The world is made up of two categories of people: those who know how to be stress free and those who don’t. Stressful people are those who desire to control life. They like to mould life in the way they wish it to be. They are focused only on themselves. Those who are stress free are those who accept what life offers them without complaints. Their focus is about what they can do for others. They are clear that ‘life is for others’ is the context of their life.

What is Stress?

We are merely a bio-machine as long as we believe we are mind and body. The purpose of human life is to transcend the mind and ascend to a higher state of consciousness. In that state we are truly in the divinity that we descended from. Until we reach that state of unity with what we truly are, we are in turmoil. Stress or tension can be identified as this turmoil, this confusion between our true nature and what we pretend, struggle and strive to become.

Incomplete Solutions

The reasons for stress in one person does not necessarily cause stress in another. Someone said that the reverse of ‘stressed’ reads as ‘desserts’! Nowadays, talking about stress and offering solutions that work temporarily at best is a huge business. Rather than fixing what is wrong within, people try fighting or dissolving stress by manipulating the field of outside circumstances. How long can you run? From what will you run away?

The root of Stress

Stress becomes an inevitable part of life because we feel it is connected to the fast world outside of us. We feel there can be no life without what we term ‘stress’. The truth is, stress is just our own mind-body’s response to what happens outside of us. It is not the disturbance outside that creates trouble, tension and stress. It is the disturbance inside that does it.

Guaranteed Solution to be Stress Free

Stress can be avoided by changing yourself. You can make yourself stress-proof. This is very simple. Choose not to be affected by what happens outside you. This is not impractical. It is your conditioning that influences you to get affected by what happens to you through events that are beyond your control. Nothing is inherently good or bad except what we judge them to be.

Drop your judgment about yourself, about the people around you and about the situations. You will get freedom from stress. You experience stress when you flow against the current, not when you flow with it. You lose yourself when you flow with the current. It helps you reach the restful mind state from which you can witness events around you without getting stressed out by them. You really have nothing to lose by trying, except your stress!

Be stress-free! Be Blissful!

Based on Swamiji’s article that appeared in Economic Times on 11 June 2009. Here Bhagavan Sri Nithyananda Paramashiva is lovingly addressed as Swamiji.