you're going to be constantly triggering your anticipatory stress responses over what you *think* might happen and also catch yourself out. But see if you check out the Creative Law meme you should be able to figure out that the point of equilibrium - and mindfulness - is despair where you go from a traumatic mindset into a dramatic mindset. Please keep in mind:

• Often in life you don't get predictive control

  Quite often in life when you find yourself in a stressful situation you don't always get what I call predictive control over your circumstances. What I mean here is that despite the fact you know you're in a stressful situation, you don't know how stressful it's going to be, how long things are going to be stressful for, or even how the stressful situation is going to impact you further down the line. All you know is that it's stressful.

  Often when you're in a stressful situation or set of circumstances trying to figure out the scale, dimension and even the trajectory is generally unhelpful. You're experiencing tension, anxiety, fear, frustration, but see too, if you cannot see a way forward or a way out, you're also experiencing despair. Here is where social support matters, but see often you can be in a stressful situation without any social support or feel that you're going to be stigmatized if you do reach out for social support.

• Having predictive control generally makes things worse, not better

  Having some sense of predictive control seems attractive and even reassuring from a hypothetical perspective, but generally in many stressful situations and circumstances the chips don't fall where you think they will fall. Besides would you want to be given full predictive control and personal agency in your worst possible circumstances? Think about it.

  Only believers in free will or personal agency will come up with the 'could have, should have' arguments in the face of a tragedy or some might turn to religion and argue that it's 'God's will'. But generally those of us with a bit more emotional intelligence and empathy will tell the bereaved parents of a child killed in a road traffic accident that nothing could be done to produce a different outcome. Personal agency and responsibility has no place whatsoever in the face of a tragedy. It wouldn't have made a difference if you'd got to a doctor earlier. Having some sense of predictive control only works in very mild or moderate cases of stress.

• Seeking love to mitigate loneliness generally doesn't work

  Having any sense of predictive control when you're struggling with the stresses of loneliness and isolation generally works against you. Dating while lonely messes you up in the head, screws up your thinking, and often causes you to read far more into potential relationships than actually exists.

  This is a good example of how having any sense of predictive control, or any sense of control, generally makes things worse and skews your whole perception and perspective.

My point here is that in times of stress it's generally unhelpful to try and get control or seek to have control - whether it be predictive control or otherwise. This is where I give you a fundamental truth. Nobody, repeat nobody, is in control - of anything. You might *think* you're in control. You might *desire* to be in control. You might even *assume* that you're in control. But trust me, being in control goes right against the mystical principles of Natural Law (Creative Law) and against the scientific principles of biology and Nature. Truth is you're caught up in a relationship or mystical transaction between a multi-dimensional environment and a multi-dimensional brain.

I know that I'm contradicting cultural thinking and what some would describe as common sense, but the principle which gets you through stressful times is to give up or surrender control - let go, non-attachment - and instead work on your environmental and social awareness, in other words, pay attention to what's going on around you and take the path of least resistance. Forget about trying to predict or get too attached over an outcome or change in circumstances, which leads to suffering. The way out or change in circumstances will come anyway and it will be clear to you. So you have nothing to worry about.

You've got to do what works for you as an individual

I spend a lot of my time trying to find different ways of highlighting or pointing out the subtle differences between individualism and individuation. Now please keep in mind that our biological reality isn't just human, it's also primate. We're similar to other apes and monkeys out there, the chimps, the bonobo apes, the gorillas, the orang utans and the baboons. We got the same kind of circuitry going on in our brains. We're just better at anticipating stuff, imagining things, mythologizing and conceptualizing. The drug of choice is just the same - dopamine. You need the dopamine to help you deal with the stresses of life.

Okay so what's the difference between individualism and individuation? Individualism generally gives you all your primate stuff such as social hierarchy, domination culture, and to a significant degree social rank and class. In other words it gives you structure and a frame of reference. It gives you your authority figures. But individuation is different. Individuation is all about Nature. It's about growth. It's about healing. It's about evolution. If you go take a walk in a park or a forest and take a look at all the trees, you should find that each individual tree grows differently to the others. Likewise if you go talk to elderly people about their lives and their memories, in each individual case you should get a different story. Contrary to what many people think, our environment generally supports and promotes individuation, as does Nature.

