A Key to Stopping Going Against Ourselves

Our biggest problem is that we go against ourselves.

Going against ourselves takes three forms:

giving in to second thoughts about what we have chosen.
struggling against second thoughts.
changing the subject (or substituting one thought for another -- such as "reasons why" -- or changing our course of action) without "clearing the slate", first -- without releasing both our "first thoughts" and our "second thoughts --

and so remaining in a state of internal conflict All three are ways of trying to escape a situation without releasing -- like stretching without releasing the action of holding ourselves tense. All three of these are ways of going against ourselves while feeling in mystery about why we feel distressed.

Releasing is none of these. Releasing is relaxing, not effort on top of effort. It's open space, not "right decision".

Starting something and not finishing it -- or giving our word and then breaking it -- are ways of going against ourselves. They leave a residue of distress behind, which we may tolerate -- but at a long-term price.

Release is impossible without intelligent sensing and is spontaneous as soon as we recognize the action of going against ourselves as self-generated stress and distress -- felt to be, not just thought about.

The Gold Key Release activates intelligent sensing as preparation for releasing. It is not, "escape", in the usual sense, because it reveals that we are not seeking to escape something outside of ourselves; it is our own unrecognized, chronic activity that we are suffering and seeking to escape. We are going against ourselves. It has a characteristic feeling: stress.

It is not a matter of having sophisticated knowledge about our subconscious mind or its contents. Knowledge-about is different from mastery. Knowledge-about is a mental activity -- one step removed from direct experience; it has no power, but is just another way of getting bogged down. Mastery is immediacy of experience and intelligent participation, in it. It is freedom.

To release is one of our most basic lessons. (click above)

Click above to do it.

Balanced Intelligence Training

If you've been reading my recent writings on Balanced Intelligence, you've heard how balancing our intelligence clears our mind, restores peaceful balance; gives us back our resourcefulness; and opens our imagination for spontaneous, good problem-solving ideas to come in -- ideas we may have missed, when overstressed. It brings relief, immediately.

The Gold Key Release is the entry-level Balanced Intelligence procedure. "Entry level" means it's the first and easiest to learn and do. It's also quite potent. I used it to focus my attention to write these explanatory pieces.

We use The Gold Key Release when we want to get untangled from sticky situations -- particularly, sticky situations that we can't figure out -- unentangled without struggle and in increasing freedom of our own mind and emotions. That's why it's called a "release".

Hearing is one thing; experiencing is another -- or, said another way, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating."

The results are better than can be achieved with brainwave training because brainwave training causes generalized effects and The Gold Key Release brings targeted relief -- relief from situations we want handled -- quickly.

... better than can be achieved with breathing techniques or tapping because, though those techniques discharge the intensity of stress in the moment, they don't change the conditioning that leads to stress. The Gold Key Release dissolves the conditioning, itself, so if a situation recurs (unlikely), we feel much more at ease and in command of ourself and the situation. It's a shift.

It works better than visualization or Law of Attraction because those approaches seek to counteract or override counterproductive conditioning -- which may arise, again, like The Loch Ness Monster, and attack our lives, again, like Godzilla. The Gold Key Release dissolves subconscious conditioning, precisely and altogether, so there's nothing left to override -- no need to figure, compromise, give in or struggle. Just do The Gold Key Release and move forward. Your way of handling situations will have changed, spontaneously because you have changed yourself.

This is likely to be different from anything else you've tried.

The first-responders' ticket price for this first time offering of training in The Gold Key Release, $375.00, ends on April 22nd, 10:00 p.m. PDT.

After that, the ticket price goes up to $877.00.

... with a second chance at a low ticket price:

Ticket holders at the $877.00 price who fulfill the requirements of complete attendance, participation, feedback, and a video testimonial will get $402.00 refunded, to them.

Buy your ticket(s), now.

by April 22nd: $375.00
by April 25th: $877.00 with $402.00 rebate, if you qualify

Results are telling.

In return for this discount, you agree to give me a video testimonial I can use to promote future occasions and feedback -- so I can make the training the best it can be, for future participants.

VIDEO TESTIMONIALS

Let's do this, together.

Balancing the Core 'Muscles' of Intelligence -- training

All intelligence has four core "muscles":

attention, intention, memory, and imagination.

These muscles of intelligence develop through stimulation by experience and an inherent impulse to come alive.

Attention gets stimulated by demands upon our attention.
Intention gets stimulated by unfulfilled desires (such as hunger or frustration) or conflict.
Memory gets stimulated by changing conditions (including imagination).
Imagination gets stimulated, spontaneously, and stimulates the other three.

All four work as a unity and only as a unity -- ideally, as a balanced unity in which their vividness and distinctness are equal to each other . That equality makes for mutual responsiveness.

In effect, each contains the other three.

When one is more vivid and distinct than the others, the more vivid one changes more slowly than the less vivid ones. They "run rough", together, like an out-of-tune engine.

In general, our experiences emphasize them unevenly; some experiences call for more attention, others, more memory, and so on. The more discordant the experience, the more pronounced the unevenness.

When they are uneven, they don't work well, together. Instead, the more intense ones overpower the less intense ones. The sensation is of strain.

For example, when memory overpowers imagination, imagination gets squashed by our memories and memory takes over. Lack of imagination leads to lack of foresight and lack of creativity; this happens when we are effortfully trying to come up with a solution to a problem.

When intention overpowers attention, our intentions might mismatch our actual situation. Things get missed. Mistakes get made. We get frustrated. Intention intensifies.

The same kinds of consequences afflict other unbalanced pairs, according to the combination.

The sensation is one of the solidity or substantiality of experience, beyond our control.

BALANCE

Let's look at balancing them, now.

Even though the four core muscles of intelligence work as a unity in which each contains and works with the other three, we can address them individually and in all possible combinations.

Let's look at that, some more, with a short mental exercise. Consider:

To pay attention, we intend to pay attention. Even if something catches our attention unexpectedly, we still intend to pay attention, even if automatically.

To remember something, we put attention on it. A memory forms when the intention to put attention on something outweighs our intention to pay attention to anything else. So, we have attention, intention, and memory working as a combination.

That combination produces our sense of a remembered, substantial experience that persists ("reality").

Some understandable confusion exists about the relationship of memory to imagination, so let's clarify.

Since life is perpetually changing, our memories of life are perpetually being updated. Change has the quality of unpredictability and newness; memory is all about predictability and familiarity, so the "muscle" of memory, by itself, cannot update our memories. Memory can only reinforce itself.

To update our memories, space for unpredictability and newness is needed. That space is, imagination.

Imagination is inherently unpredictable and new. If it's predictable, it's not imagination, but memory.

Imagination is open space; memory is filled space.

