Although listening to music in a car or as
“background noise” can be somewhat effective in stress reduction, it’smuch better to listen in a quiet room by yourself or with someo ne close to
you. Visualization  is simpl y the creation of an intensely pleasurable and relaxing
experience in your “mind’ s eye.” Information on the power of visualization
with respect to aging can be found beginning on this page , under the
heading, “A T rigger for T ransformation.”
Meditation  can take many forms, including breathing awareness and
primordial soun d meditation, which uses a mantra as a tool for quieting the
mind. More information on meditation is offered elsewhere in this book, in
particular on this page  under the heading, “Meditatio n Lowers Biological
Age.”
Sleep  naturall y reduces stress and restores internal balance. If you really
need it, feel free to close your eyes at any time for a catnap. Many highly
energetic and successful people allow themselves this luxury . Contact with the natural envir onment  almost always reduces stress. If your
life takes place in an almost entirely man-made world, significant stress is
likely to accumulate in the course of your daily activities, though this
accumulation may occur outside your conscious awareness. Even if it’ s only
buying a potted plant for your office or taking a brief walk in the park each
morning, staying in touch with nature provides important stress-reducing
benefits. Relinquishing the need for contr ol is the principle that underlies all
genuinely effective stress-reducing techniques. If you begin to feel tense at
any point durin g the day, reme mber that trying to master every detail of
your situation is stressful and most likely counterproductive. Learn to relax
and go with the flow of events. Sometimes a good cry can also be highly
beneficial to restoring balance  and escaping the impulse toward total
control. For millions of people, life is so frustrating that their only hope of
relieving stress is by overeating  and drinking, while whole societies try to
escape their miseries by attacking other countries. Strife breaks out overissues that seem trivial to an outsider , but frustration and lack of control are
enormously painful conditions to live under . When someone close to you
suddenly dies, the unbearable heartache of grief is tied up in potent
intangibles: You couldn’ t have predicted the death, you couldn’ t have
stopped it, and in many cases there seems no way to express enough of the
pent-up feelings of loss and abandonment. This becomes particularly
painful if the person to whom you need to express your feelings is the one
who died. In medic al terms, the toll in sickness due to these elements is great. Dr.
Geor ge Eagle, a psychiatrist at the University of Rochester , investigated
160 cases of sudden death that had no physical explanation: 58 percent took
place at a time of bereavement or loss and 35 percent at a time of threat;
only 6 percent coincided with a time of pleasure. It is not the stress itself
that is fatal, since the same losses and threats are survived by other people. The ability to withstand the stress is lacking. This vulnerability overrides
physical factors. When someo ne under 50 dies of a heart attack, for
example, half the time none of the classic risk factors for heart disease—
hypertension, elevated cholesterol, and smoking—are present. The leading
cancer in Ameri ca, lung cancer , is directly tied to smoking, a habit that for
most people is purely an outle t for frustrated emotion, a pleasure seized
upon the way a caged rat seizes a piece of wood to gnaw on. In the laborator y, animals that are less evolved than rats (frogs, for
example) do not respond to intangible stressors. The key factor  is memory . If an animal has only a primitive memory , it won’ t recognize the difference
between one situation and the next. Rats remember the unpleasant sensation
of being shocked, and therefore they can be trained to press a lever to avoid
repeating the sensation. When the lever is taken away , their memory is also
good enough to anticipate the next shock—they have expectati ons. This is
like the nervous  patient in the dentist’ s chair who jumps as soon as he hears
the drill; the mere sound triggers an expectation of pain that in turn
activates the pain response. In eithe r case the expectation is the stressor . This has enorm ous
implications for aging, because all of us carry around a world inside
ourselves—the world of our past. We generate our own stresses by referring
to this world and the traumas imprinted on it. There would be no stresswithout the memory of stress, for our memories dictate what frightens us or
makes us angry . We feel out of control and frustrated wheneve r a situation