Therefore there's many different strategies, tools, techniques for stress management and mindfulness - meditation, yoga, therapy, video games, art, drama, music, sex, crafts, cooking, dream weaving, exercise, going to the gym, creative writing, poetry, and so on and so forth. Some of these things will work for you, others won't. But for any of these to work they really do have to be regular or sustained activities and not just something you do in your spare time, at the weekend or once every so often. See you've not just got to feed your brain dopamine hits and stimuli, you've also got to keep your brain in some kind of shape and keep it fit - exactly as you need to do with your body.

However with that in mind you have to take into account these three important considerations:

• You need to safeguard your emotional/psychological well being

  This is something I feel I keep having to point out to people way too often. Mindfulness is not an achievement. It's not something you struggle for or attain. Mindfulness is something you're born with and you have throughout your whole life. Think of it as your emotional and psychological centre point, a point of equilibrium, balance, and homeostasis. This needs to be something which you're aware of across all planes of consciousness. What's more nobody else can lead you to this. Nobody else is you. Nobody else can be you. You have to figure it out for yourself.

  So, using the Creative Law meme as a reference point, i.e. the Creative Cycle, the further you get taken away from your centre point, which I've also described as your Principle or Core Being (in my books and Qultura methodology) you need to become less emotionally and psychologically attached, and when it comes to stuff that's too stressful, be prepared to set boundaries and say "No." Keep in mind that it's usually easier to tell people "No." than to say "Fuck off." It's on you not to let things get that far.

  This applies especially to work/employment and personal relationships. You might have seen the 'Don't say that's not my job' meme which appears on the internet. Pay attention to the fact that this is an employer generated meme. In employment and work situations you're going to come up against a lot of so-called personal responsibility, obligation, accountability, and so on. Unless you're trying to gain experience in a particular job field or area you should not be prepared to be exploited or used, and even if you do, it's got to come with strings attached and limits. Likewise in relationships. There has always got to be some benefit to you. Always remember that work is a finite commodity, but always be prepared to safeguard yourself, set boundaries, and save your loyalties for those who respect them.

• You need to develop on your environmental and social awareness

  In order to develop on your environmental and social awareness, you need to get some mystical insight into such stuff such as Qultura, Natural Law, or a similar method of enquiry (for example Taoism, the Tao Te ching, Chuang Tzu, etc). What you need is a basic understanding of physicality and energy and how stuff works which can serve as a basis or platform for your own investigation, enquiry, experience and other stuff you learn from your own direct life experience.

  You need to evolve past your social and mental conditioning to the degree that you can recognize mystical principles, patterns, rhythms, cycles, even numbers and sequences. See this is the thing about yoga and meditation, specifically - such activities need mystical insight otherwise you'll end up sat on your backside, staring into space trying to suppress your thoughts through trying not to think. Great for your posture. Not so great for your brain because usually you'll only end up stressing yourself out for no reason or benefit. You've probably got enough stressors coming from your environment, circumstances, other people and authority figures. You don't need to create your own internal stressors.

  What this will give you is the ability to be responsive as opposed to being reactive, as most people are in life. Please don't underestimate this very important life skill. If you can learn how to be responsive in all life situations, and especially under stress, without being reactive and triggering your anticipatory biological stress responses, then you're pretty much 90% of the way there.

• EMB - enjoyable, meaningful, beneficial

  Lastly, no matter what stress management technique, strategy, or tool you choose personal, it's got to be enjoyable, meaningful and beneficial to you, relative to your situation and circumstances. It should not be in shape or form hard work, drudgery, or something that is 'good for you'. Define good.

  I give you the example of a spectator sport such as football. Following a football team gives you the highs and lows of sport, develops on your social and environmental awareness, gives you a bunch of people you can relate to, and furthermore it's not deep. With each match you get the anticipation of the result. If your team wins of course, you get something out of it. If not.. oh well. Go back to life and do something else. But this is just one example, there's many others to choose from, such as a television series, a book, music, art, travelling. but it's important that you find whatever you do enjoyable, meaningful and beneficial.

This is where I will leave it. I could write more, but I want to break the rest down into different blog posts. Please feel free to like and comment on this posts where you see it on a social media platform. If you have a specific question or want more information simply message me and ask away.