We recall memories by intending to imagine them; we can do that if we remember that we remember something. That's how you know where to look for your car keys -- "Ah! Now I know where they are." That's handy, wouldn't you say? Keeps the mind clutter-free.

That works as long as memory and imagination operate at matched levels of intensity.

If memory dominates imagination, there's no space for us to imagine where else to look (if we can't find our car keys, for example). We keep looking in the same places -- over and over and over again. Our attention gets cluttered by too many memories, leading to overwhelm.

If imagination dominates, memory is ungrounded. Our attention gets scattered, leading to feeling spaced-out. We end up looking for our car keys in the refrigerator. (Been there?)

So, back to balancing. Our first step is to identify which core muscles of intelligence are out of balance with the others.

There's an easy way to tell if one or more of our muscles of intelligence are out of balance: Put attention on each and notice how vivid (bright) and distinct (sharp) the impression is.

Let's take the example of "car keys".

We can put our attention on, "car keys" -- we want them, now, wherever they are.

We can imagine what they look like.

We can remember where we usually put them.

We can intend to get them.

The four 'muscles' of intelligence work, in tandem -- and we see how we can address them individually.

What you're likely to find is that some are more vivid and distinct than others -- particularly if you can't find your car keys!

Now, we come to balancing them.

We look at them, in pairs. For each of the muscles of intelligence, there are three such pairs. Take imagination, for example:

imagination and attention
imagination and memory
imagination and intention

Merely remembering the names, deliberately, is sufficient to stimulate them so we can compare them.

So, to balance imagination and memory, when imagination is weaker than memory, we might think, to ourselves (at an even tempo):

remembering

[ pause ]

imagining

[ pause ]

remembering

[ pause ]

imagining

[ pause ]

remembering

[ pause ]

imagining

[ pause, pause ]

imagining

Each alternation compares their vividness and distinctness, automatically -- and with each comparison, the two become more equal in intensity.

Try it.

Feel how attention landed hard on imagining? Feel how that intensified our impression of imagining? (Often, we need to do multiple repetitions of the whole sequence, forward and backward, to get them balanced.)

Since all four work in combination, we do that with all possible combinations -- or risk being out of balance in an unrecognized way. (We will have a "clue", though: a feeling of stress).

This, of course, is a simplified example of how to cultivate balance. Specific Balanced Intelligence procedures apply this principle in unique ways, according to their purpose.

There are Balanced Intelligence procedures for:

getting free of sticky situations, without struggle: The Gold Key Release
making the invisible aspects of relationships visible: The Middle-Way Memory Matrix
resolving self-sabotage and ambivalence: The Invertor
making the invisible aspects of a specific kind of experience (such as a dream) visible: The Balanced Intelligence Lattice

All of these procedures cultivate intuition.

Enrollment at the ticket price of $375.00 ends at midnight, April 22nd. After that, the ticket price goes up to $877.00.

... with a second chance at a low ticket price:

Ticket holders at the $877.00 price who fulfill the requirements of complete attendance and participation, feedback, and a video testimonial will get $402.00 refunded, to them.

Final ticket availability at this price: 10:00 p.m. PDT, Friday, April 25th.

Buy your ticket(s), now.

by April 22nd: $375.00
by April 25th: $877.00 with $402.00 rebate, if you qualify

16. Making the Invisible, Visible, by Balancing Our Intelligence

There's a way to get subconscious material that is affecting our lives, adversely, quickly to become conscious -- for the invisible to become visible.

It involves our four "core" muscles of intelligence:

ATTENTION | INTENTION | MEMORY | IMAGINATION

Surprised, huh? (by now, not, right?)

Still, I'd like to provide a little bit of explanation.

Those core muscles of intelligence operate best when they cooperate in a state of balanced integration.

When they are out of balance, it's because one or more of those four "muscles" is sluggish, overactive, or poorly integrated with the others. That's their set-point and it's gumming up the works -- attention is stuck on something, intention is weak or poorly coordinated with the other three, a memory of an experience is being suppressed, or imagination is being squashed by loud memories that drown out any new information.

Feel that. Sounds like psychology -- or politics -- doesn't it?

What makes subconscious material, subconscious, rather than conscious, is the state of imbalance.

That's handy, to know; it means that by balancing and coordinating our four core muscles of intelligence, we can get subconscious material not only to "surface" (become visible), but also to come to a free and easy balance. It happens quickly.

This is helpful to understand.

Our experiences are given form and intensity by the interaction of attention, intention, and memory. Without attention, no experience is possible; without intention, there's no intensity and no attention goes onto an experience because, "Who cares?"; without memory, we can't keep our attention on anything long enough to experience its details -- or even to steady on it.

So, those three, together, give experience "substance" -- make it visible -- but not active or even perceptible. Without the "incoming" channel of imagination, our memory only reinforces existing memories. It's a state of "static" experience -- which is to say, no experience because we can perceive only things that are in changing relationship, to us.

If you want to test that statement, gaze fixedly at something. In less than 30 seconds, you'll notice that it "washes out" or goes invisible. That applies to all of our senses and experiences.

The function of our senses is to perceive things that are changing. That's why prey-animals freeze, when afraid; it reduces their visibility. You can see how that might have survival value.

Imagination is our incoming channel for perceiving change.

Every time our attention shifts to something new, or something in our situation changes, our imagination links what's happening now to what we remember, so we can make sense, of it.

That's how we understand language, for example. Language connects words with relevant memories of experiences.

We discover how important memory is to perception whenever we enter into an unfamiliar situation. Without memories to orient us, what do we feel? Yes. That. I call it, being in the zone -- of incomprehensibility!

Here's the practical application:

You can test this. Whenever you feel stuck in a situation or state, shift to imagining that state, vividly, while experiencing it. That takes intention, attention and memory, so now we have all four working together. To the degree that we sufficiently balance all four, our now-experience loses its "stickiness"; our attention and intention come free. The experience is of relief from stress. It happens in moments.

However, there's a catch:

If one or more of the muscles of intelligence -- attention, intention, memory and imagination -- is gummed up (sluggish or hyperactive -- out of balance with the others) we feel stuck, caught. That's the catch.

The release comes from activating and freeing all four muscles of intelligence, equally, in the moment. It's quite remarkable, and undeniable, when it happens.

That, in fact, is how The Gold Key Release Balanced Intelligence procedure works to make the invisible, visible: balance.

The Gold Key Release: "What to Do" when it's all too much.

The Gold Key Release is a short procedure to eliminate, not just momentary stress, but long-standing stress-patterns that repeat themselves.

When adverse conditions pile up, what may descend upon us is a mass of stress so large that we don't know what to do, with it.

This version of the Gold Key Release is a way to clear our mind and balance our intelligence so that "what to do" shows up, to us, as a good idea that we can readily act upon.

Learn more about it.

