Do you agree that if you could relax, life would be easier? Do you agree that tension comes from… well, tension? Certainly, tension breeds tension.
Beloveds, when you tense up, what is happening? You are resisting something. You may not even know what you are resisting. You just are ready for a fight. You may be expecting life to give you trouble, and so you get ready ahead of time and brace yourself. You put your fists up. You are not going to let yourself be found napping.
Might I suggest that you indeed be found napping? Then you might be without great resistance.
Perhaps you have thought that life is your opponent, a bogeyman, ready to get you. When that is your position, what can you do but fight? Of course, if you feel faced by a scourge, you would resist. Wait until a scourge comes out fighting, and maybe not even then.
It would change your life if you did not get tensed up. Do you believe Me?
For you to stop tensing up, something has to change. In most cases, it has to be you. You can do it. Once again, we are talking about letting go. Let go of need to protect, defend, or to present yourself in any pre-determined way. Leave the past and the future alone. They can do very well without your brooding over them.
What is it that makes you feel that you have to hang on to or prevent or convince or dissuade anything at all? When there is a fire, it makes sense for you to run for your life. Beloveds, most of the time, there is no fire, and still you run as if your life depended on it. Let not your life have a fire siren run beside it. Let not your life be a fearsome thing. When trouble wants to enter your life, your machinations don’t seem to prevent it anyway. It’s even possible that your worry hastens it, makes a bed for it, perhaps even invites it by the position you take, the pose of a fighter looking for a battering ram and somehow turning it on himself. Worry is like a battering ram, isn’t it? It keeps coming at you and pushes everything out of its way.
Beloveds, there are times to sit, and times to get up. And yet all these times, tension does not serve you. It cramps you.
When you are relaxed, you are engaging. When you are tense, you disengage. You oppose yourself. Try sitting back in life more often, no matter what you are in the middle of. Recline. Tell Me, what joy is there in tension? Tension has only the power you give it. This is a well-known physical fact that what you resist gets stronger. Why would this not be true on subtler levels as well?
It has been said that that which you fear comes upon you. You are also quite familiar with the saying that like attracts like. Are they not the same?
That which you resist, you strengthen. That which you invite, you strengthen.
Will you be a little easier with life, take it in your stride, go along with it?
You may say, “Well, God, I sure would relax if I knew how.”
I would like to suggest that you learn how. Begin by reminding yourself that you would like to relax. And then breathe, and then slow down. Leave harriedness behind you. Release your perceived need for tension, beloveds.