reminds us too closely of earlie r times when we were out of control and
frustrated. The curse of memory  is that it ages us from the inside; our inner
world is getting older , shutting us out from reality , which is never old. The perfection of human memory is astounding. In the early  days of
psychoanalysis, Freud was amazed by the accuracy of his patients’
unconscious retention of the past. He might lead a depressed patient back to
a trauma that occurred at age 2, such as being left overnight in the hospital
by his mother for a tonsil operation. At first Freud found that the memory
would not allow  itself to be revealed at all clearly . Blankets of numbness
and denial cover ed over the original feeling of being abandoned, and yet if
the patient was courageous enou gh, those cloaks could gradually be peeled
back. With the utmost clarity , the patient would recall exactly what had
happened that night in the hospi tal, not just every nuance of feeling but the
minutest physical details—the time on the clock, the numb er of steps
leading to the operating room , the color of the nurse’ s hair. But why
shouldn’ t we recall such details? They have been imprinted onto us like
microchips, adding their output to all future events. There are few if any simple stresses in human life, because as soon as a
new event occurs, the imprint of old memories becomes activated,
triggering the kind of stress we anticipate. Thus, stress beco mes a self-
fulfilling prophe cy: Our reactions fit our expectations. The fact that every
event cannot help but get imprin ted with an interpretation gives memory its
treacherous power . The Hormone Connection
The stress reaction involves the release of powerful chemicals that the body ,
as I’ve described, must cut off before damage is done  to itself. Endocrinologists classify stress hormones as glucocorticoids,  which are
hormones secreted by the adrenal glands as part of the heightened arousaldemanded of the body under stress. The function of glucocor ticoids is to
activate the shift from anabolic to catabolic metabolism. Specifically ,
glucocorticoids break down glucagon in the liver, a form of stored energy
that the body can use as needed ; when the glucagon is used up, the same
glucocorticoids go on to break down proteins. Under extreme conditions,
such as times of famine, the body must fend off starvation by starting to
consume its own muscles in order to keep up blood sugar , and again the
chemicals responsible are glucocorticoids. The best known of the glucoco rticoids is cortisol, which plays a hidden
role in the aging  of certain animals, specifically the Pacific salmon. After
hatching, young  salmon spend their first four years at sea before they are
mysteriously guided thousands of miles to the exact freshwater lakes where
they were born. After a heroic journey upstream over rapids and man-made
dams, mature salmon spawn and almost immediately die. What causes the fish to age overnight into feeble, spent creatu res is not
sheer exhaustion but an internal “aging clock,” built in to their DNA, that
bides its time until spawning, then releases a rush of corticoid hormone in
massive amounts from the adrenal glands. Cortisol is a potent stress
hormone in all animals; in salmon it is a death hormone. Its fatal release
occurs even if a fish is taken out of the water before its gruelin g migration
and allowed to spawn in peak physical condition. Aging clocks obey their own timetable, having no regard for the
environment. Taking a salmon upstream by hand, giving it adequate food,
and protecting it from all stress will not save it; after spawning, the fish’s
biological clock knows that the appropriate time for death is at hand. “Appropriate” is a very flexible  term in Nature. A mayfly that lives only
one day and a giant clam that survives over one hundred years each have an
“appropriate” life span. Nature balances many ingredients to arrive at the
life span of a creature. Size, weight, metabolic rate, food supply , predators,
breeding age, and number of of fspring, among other factors, influence when
aging will begin. A mouse might live a year or less in the wild, but within that year the
creature matures , breeds, bears a number of young, and keeps its species
going. In the balance of Nature, that is sufficient; if a species can keep its
population going before it ages and dies, its purpose has been fulfilled.In animals the onset of aging is tied to physical evolution. Each animal
has evolved to a given life span that accords best with its survival. If mice
lived to be 100 and continued to have dozens of offspring every year, the
world would be overrun by mice and the predators that eat them. Nature
does not allow such gross imbalances to persist, however; all the species fit
in to their own niche of life span and follow their own specific aging