15. Restoring Being At-Ease as Our Baseline Condition

Has it occurred, to you, to wonder why life seems so difficult, at times? We all have a sense of what ease feels like, that it feels natural -- when we're not chasing after (or fighting) something.

Doesn't that seem odd that we feel we must struggle -- do something -- to change our situation, to experience ease, when ease is the absence of struggle? Who wrote those rules?

I say that ease isn’t something to be accomplished and held onto by an effort to create a sense of ease. Using struggle to recover balance is itself what keeps us off balance. In my experience, an indirect approach is necessary.

Every day, we face situations that trigger a loss of balance -- or reveal our existing imbalance. Our ability to exist at rest is impaired -- temporarily, at the very least, and more often, for a lengthy period of time.

To recover a sense of ease in the midst of stress may seem complicated or unattainable. That's because we're looking in the wrong place, for it.

Here's the key point: It's generally true of human beings that we're loaded with stress patterns that live on in our subconscious and affect us, whatever else we're doing. Here's the right place: our stress-patterns, themselves. Disarm stress patterns, and everything else feels easier. The key is to disarm stress, not to cultivate a sense of ease. We rest from stress.

Make sense?

There is an indirect approach that, the more we use it, the more we release the unnecessary stress patterns we have learned in everyday situations, so that when difficult situations arise, we meet them from a more relaxed baseline condition.

When we know how to release, rather than suppress, that's what we experience. We discover that our stress and struggle are an inside job -- perpetuated by ourselves through habits developed over a lifetime, trained by authorities like parents, teachers, and bosses, and based on the idea that if we just got things right, we'd feel at ease.

Well, temporarily, at best, because conditions change, inevitably.

Balancing our intelligence is a way to release subconscious stress patterns, so that instead of fighting or struggling for a sense of relief, we relax into ease -- without giving in, without compromise, and without complication; without resisting a situation (or our own stress patterns) or changing the subject to get relief.

As we disarm our accumulated stress patterns, we ease as our baseline condition. We feel peaceful empowerment as our natural state.

Be well -- and eat your vegetables.

TO RESPOND, CLICK HERE.

A More Detailed Look at The Gold Key Release

When you're brand new at this, you may not get vivid feeling-perceptions at first; you may feel like nothing is happening or that you're not doing it right. Do it again. And again. After a few times through, you will get vivid (and familiar) perceptions during the procedure and wake up more completely.

After that, it will be easier and you will know whether you are getting good "traction" in a session.

Understand, though, that you are addressing things in yourself about which you are relatively dense. If you weren't dense about them, they would not have shown up as problems.

If you want me to mentor you through the procedure to show you the "teeth", click mentoring. With your permission, we may record the session for instructional purposes or for posterity, whichever comes first.

A DRILL: "Jiggling" the Key:

(if it the release doesn't happen easily)
Practice the drill once to a good result, then do more Gold Key Release.

| ! | Imagine remembering.

| ! | Remember imagining.

| ! | Imagine remembering.

| ! | Repeat indefinitely until you get a shift (not many repetitions will be needed).

|*| Stop imagining. Awaken.

(|=| The Transcendent "Kiss" occurs.)

ESPECIALLY POTENT: As soon as you feel The Transcendent Kiss feeling, go into The Tongue Mudra.

Click the link to learn about, and how to do, The Tongue Mudra. Using The Tongue Mudra causes releases to occur faster and more completely. Tongue Mudra is potent and not properly to be underestimated.

Let each Transcendent "Kiss" appear and fade before moving to the next step of The Gold Key Release. Let it spread through you before continuing. Pay attention to the feeling, and you'll know. If it doesn't fade, by itself, you're done. If you need more for that item, you'll know, later.

FOR "DENSE" ITEMS That Don't Easily Dissolve

... in which either "It's True" or "It's Untrue" feel absolutely true, to the exclusion of the other.

When one "side" ("It's true," or "It's untrue") is overwhelming, you will be too attached to your position to release your item at the final step.

To balance the two "sides", use the technique, below. Use it only after you're accustomed to doing The Gold Key Release and you know what dissolution feels like.

For now, try the words, below, for experience:

"It's true! It's true! It's untrue! It's true!"

Pause and feel what comes up.

"It's untrue! It's true! It's untrue! It's untrue!"

Pause and feel (optimally, at each step).

REPEAT until the two "sides" are equal.

In The Gold Key Release, substitute this sequence for the standard, "... It's true... It's untrue..." steps.

FOR EVEN MORE PERSISTENT (VERY DENSE) ITEMS:

At the, "It's true!" step, follow this (entire) sequence:

| "It's true! It's true!"

| "It's untrue! It's untrue! It's untrue!"

| "It's true! It's true!"

| "It's untrue! It's untrue! It's untrue!"

| "It's true! It's true!"

| "It's untrue! It's untrue! It's untrue!"

Pause and feel until your attention steadies (optimally, at each step).

This formulation helps balance out bias in either direction -- "It's true!" or "It's untrue!". That balance much eases recognition and release. Play with it once you've gotten accustomed to the procedure.

Esoteric Somatics and Tibetan Buddhism
on kinds of experience in and to which
TetraSeed Modulations may be "interestingly" applied

“To study the Buddha Way is to study the self.
To study the self is to forget the self.
To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things.
When actualized by myriad things,
your body and mind as well as the bodies
and minds of others drop away.
No trace of enlightenment remains,
and this no-trace continues endlessly.”
~~ Dogen Zenji

Intuiting and Harnessing the Powers of Intuition

Intuition isn't guesswork. It isn't following hunches.

Intuition is direct perception of an impending, distant, or "not evident" event without need for description or analysis by the mind.

Perhaps you've had the experience of thinking of someone and very soon the phone rings, and it's them: intuition (in the form of precognition).

As you know, intuition, like imagination, is ephemeral. It tends to vanish quickly, unless captured in memory.

To capture anything in memory, it has to make enough of an impression -- something that can come from the intensity of an experience or its repetition -- or both.

In both cases, attention has to rest stably in an intuitive perception -- which means sufficiently steadily and focussed for a memory impression to form -- without use of the thinking mind.

Although intuition doesn't come from the thinking mind, deliberately thinking of something and holding attention on it can direct enough free attention to that item to open the channel of intuition. It's "think, then feel".

Fleeting attention can't capture intuition. Scattered attention can't capture intuition. Noisy mind can't capture intuition.

Attention has to be free enough, the mind quiet enough, to detect an intuitive impression, which generally occurs spontaneously, sometimes instantaneously and sometimes after a delay, "when we're not looking". You need free attention to capture it.

That last sentence should have clarified, for you, the importance of cleaning up chronic stress patterns, which are background noise in the nervous system.

I started by saying what intuition isn't. Now, I'll say some things about what it is.

