stress

Stressors of Comfort and Security

This Science News article, The mess that is stress, ties right into my last post, “Right state of peaceful mind”. Notice how the lightening bolt in the graphic (left) points to the brain, and from there down through the rest of the body. The article puts it this way: “The effect of stress starts in […]

Fear & Need Born in Nothing

Fear and need are the underlying principle for most of my observations. I know this rationale often raises more questions than it answers, so more clarification is in order. Not that I haven’t tried before… see Fear is the Bottom Line and One who speaks does not know? Well, third time’s the charm, right? On […]

Loss Aversion Management

This short NPR audio interview, We Care More About Losses Than Gains, shows how we can’t help but shoot ourselves in the foot. When I look around, I see “loss aversion” influencing just about everything we do, albeit often in very subtle ways. The innate emotional aversion to loss, when reinforced by reason (thought) traps […]

“Fixation on same, same”

Recently my friend Andy teased me about my fixation on “same, same”… my fondness for finding similarity between apparent opposites. This was in response to my comment, “Folks on the left use people on the right as scapegoats, just as folks on the right use those on the left. Each is consumed by the blind […]

The Only Safe Escape

The only way I’ve found to escape life without unintended consequences is to give myself to life. This is an example of chapter 78’s Straight and honest words seem inside out, or as D.C. Lau put it, straightforward words seem paradoxical. I can essentially lose myself in the moment by utter devotion to that moment […]

Fear Rules

The recent series of disasters in Japan triggered serious fear in some folks in America. This is curious considering how far removed we are from the actual experience. This is mainly what sets us apart from other animals. Thinking enables us to feel matters are worse than they really are, or vice versa. Media only […]

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

I’ve long touted the benefit of watching out for similarity. The more literal translation of chapter 56 puts it this way, Knowing doesn’t speak; speaking doesn’t know. Subdue its sharpness, untie its tangles, Soften its brightness, be the same as dust, This is called profound sameness. Focusing on differences, while often stimulating, is just not […]

Playing With Dolls

I’ve been amused for years by society’s attempts to blame culture for things that are obviously biological. This is the old nature vs. nurture debate. Naturally, I could never prove that nature was primarily responsible by coherent debate alone, although it was always fun trying. I suspect that those who blame nurture and culture do […]

Balancing Difference With Similarity

Noticing differences greatly assists survival… up to the point of diminishing returns, especially for a thinking animal like us. Even so, the naïve acceptance of difference as a true portrayal of reality would seldom have been a problem for our hunter-gatherer ancestors, given their down to earth circumstances. Conversely, our naive acceptance of difference as […]

The Worry Gene

Have you noticed how something always seems to be wrong no matter how right things appear initially? There is an apparently endless supply of issues to fret over. After we resolve our pressing life and death issues, you’d think we could relax and appreciate that victory. Alas, no sooner is one problem solved than we […]

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stress