patterns. Sometimes Nature’ s specific intent is hard to decipher—why , for
example, do tiny brown bats live for twelve years or more while field mice,
who weigh the same and share the same fast metabolism, struggle to
survive for only a season or two? The factors that influence the life spans of
different animal s are so complex and subtle that explaining how animals
age is difficult— more than three hundred theories currently vie for an
answer . Aging clocks are disturbing to the imagination because they are time
bombs that animals unwittingly  carry around inside them, the instruments
of their own destruction. Many biologists speculate that human DNA
contains an aging clock; if it does, it must be much more variab le than that
in salmo n, for humans die at extremely wide-ranging ages. In the Roman
empire average life expectancy was around 28 years; today it has risen to 75
years in America and 82.5 years for women in Japan, the longest-lived
group in the world. This increase was achieved by the trait that sets us apart
from lower animals—free will. Our moment of death is not determined at
birth; humans defy fate by building shelters against the elements, planting
crops against starvation, inventing cures for disease. Yet the biochemical inheritance that we carry within us poses a constant
threat. Like Pacific salmon, our bodies have the ability to release large
doses of hormones outside our voluntary control. For example, a small,
nonlethal dose of cortisol is released every time we are in a threatening
situation. To many physiologist s, this implies that our bodies are not well
adapted to modern life. Also beyond our conscious control is the effect of
glucocorticoids in a host of other destructive processes: musc le wasting,
diabetes, fatigue, osteoporosis, thinning of skin, redistribution of body fat,
fragility of blood vessels, hypertension, fluid retention, suppression of
immune function, and impaired mental function.The above are signs of steroid poisoning, which looms as a danger if
patients are kept too long on large doses of steroid medications. In
situations where  a person canno t terminate the stress response or act it out,
his own body administers a tiny dose of steroid poisoning. The danger of
repeated inappr opriate stress is much greater , then, than any single
catastrophic stress. Meditation Lowers Biological Age
The connection between aging and stress hormones has been strongly
demonstrated, but the problem of how to control these hormon es remains. Because the stress reaction can be triggered in a split second and without
warning, it is impossible for us to control the molecules themselves. However , there is one mind-bod y technique that goes directly to the root of
the stress response by releasing the remembered stresses that trigger new
stress: meditation. Levels of cortisol and adrenaline are often found to be
lower in long-term meditators, and their coping mechanisms almost always
tend to be stronger than average. Before the early 1970s, these benefits were not even suspected. Meditation held little appeal for Western medicine until a young UCLA
physiologist named R. Keith Wallace proved that besides its spiritual
implications, meditation had profound effects on the body . In a series of
experiments begun in the late 1960s as part of his doctoral work, Wallace
took groups of mostly college-aged volunteers who practiced
Transcendental Meditation (TM) and hooked them up to monitors to test
critical bodily functions while they were in meditation. Subjectively these
young volunteers reported a sense of increasing calm and inner silence. Although it had been previousl y thought that it took years of practice to
attain a deep meditational state, the mantra meditation very quickly
produced profound relaxation and significant changes in breathing,
heartbeat, and blood pressure. TM and Primord ial Sound Meditation are based on the silent repetition of
a specifi c Sanskrit word, or mantra, whose sound vibrations gradually leadthe mind out of its normal thinking process and into the silence that
underlies thought. As such, a mantra is a very specific message inserted into
the nervous system. Since mant ras have been in use for thousands of years
in India,  their precise effect on the physiology is well known as part of the
science of Yoga, or union. The aim of Yoga is to unite the thinking mind
with its source in pure aware ness. In modern terms, “pure awareness”
means quantum space, the silen t, empty void that is the womb of all matter
and energy. Pure awareness exists in the gap between though ts; it is the
unchanging background against which all mental activity takes place. We
would not ordin arily suspect that such a state exists because our minds are