Intuitive impressions of an event or item feel like that event or item in question. It's like a coming attraction trailer for a film. It's a mini-experience occurring in our incoming channel, which is imagination; all of the senses may be involved, but at the very least, the feeling (not necessarily emotional) sense is involved.

A good situation to get familiar with this kind of perception is when you are facing a choice between two options; put your attention on each option long enough to steady, focus and get a felt impression. Alternate between the two options to detect the differences between them.

Though intuition may give us "yes or no" answers, more information than "yes" or "no" is available -- unless the two options are so close that it makes little difference, in which case I recommend that you wait a while until one of them is more prominent.

Why?

Timing. It may just be too soon.

Our own biases and preferences may color intuition. Sometimes, intuition says, "no" when we want it to say, "yes" -- or vice versa. We're wiser to go with intuition than with preference -- to go for the feeling, rather than by knowledge or analysis.

Once in a while, following intuition leads to a surprise, a "what in the world was that about?" moment. When that happens, take it in stride. It's a wake-up call to learn to release your attention from fixed positions.

Intuitive perception requires the kind of openness that occurs when stress is low and the nervous system is relatively quiet. The quieter, the more deep, vivid, and distinct the intuitive perception.

How to get stress low enough?

Balance your four core modes of intelligence: attention, intention, memory, and imagination -- in every situation in which you feel stressed out -- and experience the peace that results, in each case.

That's all, for now.

In a few days, I'm going to make an announcement of a coming attraction. Ready?

13. Focusing, Coherence, and Receptivity to New Ideas | The Foundation of Inspiration

Refreshed openness to new ideas is one of the promises of balanced intelligence.

First, we'll consider what "openness to new ideas means". I expect that it will not be what you think.

Then, we'll consider how to be open to new ideas. Here's a little clue: it takes the same kind of receptivity as for receptivity to imagination -- and I'll explain why, in case it isn't already obvious.

I suspect that for most people, "openness to new ideas" allows for filtering new ideas according to what we know. That's precisely not openness to new ideas; it's openness to familiar ideas!

Here's a familiar phrase: "thinking outside the box".

"The box" is everything we believe we know.

So, openness to new ideas means allowing for all ideas -- not necessarily to act upon them or even to accept them, but to release the grip of mind that screens out anything not already ringing the bell of familiarity. The operative word, here, is allowing.

Why?

Because memory -- everything we think we know -- tends to drown out new ideas. Pre-emptive rejection.

Here's an example of pre-emptive rejection. It concerns actress Hedy Lamarr, who was in films of the 1940s.

It turns out that Hedy Lamarr was brilliant as well as beautiful. She had a mind open to new ideas beyond those of the movie industry. Actresses and actors must have focussed, coherent attention -- and imagination -- to perform. She was practiced, in them.

On one occasion, she was in the studio of a musician who had a player piano. In case you don't know, a player piano is an automatic piano; it has the music encoded in punch marks on a large roll of paper that feeds through a mechanism that activates the keys of the piano -- punch marks similar to those used in vintage 1970s computers to enter data from large stacks of punched cards. We still hear of those used in voting machines.

She was aware of the use of radio controlled torpedos in the war effort (WW II) -- probably from news reports -- and that those radio signals were being intercepted by the enemy to evade or misdirect torpedos. She was also aware of coding efforts (famous name: Enigma) used to encrypt communications -- and that the enemy was getting better at decoding encrypted messages.

When she saw how a player piano worked, she had an insight into the radio control problem: the one-to-one correspondence between the locations of the holes and the keys being activated on a player piano. She recognized how torpedos' control signals could be made to switch to different radio frequencies (corresponding to different keys) while a torpedo was in transit, analogous to the way a player piano roll controls the piano, while the music was playing -- in a programmed way -- to defeat attempts to intercept the radio control signals.

She went through the effort of contacting officials at the Pentagon to present her idea -- called Frequency Hopping, in a meeting. They had the meeting, and they rejected Frequency Hopping.

Officials at the Pentagon demonstrated pre-emptive rejection. They wouldn't think outside the box, but stuck with what they thought they "knew". They may even have failed to give proper attention to the idea because it came from an actress.

Nonetheless, she patented the technology.

Decades later, the exact same scheme has become part of the system that routes phone calls through the cellular network and which is in use, today -- a switching scheme for efficient wi-fi. That was Hedy Lamarr's invention -- and now she gets credit, for it.

Hedy Lamarr's insight depended upon her focus (ability to see details) and coherence (ability to stay on-subject and to see more deeply). She wasn't actively searching for a solution to the torpedo guidance vulnerability; it came to her, spontaneously. That's how it works -- inspiration when we're not looking.

Coherence allowed her to focus steadily enough for her to see the details -- and for an idea "outside the box" to come. She had the presence of mind to recognize its potential and the tenacity to arrange a presentation to Pentagon officials. Coherent Focusing.

Focusing and coherence are attributes of free attention.

Free your attention, and focus and coherence are available, to you.

That's all, for today.

1. Do you yearn for a more peaceful life? Here's something that may be worth hearing

Have you been trying to create a more peaceful life by changing your circumstances -- everything and everyone around you? or even yourself?

That's what almost everybody in the world has tried and continues to try. Our world situation is where that strategy has landed us.

Albert Einstein said something relevant -- if people could hear it: "Problems cannot be solved from the same level of consciousness that created them." If we digest that, it might sound like this: "The results of our actions reflect our state of mind when doing those actions." Chew on that, for a moment. State of mind matters.

Another saying often swallowed whole, without much chewing is, "Become the change you want to see in the world." Sounds good, doesn't it? Idealistic! Lofty! Everybody should do it!

I think Gandhi said that. After chewing, it sounds like a platitude: "Live with integrity." Now, re-visit Gandhi's saying about being the change we want to see, in the world. They fit together. See?

And yet, we tend to try it the other way, first. Change the world!!!

Why is that?

I think it's because so few of us are able to regulate our own state, very well, we instead seek to cope with circumstances to bring relief. Coping is very tiring. That's because "beneath" coping is resistance and opposition -- or it wouldn't seem like coping.

Over a lifetime, it piles up. That's why, as we age, we go for the familiar, the commonplace, the conventional. The pile-up

Some people try "inner work". We aspire to healthy ideals, mental health, mindfulness and spirituality. For such approaches to succeed, they must effectively eliminate the pile-ups. It's slow going.

Those pile-ups pervade our lives as lifelong patterns so familiar as to be taken as "just how I am"; we lack access to "the levers and switches of the runaway train that is our mind" -- that's why it's an uphill climb that seems like things are going downhill, fast.

The world is a conspiracy of stressful search for relief from stress. Doing, doing, and more doing -- our state of readiness for anything and everything in all kinds of ways and running our lives according to everything we know. "Stress". "Overwhelm". "Too much". "On your mark! Get Set! ..." Am I exaggerating?

