The Mindshifters group on Tuesday watched the lecture titled: Getting The Stress You Need. While this title sounds contradictory because some would say we don’t need stress in our lives, the truth is that without stress, as defined in the lecture, we would not survive long. For the purpose of this lecture, stress is defined as the difference between the way we see things and the way we want them to be. By way of a simple demonstration, if I want my body to be comfortable but I happen to sit on a thumb tack, I will immediately experience a difference between the way I want things to be and the way I perceive them to be. This is a good thing because it will motivate me to move off of the tack.

The lecture also talks about how I select certain intentions and elevate them to the level of goals, which is what organizes my behavior. This is how I accomplish everything in my life. It is suggested that I don’t do any behavior without first having elevated an intention to the level of a goal. If my goals are determined by my intentions, then the quality of my intentions will determine the quality of my goals and therefore the nature of my behavior. This is why it is important to monitor my intentions and choose only loving intentions. If I choose only loving intentions then my goals will be loving and my actions will be loving. If I hold hostile intentions then my goals will be destructive and my behavior will be destructive. If I hold fearful intentions, my goals will be negative and my behavior will be avoiding.

The discussion in the group included the difficulty some people have in giving up their habit of holding fearful and hostile intentions and perceptions of the world. Many of us have become so familiar with feelings of anger and fear, that we feel these intentions and perceptions serve a useful purpose in our lives. The key here is that any tool can only produce a result which is like the tool. So if I use my anger to accomplish a goal, I am creating negative energy in my body’s energy system and sending out angry energy into the atmosphere and relationships around me. Whatever “good” results I believe I have accomplished with the use of anger, I am also creating stress and negativity in my interactions and relationships with others.

I am also creating distorted perceptions for myself whenever I engage in angry or fearful energy. The only way to perceive the world accurately is to hold the energy of Love in my mind. When I am holding the energy of Love, I will be able to identify the highest and the best in another and choose to cooperate only with that part of the other person. When I am feeling fear or hostility, my perceptions are distorted and I will be using inaccurate data to form my “reality”. When I am in a potentially dangerous situation and I am triggered to feeling fear, the most productive thing I can do is calm myself down so that I can see actual events more clearly and think more clearly. One of my favorite quotes for difficult situations is, “This is way too important to panic about!” This is because if I move into the energy of fear or hostility, I am distorting my perceptions and leaving myself with bad data to formulate my “reality”.

The goal of this work is to teach only Love. The process of this work is to be vigilant about anything in my thoughts and beliefs which block me from recognizing that …

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false!