tension or relaxation? finding the authentic way

May 3, 2016 | Other Popular Teachings

Tension David Lees

summary

Discover how to interpret and resolve feelings of tension and stress, to help you find a more relaxed, authentic, happy and balanced way of living.

This is a short extract from a live teaching webinar session with David.

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full teaching transcript

David James Lees:

….thanks everyone… so the topic is: ‘tension is who you think you should be, relaxation is who you are’…. and this is a Twitter quote I did some months ago, and Alex has just picked it up.

I think it’s a really good quote and I’d like to expand on it, particularly because when we did the retreat a couple weeks ago, one of the ladies in the retreat I think misunderstood the teaching. She challenged me, which was really good of her…. and she was saying that she understood that I was saying you should ignore your feelings and really what I’m saying is TOTALLY the opposite:

You should INTERPRET your feelings, and this is a Taoist teaching that we shouldn’t ignore or avoid our feelings we should interpret what our feelings are telling us.

So, I use the word tension there, and I would have used my language a ‘red light’ because tension is just a name that we give a feeling. It could tension, it could be stress it could be anxiety…. it could be lots of things.

So that the first thing, to be really concerned about the words that you use, because if you use a word like tension: ‘I’m tense’…, ‘I’m stressed’… what that tends to do is to make you MORE tense and MORE stressed and you’re not getting to the root of the problem.

So the first step is what I always try and teach: that you have to SEPARATE your feelings away from your thoughts and beliefs that created those feelings.

So you acknowledge the feeling, and I would prefer you to say: ‘I am now experiencing a red light’.

Then the next step is to say: ‘What am I thinking; what do I believe that created that red light?’ …and then that allows you to follow those thoughts down, along what the Taoists call ‘the Golden thread’.

Once you do that separation between your feelings and your beliefs it allows you to ask the golden thread question of: WHY?… ‘why do I think that?’…. ‘why do I believe that?’ And for those of you who have worked with me, you know that most of the session is spent by me asking ‘why?’: ‘why do you think that?… ‘why do you believe that?’

And a little tip here: watch the mind. The mind will try and block you and it will give you an answer of: ‘I don’t know why!’

And when you hear that you know that you getting towards the truth. The mind has blocked you and stopped you from going any further. That sometimes when you do need a little bit of help to navigate round that block to get to the reason.

So, if you experience tension – a ‘red light’, you KNOW that you are thinking or believing something that is incorrect; that is not in the spiritual flow of who you REALLY are.

So looking at it on the other side: if you experience relaxation, which is what I would call a ‘green light’, then you are now operating and functioning in the correct, balanced way, in what I would class as ‘wu wei’, that’s right for you.

So that’s why understanding the difference between the ‘red light’ and the ‘green light’ is so important, because it allows you to follow that thread down.

So the step is to acknowledge the feeling – try not to give it a label such as ‘tension’, ‘stress’, ‘anxiety’ – just give it a ‘red light’ label…. then ask yourself: ‘why have I created that red light?’… and that takes you down to the reason, to the cause, to the belief.

And when you get there, this is a very sacred place in Taoists teaching, because this is where you will experience the ‘spiritual lesson’. Because there’s something there that you have to learn.

And if you DO NOT learn that lesson, what happens is that lesson will keep on coming back to you, on what the Taoists call the ‘Carousel’. The lesson will keep on being repeated back to you. It may be different people, it may be different times, but it will be the same lesson.

And so, when you get the red light it gives you the opportunity to go down and to find that lesson, and this can be the greatest blessing that you can really have…

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