We're not peaceful or we can get only "more peaceful". A sea of "stress" pervades our places, concentrated some places (like airport departure gates), lower-level in others (like sensory-deprivation centers and massage studios), moderate-to-high level (parks and public venues) to hysterical (corporations, cities and the news media). We get infected. Relief is often temporary.

Because we seem to have so little control of our own state, we blame our stress on causes outside ourselves. "Such and such made me feel bad."

That load gets big. When it becomes overwhelming, distress seems to surface like Nessie, The Loch Ness Monster -- or suddenly to loom, like Godzilla. Bananas -- it's Bananas.

But the stress comes not from the circumstances, but from our own way of operating. It's our internal state that we're experiencing, not "circumstances". No escape from ourselves.

But, not having a handle on our own state, we make attempts to change circumstances, escape, or to suppress our reactions -- and away we go. More of the same.

The more "stressed" we become about our chronic lives, the more disturbed we are, the more aggressive we become for something different. We might become an entrepreneur! or for more of the same -- like a millionaire politician.

So, some people yearn for a more peaceful life -- and that's a sign of intelligence.

How to unload the pile-up without giving up or making unacceptable compromises? without burnout? without just persisting and bearing up? Without becoming a moron?

What to do? What to do?

Stay tuned.

Next expostulation forthcoming in two days, or so.

Change and Turbulence

Every change involves turbulence, called, "disturbance".

People who resist change are resisting that turbulence and people who recoil from the disturbance of turbulence resist change.

As a result, little changes.

To be able to change requires a kind of steadiness characteristic of Balanced Intelligence -- a dynamic balancing, not a fixed, static state of balance.

Using the TetraSeed Awakening Matrix | The Intelligence Lattice

There is a way of using the Intelligence Lattice that economizes on time.

It's to select one expression in each of the four "muscles" of intelligence.

Identify the item you're wanting to illuminate.

Holding it in mind, go through each of the expressions in each column ("muscles" of intelligence), sensing which one "lights up" or becomes more vivid and distinct. That's the basis for selecting each of the four expressions.

Then, using those expressions, combine them into pairs of every possible combination in the TAM3 rhythm, in the following manner.

B [ item]

B [ item ]

[ item ]

B

A [ item ]

[ item ]

"Priming":

repeatedly invoking the expressions of the four modes of intelligence until they turn on sufficiently vividly to feel.

Instructions for Novice Practitioners of The Middle-Way Memory Matrix

In the Middle-Way Memory Matrix, the feelings the words evoke tend to show up at varying levels of vividness.

Equalize them.

To do so links them.

Linking them places them into mutual relationship.

That leads to integration

It also leads to self-insight, spontaneous self-releases, and self-corrections.

Sensing the moment of meaning beginning, when we say or think a word, and the moment of meaning ending is called "cropping" our words.

"Cropping" our words teaches observing, starting, and stopping the fixation of attention:intention.

"Cropping" is a more advanced technique in using The Middle-Way Memory Matrix.

The words of The Middle-Way Memory Matrix are expressions of intentions. Rest at an expression long enough for its meaning to consolidate -- or it's evident that nothing is forthcoming. Hold to the rhythms of the words shown in the recorded instruction.

12. How Quickly Can We Take It All In? Attention Refresh Rate -- Something You May Have Heard Nothing About

There's another consideration to be added to focus and coherence. It's "refresh rate" -- the amount of time it takes to get an impression of something before a new impression can be received. It's like reaction time.

Memory takes time to form. It also takes time to evaporate and make room for the next impression. Those are built-in time lags to the operation of attention.

A slow refresh rate both increases the time needed to focus and the time needed to achieve coherence -- functions of memory. The quicker memory can receive an impression, the faster the refresh rate can be and the shorter the time to achieve focus and capture details. Refresh rate.

Memory is affected both by physiology and by load. Physiology is the activity of bodily systems; load is the demand placed on the those systems by the information (or sense content) being absorbed.

Some nutritional substances enhance refresh rate -- like caffeine, nootropics, and good diet -- and others impair it -- like alcohol.

Some conditions enhance refresh rate -- like integrity and the coherence (clarity) of information -- and others impair it -- like dishonesty, or incongruity (cognitive dissonance), noisy-mindedness, pain and disease conditions.

As short-term memory gets loaded, refresh rate slows down. That's a good reason why it's better to do many short sessions of learning than to do few long sessions (why "cramming" doesn't work, long-term).

If you're having trouble absorbing this, either your refresh rate is too slow or you're attempting to absorb faster than your memory allows (too much, too fast).

Clean up your diet and unload your memory (stress level). Quiet mind has a faster refresh rate than noisy-mindedness.

That's all, for today.

Next expostulation in a couple of days, or so.

For now, be well -- and eat your vegetables!

11. Focusing on Focusing -- It's All in the Details

Here's a little-easy one:

Focusing on focusing.

Everybody focuses -- well or poorly, whether visually, through the other senses, or intuitively (bypassing the external senses).

Few focus on focusing, itself -- unless they're having trouble focusing, in which the usual strategy is to try harder to focus -- which leads to eyestrain. Doesn't work, so well, does it?

So, I'll bring focusing into focus.

Focus is the ability to sense more details. That's what happens when we bring things into focus. That's what an optometrist is looking for with the correct lenses: that ability to see more detail -- smaller letters on the eyechart.

Focus narrows the field of attention so that more attention is available for objects (or subjects) that appear small (the result of size -- or distance). The result is what's called, "higher resolution" -- sharpness. Details, visible.

Focus is different from freedom from distraction (which is what many experts mean, by "focus"). The term for non-distraction is the cousin of focus, coherence.

When a person is incoherent, they bring in extraneous matters in a disjointed way. They have scattered attention and induce scattering of attention in their listeners.

Feel it?

Focus is different from the idea of focus. The idea of focus, in itself, is unfocussed! It's vague -- and it can be wrong, as when we conflate focus with coherence.

Focus is what's needed to distinguish an object of attention from its background and objects in the foreground, its context or setting -- involving reducing the field of attention to the object of interest by making everything but the object of attention, blurry.

Focus requires coherence and coherence requires focus. Attention has to remain long enough on an object for it to come into focus; attention has to focus long enough on an object for attention to steady, upon it (coherence). Those are good reasons to cultivate both focus and coherence, equally.

How to do that? Balance your core faculties of intelligence -- attention, intention, memory and imagination.

A word, for the wise, is sufficient.

That's all, for today.

Next expostulation in a couple of days, or so.

10. Focus and Coherence: The Secret to Clarity and Effective Action

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FOCUS AND COHERENCE

Why should we care?