so preoccupied with the stream of thoughts, wishes, dreams, fantasies, and
sensations that fill waking consciousness. That is why the ancient Indian
sages had to devise the specific technique of meditation, in order to show
the mind its own origins in the quantum depths. When Wallace initiated his research, the mechanics of meditation were
poorly understood in scientific terms. He was the first to show that sitting in
meditation with the eyes closed  induces the nervous system to enter a state
of “restful alertness”—i.e., the mind remains awake while the body goes
into a deeply relaxed state. (In the jargon of physiology , Wallace called this
state “hypometabolic wakefulness” to indicate that the subject’ s metabolism
had decreased while he retained wakeful consciousness.) When first
discovered, the state of restful alertness generated considerable  curiosity in
the medical profession, becaus e rest and alertness had previously been
considered opposites. Sleep is a hypometabolic state in which oxygen
consumption decreases, heartbeat slows, and consciousness blanks out. The
waking state, on the other hand, is marked by higher oxygen consumption, a
faster heartbeat, and an alert mind. Wallace found that these oppo sites were united in meditation; while
remaining alert enough to push  a button every time they transcended (i.e.,
felt the experience of pure awareness), his subjects went into a state of rest
twice as deep as deep sleep. Moreover , they did so very quickly, usually
within ten minutes after shutting their eyes, compared to the four to six
hours it takes us to reach our deepest relaxation in sleep. Beginning in 1978, Wallace researched the effects of meditation on
human aging. He used three markers for biological aging as shorthand forthe aging process as a whole: blood pressure, near-point vision, and hearing
threshold, all of which typically  decline as people grow older . He was able
to show that all these markers improved with long-term practice of
meditation, indicating that biological age was actually being reversed. Meditators who had been practicing the mantra technique regularly for
fewer than five years had an average biological age five years younger than
their chronological age; those who had been meditating longer than five
years had an average biological age twelve years younger than their
chronological age. These results held good for both younger and older subjects. Later
research on the overall health status of two thousand meditators  in a group-
insurance plan confirmed that they had remarkably good health in all age
groups. Meditat ors visited doctors and entered hospitals only half as often
as did those in the control group. Across-the-board reductions were seen in
thirteen major health categories , including more than 80 percent less heart
disease and more than 50 percent less cancer than in the controls. Significantly , the meditators in age groups 65 and over showed the most
improvement. A decade later I was able to play a part in proving that these benefits
were linked to exactly the kinds of hormones I have been discussing as
prime markers for aging. As a physician I had been prescribing  meditation
since 1980 as well as practicing it myself. In the late 1980s a colleague of
mine, Dr. Jay Glaser, invited me to join his research on a very intriguing
steroid called DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone). DHEA is a plentiful but
only vaguely understood substance secreted by the adrena l cortex; it
circulates in the bloodstream in quantities thousands of times greater than
either sex hormone, estrogen and testosterone, yet pinning DHEA down to a
specific role in the body has proved elusive. Glaser decided to follow up one property of DHEA, which is that it is the
only hormone that declines in a straight line with age. Levels of DHEA
peak around age 25, fall off at an increasing rate after menopause, and
dwindle to 5 percent of their maximum by the last year of life. It was
known that DHE A is a precurso r of stress hormones such as adrenaline and
cortisol, which means that every time the body makes these hormones, it
has to use up some of the reservoir of DHEA that we are provided with atbirth. That would account for why DHEA declines over time; however , this
decrease is not the cause of aging but mirrors stress as it contin ues to build
up over a lifetime. Great excitement had been generated in the late 1980s when Arthur
Schwartz, a biochemist at Temple University , administered DHEA to mice
and observed a remarkable reversal of aging: Old mice regained youthful
vigor , and their coats resume d their former sleek and glossy texture;
incipient cancers, whether naturally occurring or induced by artificial
means, disappeared; obese animals returned to normal weight; immune
