Stress Is a Desire of the Ego

That pesky ego is at work when you’re experiencing stress or anxiety. Perhaps your ego-self feels more effective dealing and coping with stress because you feel you’re actually doing something in the world. Perhaps it’s habit, custom, or believing that this is the right way to be. Only you can analyze the why. But the fact is that stress is familiar, and tranquility is unfamiliar, so ego desires stress. But there’s no actual stress or anxiety in the world; it’s your thoughts that create these false beliefs. You can’t package stress, touch it, or see it. There are only people engaged in stressful thinking. When we think stressfully, we create reactions in the body, valuable messages or signals requesting our attention. These messages might reveal themselves as nausea, elevated blood pressure, stomach tension, indigestion, ulcers, headaches, increased heart rate, difficulty breathing, and a zillion other feelings – from minor discomfort to serious, life-threatening illness.

We speak of stress as if it were present in the world as something that attacks us. We say things like I’m having an anxiety attack as if anxiety is a combatant. But the stress in your body is rarely the result of external forces or entities attacking you; it’s the result of the weakened connecting link to intention caused by your belief that ego is who you are. You are peace and joy, but you’ve allowed your ego to dominate your life.