Most people have a sense of focus -- but apparently few people have a sense of coherence.

When it comes to clarity, both are essential.

Why?

That has to do with the difference between focus and coherence.

What happens when we focus?

We narrow our field of attention; we concentrate.

Think of a magnifying glass concentrating the rays of the sun. The image of the sun on the other side of the magnifying glass is smaller, the more focussed it gets. Two things result:

It's hot enough to start a fire -- unlike naked sunlight.
More details become visible in whatever we are magnifying.

What happens when something becomes more coherent?

See? Not so obvious, is it?

I'll fill in the gap.

The opposite of coherence is, noise.

What happens when something gets more coherent is that the noise, in it, diminishes. The signal-to-noise ratio improves. It's the difference between a radio tuned on-station (clear) and the signal between stations (noisy). It sounds better in an obvious way: Even at a lower level of volume, it's easier to understand than a noisy signal at a higher volume.

Here's another illustration.

The laser. We've seen them in market checkout stands. The red laser light has a peculiar, "dotty" appearance -- just so you know what I'm talking about.

A one hundred watt light bulb is not very intense. A one watt laser is intense enough to melt steel.

The light from a light bulb is incoherent; the light rays interfere with each other, like two people talking at cross-purposes, so more energy is needed to illuminate anything -- or to get anything done, together. Lots of wasted effort.

The light from a laser is coherent; the light rays reinforce each other, like people agreeing upon and building on what each has said. More efficient. More fun.

When we are acting in an incoherent manner, we contradict ourselves or our thoughts are chaotic. We seem a bit crazy.

What happens when we are being coherent is that our thoughts are organized and our actions are efficient. We seem more sane, to others (unless their attention is scattered, incoherent, in which case everything seems incoherent, to them).

No matter how focussed we get on the words of an incoherent person, they still seem incoherent.

However coherent a person may be, if they're not focussed, (e.g., bringing up irrelevant points), they're harder to follow.

Now, you have a sense of what I mean by, coherence. Things fit together. Another term for this is, integrity.

So, when we focus, we exclude distractions, which we experience as noise -- and we exclude things we consider extraneous -- we narrow our attention.

When we're coherent, everything we say or do reinforces everything else we are saying or doing, so if we broaden our attention, that broadening serves our original intention.

Focus highlights details; coherence reveals how the details are related.

Now, you understand why both focus and coherence are necessary, for clarity.

Now comes the $64,000 question:

How do we get from incoherence to coherence?

It gets back to our four core expressions of intelligence -- attention, intention, memory, and imagination.

If any one of those is out of balance with the others, our intelligence becomes noisier, rather than clearer. People can hear it in our speech (disjointed thinking, wandering thoughts, irrelevancy); they see it in our actions (inconsistency, lack of integrity, wasted effort).

So, the key to clarity -- which requires both focus and coherence -- is to balance our intelligence.

Balanced intelligence -- something few people recognize for what it is (even though it is more functional -- and beautiful -- than unbalanced intelligence).

Balance your intelligence. Do it, today!

I know, you may not know how. That's coming.

Next expostulation in a couple of days, or so.

9. From Overwhelm to Free Attention: How Slowing Down Relieves Overwhelm

To understand free attention, it helps to understand saturated attention.

Another name for saturated attention is, overwhelm.

It's like a full stomach -- nothing more can come in.

Saturated attention -- or overwhelm -- is a memory problem. It's what happens when we take in too much, too fast. Memory is what's saturated; attention is being dragged along, for the ride.

It's also what happens when we're conditioned into a short attention span, as we may be by video games, advertising techniques and "clever" editing of entertainment media.

It takes time for a memory to form. First, it has to go into short-term memory and held, there, long enough (staying with one thing until it's done, before moving on), and with enough intensity or repetition that it goes into long-term memory.

Short-term memory is like the mouth and long-term memory is like the stomach. Food stays in the mouth for enough time for us to chew and swallow -- a relatively brief period compared to the amount of time food stays in the stomach, for digestion.

When we attempt to take in too much, too fast, no swallowing is possible. Overflow.

When we're conditioned into a short attention span, we feel the need to swallow before chewing is complete. Overwhelm.

Since digestion occurs mostly in the stomach, overflow prevents digestion; since comprehension occurs mostly in long-term memory, overflow prevents comprehension.

Haste, overflow, and overwhelm prevent digestion.

When we're full, that's the time to stop. Some of us don't know when to stop. We override knowing when to stop with notions of necessity or limited opportunity. Result: gluttony. Gluttony follows from urgency and leads to poor assimilation and poor elimination. Likewise, with information.

The term for someone who takes in large amounts of information but digests it poorly is, a fathead. If you've studied at university, you know about "cramming" -- "11th hour" studying before an exam -- fueled by caffeine and maybe other substances. How much do you retain what you've crammed and for how long? Trained by our university experience, we bring the strategy of cramming to our life, thereafter. So, there's an intention problem, also, when we have memory problems.

Finally, saturated memory prevents imagination from working. "Loud" memory drowns out "quiet" imagining. "The old" drowns out "the new".

So, it's a four-part problem, as usual, a problem of attention, intention, memory, and imagination.

That's attention saturation, in a nutshell.

Free attention? That's known as "quiet mind", lucidity, clarity and other such terms. Insight, imaginativeness, and ingenuity follow. We seem more intelligent.

Self-regulation of attention allows us to take things in at a speed at which we can absorb it. When we take things in more slowly and in control how much we take in (bite-size), we absorb better.

In this age of haste, many people find that a challenge, both in terms of food ("fast") and in terms of information (too much). We miss details and nuances. We act without comprehension, automatically, and hope we get by. We don't see to it that we're being understood; we don't check by asking, not just whether the other person understands, but what they understood. We're not playing with a full deck.

Trying harder works no better for absorbing too much information than for absorbing too much food.

No amount of reasoning to justify overconsumption results in escape from the consequences -- overwhelm and distress.

When we've saturated our attention, self-discipline is called for -- the discipline of noticing when we're approaching saturation, fullness -- and stopping, until later, when we have space (interest) for more. With the right 'tool', the right kind of self-training, that kind of discipline is relatively easy -- but, of course, we've got to want to.

To get things done faster, slow down. It works far better to do many short learning sessions than to do one or a few long ones. We wean ourselves of influences that cultivate short attention span. If you can't tell what those are, you need more free attention.
Clean up questions and points of uncertainty that trap some of your attention before taking in more information.
Speak more slowly and clearly (meaning, use language well). Give yourself time to find the right word. Blurting out everything that's in our mind is not just rude; it's ineffective communication.
Give people time to absorb what we've just said, idea by idea. Stop saying, "um" and "you know" and other time-fillers; allow silence to punctuate ideas.
If you tend to forget what you're saying, mid-sentence, stop and wait for the thought to resurface -- rather than talking faster to get all of the thoughts out.