response increased; and animals with diabetes improved drastically . The
race to patent a version of the DHEA molecule began, although, as with all
hormones, the risk of serious side effects was worrisome and taking DHEA
orally was of little use, since it gets broken down in the digestive tract. But Glaser felt, as I do, that DHE A is a marker for the body’ s exposure to
stress. We know that with accelerated stress glucocorticoids increase,
lowering the reservoir of DHEA  at the same time. On the other hand, high
DHEA levels are associated with reduced incidence of coronary artery
disease, breast cancer , and osteoporosis. This makes sense because all these
disorders of aging could be associated with excessive stress response. Higher DHEA is also associate d with longer survival and decreased death
from all diseases in older men. As further evidence in the case, it was also found that cortisol levels go
up markedly in patients awaiting surgery; it stays up the day after surgery,
with a slight elevation in DHEA. Two weeks later, cortisol is still up, but
DHEA has fallen, supporting the theory that the DHEA reservoir was
depleted by stress. The logical conc lusion from this evidence is that if someone can keep up
his DHEA levels, his body must be resisting stress, and with fewer stress
reactions, aging  should be retarded. Was that a clue as to why meditators
showed less biological aging? Apparently so—Glaser took 328 experienced
meditators and compared their levels of DHEA to those of 1,462
nonmeditators (to be precise, he looked at the closely related DHEAS, or
dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate). His subjects were divided by age and sex. In all the women’ s groups, the
levels of DHEA were higher among meditators; the same was true for eightout of the eleve n men’ s groups. Since higher DHEA appears  in younger
people, Glaser took this as proof that biological aging was decreased as a
result of meditation. Interestingl y, the biggest differences showed up in the
older subjects. The meditating men over the age of 45 had 23 percent more
DHEA, the women 47 percent more. This impressive result was
independent of factors such as diet, exercise, alcohol consumption, and
weight. Overall,  Glaser estimated that the meditators’ DHEA levels were
equivalent to those of people five to ten years younger . Connecting Mind, Body, and Spirit
Whether DHEA  turns out to be as significant as it now appears, this
connection between antiaging and meditation is very importa nt. But the
implications go even deeper . Meditation is a spiritual practice. That is its
purpose in India and throughout the East. Millions of Westerners wrongly
assume that this makes meditat ion nonphysical, something you do in your
head. In truth, nothing is just in the head or just in the body . When I first
met His Holines s Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who brought TM to the West, he
made a deep impression on me with one overriding point: Spirituality is not
meant to be separate from the body . Sickness and aging represent the body’ s
inability to reach its natural goal, which is to join the mind in perfection and
fulfillment. At every  stage of spiritual growth, the greatest ally you have is your
body . Is this statement surprising to you? Most of us assume that body and
spirit stand at opposite ends of the spectrum. When we feel sensations that
are body-centere d, such as hung er and thirst, pain and pleasure , we do not
regard them as spiritual experiences. Sensuousness, which encompasses the
whole range of physical delight, is often considered low comp ared to the
heights the soul can reach. But spirituality must also be sensuous, because a
spiritual person is one who lives fully in the present moment, which means
living fully in the body . Maharishi inspired me to see that using meditation
as a way to defeat aging was a legitimate spiritual goal.Unfortunately , our culture has made the mistake of deciding that the
human body is a machine, an inert lump of matter that works without any
intelligence of its own. This misconception led to a second mistake—that
the most spiritu al people must be those who renounce the body , deny its
passions, or at the very least attempt to control its desires. This kind of prejudice against the body runs contrary to the way that
Nature fashione d us. Nature balanced mind, body , and spirit as co-creators
of our personal reality . You cann ot do a single thing, from falling in love to
uttering a prayer to metabolizing a molecule of sucrose, without affecting
everything that you are. The body is the platform that allows any experience
to emer ge and see the light of day; it is a 3-D projection of billions of
separate processes going on at any moment, including a process as
profound as coming to know the reality of God. In our society people suffer from a sense that spirit is basically  separate
from them. Our bodies process food, air, and water perfectly well without
spirit; our minds effectively think about a million things witho ut touching
upon spirit. We find it easy to set aside spiritual life, waiting for the day
when some as-yet-impossible leap takes us out of everyday life into a more
exalted realm. Every aspect of reality is one piece of a mystery , a facet of overarching
wholeness, the totality of what is. Atoms, molecules, rocks, stars, and the
human body are material expressions of what is. Pain and pleasure are
psychological expressions of what is. Compassion and love are spiritual
expressions of what is. When the material, psychological, and spiritual
dimensions are brought into balance, life becomes whole, and this union
brings feelings of comfort and security . Only if you feel sure of your place
in the universe can you begin to face the fact that you are surrounded by
creation and destruction as they constantly play themselves out. You cannot
defeat entropy as a physical force, but you can rise to a level of realization
that is not touched by entropy . At the deepest level, intelligence is immune
to decay . Your cells come and go, yet your body’ s knowledge  of how to
make a cell survives and gets passed on generation after generation. The
evolutionary intelligence that DNA embodies has many levels, and our task
as humans is to experience every level and make each a part of ourselves.In the midst of change, there are five realizations that entrop y cannot
touch. They are expressed in every spiritual tradition and form the core of
personal evolution age after age:
  1. I am Spirit. 2. This moment is as it should be. 3. Uncertainty is part of the overall order of things. 4. Change is infused with non-change. 5. Entropy holds no threat because it is under the control of infinite
organizing power . These realizations are crucial because they allow a person to rise above the
world of duality , which is inevitably caught up in the battle of creation and
destruction. There is a perspective that the New Testament calls “seeing
with one eye,” a state of unity in which all events, however painful or
distressing at the moment, serve one end, which is intelligent, loving, and
well ordered. This unified perspective cannot be forced on anyo ne until his
or her consciousness is prepared  to accept it. If you are caught up in your
own pain and convinced by your own life drama, that is your perspective,
and you have a right to it. But everyone wants an end to pain and suffering,
and at a certain point in your personal evolution these five realizations will
form the trail that leads the mind out of suffering. Let me translate each
point in terms of the new paradigm. 1. I am Spirit. Although my physical existence is confined to space and time, my
awareness is not limited to that. I am aware of the whole field as a play of
creation and destruction. Matter and energy come and go, flickering in and
out of existence  like fireflies, yet all events are held together and made
orderly by the deep intelligence that runs through all things. I am one aspect
of that intelligence. I am the field unfolding itself in local event s. My spirit
is experiencing the material world through the lens of perceptio n, but even
if I see and hear nothing, I am still myself, an eternal presence of
awareness.In pract ical terms, this realization becomes real when no outside event
can shake your sense of self. A person who knows himself as spirit never
loses sight of the experiencer in the midst of experience. His inner truth
says, “I carry the consciousness of immortality in the midst of mortality .”
2. This moment is as it should be. This present moment is a space- time event within the eternal continuum. Since that continuum is me, nothing that can happen is outside myself;
therefore, every thing is acceptable as part of my larger identity . Just as
every cell reflects the overall process of the body , each moment reflects all
other moments, past, present, and future. This realization is born when a
person gives up his need to control reality . That need is a natural response
to past pain and frustration, since it is the memory of old traumas that drives
us to manipulate the present and anticipate the future. In unity , every moment is as it should be. The shadow of the past does
not spoil the fullness that is possible only in present time; therefore, each
moment is like a clear window letting in the possibility of equa l joy, equal
appreciation of what is unfoldin g in front of you. The voice of inner truth
says, “My desires are part of this moment, and what I need is provided here
and now .”