Clean up performance anxiety, which makes us speed up. Cultivate listening capacity. The Gold Key Release is a good way to do that.

Result: free attention, better absorption of information, less overwhelm.

Overwhelm is a problem of oversaturated memory triggered by counter-productive intentions and abuse of attention. Imagination fails. Distraction and urgency increase -- and the cycle of saturated attention and overwhelm goes on, unless we change our ways.

Free attention stays put, where we place it, until we're done. It can be selective or completely open. When we're done, it moves easily and stays put on the next thing. We're receptive. We focus and catch the details of things. It's based on feeling, sensing, and intuition -- not word-and-mind based.

Free attention is coherent -- the opposite of which is, "noisy", prone to distraction.

Focussed and coherent.

There's a Tibetan saying: "When things are urgent, move more slowly."

8. What Does It Take for Clarity?

You know the saying, "A clean desk is a sign of a sick mind"?

That's like saying, "A quiet mind is a sign of a sick personality."

It's a topsy-turvy saying, which is what makes the saying funny, isn't it? sort of.

A noisy mind is a sign of a sick personality.

Oops! Did I hit too close to home, with that one? Sorry.

A noisy mind is sick because it's an ongoing disturbance.

Meditation is commonly used to quiet the mind. That works only when we're not doing anything! -- and it's doing it the hard way.

There's a deeper kind of quiet that allows for full participation in experience. It results from releasing the stress patterns that run our lives, constantly, without our awareness, consent or control.

Another term for this kind of quiet is a high signal to noise ratio -- in case you've heard that expression. It's the kind of clarity and purity that we get from a high-quality sound system -- or the intensity of a laser. Imagine someone with a mind, like that.

Less stress, a quieter mind; a quieter mind, more clarity -- and more receptivity to clear ideas.

How do we get there?

Balance our four faculties of intelligence.

That automatically reveals the hidden sources of mental noise and quiets them. It's a state of effortless receptivity that happens with balance -- the balancing of our intelligence.

Our attention gets more focussed and more coherent (less noisy).

When it's sufficiently focussed and coherent, we call that quality of thought, ingenuity.

When it approaches a certain level, we call it, genius.

That's all, for today.

Easy, huh?

Next expostulation in a couple of days, or so.

Announcing 'Getting Out of Sticky Situations without Struggle' -- The Gold Key Release 'beta' test course, Special Opportunity

Self-improvement is a big deal, these days, as people turn to life coaches everywhere, and to experts in marketing and manifestation and other topics. Another big deal, these days, is stress.

I had what some would call, "a difficult childhood". I got bullied at school, had no close friends and practically no social life. I spent afternoons after school at home practicing at the piano when boys my age were out playing; I hated it and adopted perfectionism to avoid getting yelled at. I had night terrors. I felt trapped.

At age sixteen, I took up yoga and started to participate in the human potential movement. Through the decades that followed, I practiced a number of disciplines for roughly twenty-five years each, with some overlap among them.

Different disciplines brought different kinds of results. Progress was slow and uneven. I had blind spots and didn't know what those were -- only that I was tense, timid, awkward, and didn't fit in.

What I needed was integration, not just an amassed body of information. Yoga went only so deep.

In 2015, based on what I had learned in my continuing education over the years, I had a sudden insight into four keys to change, four core modes of intelligence rooted in our feeling nature, that everybody has: attention, intention, memory, and imagination.

I'd heard them used in trainings and in TEDx talks; in university courses and sales training; in outside-the-box teachings, such as Tibetan Buddhism, the est training, Law of Attraction, 10,000 year old Toltec sorcery teachings -- and Hanna Somatic Education -- my profession dealing with stress-related disorders. But I never heard them presented as an integrated, coordinated system.

The thing is, these modes of intelligence are often unevenly developed, in us, which makes us more vulnerable to stress and feeling overwhelmed and trapped.

I developed a procedure, The Gold Key Release, which addresses those four modes of intelligence. Using it, stress patterns would surface and dissolve. I have used the Gold Key Release for about ten years with clients and for my own benefit.

Using it, I have became more confident, self-assured, and much more creative. I've developed an off-beat sense of humor. "Off beat" means that some people don't get it.

I don't consider myself that different from most people, so I figure that many people are experiencing accumulated stress and, without realizing it, the effects of unbalanced development of those modes of intelligence, without a way to handle it.

I'm preparing to offer a first-time "test" training in The Gold Key Release: How to Get Out of Sticky Situations without Struggle.

Using it, I immediately experience relief from stress, a deeper, more peaceful calm than minutes, ago, easier mental clarity, and my imagination seems to become productive; ingenious, workable ideas come in that feel right and generally work quite well.

I prefer this approach over struggling with a situation -- particularly when I'm out of good ideas and don't know what to do. It's lightweight, fast and clean.

This 'test' training in The Gold Key Release is a five week series of live-on-camera sessions during which I'll guide you through dissolving common areas of stress -- without having to disclose anything, to anyone. Once each week, you'll choose an area of stress for yourself, to dissolve using recorded, guided instruction in The Gold Key Release.

There will be plenty of time for questions and answers, during our live sessions.

There will be two forty-minute meetings, per week, live-on-camera, with recorded, guided instruction available on-demand during the week, for you to dissolve stress-patterns of special importance, to you.

For this test-run of the training, I'm inviting a modest number people who want to make the most of this opportunity -- results-orientated, diligent people who will participate fully (every session), people who will give frank, constructive feedback on each session (when you have some), final feedback when the training series is over, and a video testimonial for me to use to promote the training. For this test-run, I'm making twelve spaces available.

In return for your participation, you'll get access to this training for the lowest price it will ever be, $375.00 (where the regular tuition will be $877.00), lifetime free participation in future occasions of this training, special pricing on other trainings as I make them available, and a money-back guarantee of satisfaction for those who fulfill the requirements I have just outlined.

Your participation and feedback will assist me to make it the very best it can be for everyone who comes in the future.

Let's do this together.

Click here, if you'd like a brief conversation, about it, with me.

7. Locating Our Four Core Muscles of Intelligence -- and How to Use Them

Here's something that will stimulate your intuition: some words that describe the four basic expressions of intelligence -- attention, memory, intention, and imagination. Here they are, starting with attention.

Locating something is the essence of attention.

The words are,

attention
locating
highlighting

When we locate something, it's highlighted to us.

Repeat the words, to yourself, and notice that they make sense.

attention
locating
highlighting

How about memory?

Persistence is the essence of memory.
The triad is:

remembering
persisting
knowing

Without persistence, memory doesn't exist.

Same thing. Repeat the words and notice that they make sense.

remembering
persisting
knowing

Now, intention.

The essence of intention is causing something to be some way.

Intention's triad:

intending
possibility
to be

Notice how they fit, together.

intending
possibility
to be

Now, imagination:

The essence of imagination is the "unknown Unknown". It's the unknown-ness that distinguishes imagination from memory.

spontaneously
imagining
the unknown

When we imagine something, it appears spontaneously -- unknown by us until it appears in our imagination.

spontaneously
imagining
the unknown

Why are all four needed for clarity?

No attention, no experience of clarity.

No memory of something, no clarity about it.

No intention, no recognition of clarity.

No imagination, no improvement of clarity.

I know that I've just given you a mindful, so take a few minutes to go through the triads a few times until the special meanings tickle your intuition. You may feel unexpected releases of tension and shifts of posture, as you do it.

That's enough, for now. Just know that if you want to have clarity, all four expressions of intelligence have to be working, together, in balance.

Next stop, a biggie: How do we control attention, when we're distracted?

What's Required for Us to Focus?

Here's something nobody ever told you:

FOUR things are required for focus.

attention
intention
memory
imagination

ATTENTION

Focus is a matter of attention, and the essence of attention is locating things. That's what placing attention means and that's what focusing does. Everything else about attention follows from that.

INTENTION

Now, about intention, the essence of intention is control. Intention moves attention and once attention is placed somewhere, intention holds it, there. But that's not the whole story.

Why?

MEMORY

Because in order to hold attention on something, we have to remember what we're holding on to. That's where memory comes in. The essence of memory is persistence.

If we forget what we're attending to, we forget to persist in paying attention. Some people can't even go from one room to another without forgetting why they went there. So, where is their attention? on trying to remember why they went, there!

Holding attention someplace is what, "paying attention", means. The "payment" is the effort of intention we're having to make. The more distracted we are, the more we have to "pay".

IMAGINATION

Now imagination.

Why imagination?

Imagination is the incoming channel for all new perceptions, even sense perceptions. Imagination is like a mouth facing the Unknown. The unknown comes in through the "mouth" of imagination (and memory "swallows" it).

Every experience happens before we know it, at first. When something comes into our field of perception, that perception is unregistered, by us (yet to be known), for a moment. It's a little like reaction time; there's a lag.

Imagination has special roles, in focus. It's also the incoming channel for foresight and insight, which we never know are going to happen until they have already happened.

A person with no imagination has no foresight and whatever insight they have is limited by what they remember, rather than being closely tuned to the present moment.

When coupled with memory, imagination is the link to conscience; conscience is both imagination-based and memory-based.

So, those four expressions of intelligence are required for us to focus.

Did you notice uneven-ness among them, in you?

That's a clue. Balanced intensity of all four is necessary for optimum focus.

Balanced intensity doesn't mean "high intensity". It's when they are of balanced intensity that they integrate, together. When they are balanced -- even at moderate or even low intensity, they work better than when they are unbalanced with some of them at higher intensity.

Where intelligence is concerned, integration is the name of the game, isn't it?

That's all, for today. Stay tuned for the next one.

The Difference between Peace from Suppressing Emotions and Peace from Releasing Emotions

Peace from self-suppression or the peace of relaxation -- a world of difference.

Self-suppression is an effort, a drain on our energy. It's more a strategy than a relief. Peace from self-suppression is no peace.

Relaxing is a cessation of effort. It's relief without strategy.

Imagine a cat luxuriating in an armchair. No self-suppression, there, is there? No strategy. It's natural, for a cat.

Now, the human condition. Imagine you’ve come home after a difficult day and you’re feeling a mite irritable. Many of us use alcohol, other substances, or pleasurable distractions to escape our feelings -- or we just try to push those feelings down. This might look like peace, to others, but it doesn't feel like peace; it’s self-suppression. How do we know? We're emotionally loaded and it doesn't take much to set us off.

A cat doesn't have that problem -- have you noticed? The cat's peaceableness is effortless and soft.

What's the difference? A cat has no agenda, no worries. A cat releases her stress as soon as the need for it is over.

The difference is a matter of mind -- or the absence, of it. We humans value our mind as the source of solutions to problems. We seem to have an unending agenda of problem-solving. So, we rehash memories of problems -- and the worse the memory, the more we rehash. That's the meaning of the word, suffering, by the way. It's not the pain; it's the rehashing, the revisiting of disturbing memories again and again, seeking relief through approaches that can't bring relief.

Well, with humans, this behavior is common. In fact, it's regarded as normal, so normal that it has names: stress and its big brother -- overwhelm.

We humans may carry our stress into sleep -- and wake up tired or, if we use sleeping aids, groggy.

Unless we have found how to release (rather than suppress) stress, it tends to accumulate (as unpleasant memories tend to accumulate). Then, we might experience situations where our emotional state seems too extreme for the thing that triggered it: seemingly irrational (unrelated) emotional reactions and personality characteristics. Suppression doesn't work.

Some people mistakenly use the word, "release", to signify acting out emotions in an exaggerated way (catharsis), as if "to get the bad emotion out". That also doesn't work. While it may temporarily discharge the force of an emotion, it reinforces the pattern -- and then the charge rebuilds in the reinforced pattern, which ends up being suppressed for social or psychological reasons -- or indulged. It's a vestige of a failed psychological approach.

One habit that builds stress is to persist in frustrating activities -- such as work tasks that are not going well. By our insistent persisting in those activities ("I'll just finish this."), stress gets driven into us and reinforced -- whatever our good intentions or sense of necessity. It's self-inflicted pain -- and self-inflicted pain takes longer to ease up than pain when we stop sooner, than later. With self-inflicted pain, we're particulary tempted to use methods of escape, like alcohol.

In difficult situations, there's another reason it's wiser to walk away (temporarily) than to persist: Our state of mind carries over into the results we produce. Think of an angry argument versus an easy going discussion: what's the aftermath likely to be? Self-suppression doesn't work. It's self-defeating.

Have you ever tried to imagine or remember peace? It's a bit of a strain, isn't it? That's because stress lurks beneath appearances and resists being "overwritten" by good thoughts or whatnot.

True peace isn’t a state we can imagine or remember; that kind of "peace" is superficial. Peace comes from releasing.

Releasing doesn’t come from pressuring ourself to "feel peaceful", avoiding emotions, avoiding disturbing others -- or anaesthetizing ourselves. It's a matter of stopping inflicting pain on ourselves.

Cats don't need to learn that. Humans do.

So, the next time you seek peace, stop for a moment and notice: Are you using a suppression strategy? If it feels like effort, it's suppression; if it involves a cover-up, it's suppression; if it feels like relief, it's release.

How do we learn to release? There are faster ways and slower ways, more direct ways and more roundabout ways.

Next stop: mental clarity.

Next expostulation in three days.