3. Uncertainty is part of the overall or der of things. Certainty and uncertainty are two aspects of your nature. At one level,
things have to be certain or order couldn’ t exist. At another level, things
have to be uncertain or there would be no newness. Evolution moves
forward by surprising events; the healthiest attitude is to realize that the
unknown  is just another term for “creation.” This realization saves a person
from fear , which will always arise if uncertainty is resisted. In unity , a person sees the wisdom of uncertainty . He realizes that his
very next breath, next heartbeat, or next thought is totally unpredictable,
and yet out of this total openness, order is still maintained. Opposites can
and must coexist. In reality , you embrace all opposites in yourself, just asthe quantum field embraces the two greatest opposites, entropy and
evolution. The uncertainty of things holds no fear for someo ne in unity
consciousness, because he is certain of himself. The voice of inner truth
says, “I embrace the unknown because it allows me to see new aspects of
myself.”
4. Change is infused with non-change. Life is an eterna l dance. The movements of the dance are chore ographed
through your awareness. Your desires and attentions guide the path of your
growth. Because attention is always flowing, the dance never ends. This is
the essence of living. Every movement is part of the dance; therefore, every
space-time event is meaningful and necessary . It is the order  within the
chaos. When you realize that you are held securely within this unchanging
framework, the joy of free will arises. You cannot exercise free will if you
fear that it will bring uncertain ty, accidents, and calamity . To someone in
unity , however , each choice is accepted within the overall pattern. If you
choose A, the field will bend to accommodate you; if you choose B, the
field will accommodate that, even if B is the exact opposite of A. All
possibilities are acceptable to the field, since by definition the field is a state
of all possibilities. The voice of inner truth says, “I am getting to know the
Absolute by playing here in the relative.”
5. Entr opy holds no thr eat because it is under the contr ol of
infinite or ganizing power . Your body reflec ts the simultaneity of order and chaos. The molecules of
food, air , and water swirling through your blood move chaotically , but when
they enter a cell, they are used with precise orderliness. The neurons firing
in your brain produce a chaotic storm of electrical signals, yet what emer ges
are meaningful thoughts. Chaos , then, is just a point of view . Things that
appear random to a limited awareness fit into place perfectly when
awareness is expanded. In unity , you realize that every step into decay ,dissolution, and destruction is being used to organize new patterns of order . When your perception can see the birth that springs from decay , the inner
voice of truth says, “Through alternating steps of loss and gain, silence and
activity , birth and death, I walk the path of immortality .”
These are descriptions only; no words on a page can substitute for the
personal realiza tion (what I have called the inner voice) as it unfolds for
every individual . But we all intuitively want to get rid of discom fort, and it
takes satisfying answers about who you are and why you are here to bring
inner discontent  to an end. In its true nature, life is comfor table, easy,
unforced, and intuitively right. This means that the self-reali zed state is the most natural one; the
accumulation of stress, along with the aging that it produces, indicates that
strain and discomfort are still present. While we are still unrealized, life is a
struggle. We are constantly tryin g to relieve old hurts, escape old fears, and
impose control over the uncontrollable. The following “In Practice” section
is devoted to ending this struggle by the technique that finally works—
learning to accept your life not as a series of random events but as a path of
awakening whose purpose is maximum joy and fulfillment. OceanofPDF .comIN PRACTICE:
The Wisdom of Uncertainty
Life’ s uncertai nty makes constant demands on everyone’ s coping
mechanisms. There are basica lly two ways to cope with uncertainty—
acceptance and resistance. Acceptance means that you allow events to
unfold around you and react to them spontaneously , without suppression. Resistance mean s that you try to change events from what they really are
and react to them with famili ar, safe responses. Acceptance is healthy
because it permits you to clear any stress as soon as it occurs; resistance is
unhealthy becau se it builds up residues of frustration, false expectations,
and unfulfilled desires. In his book Emotionally Fr ee, the noted psychiatrist David Viscott refers
to the state of having stored-up feelings as emotional debt, which he links
directly to aging: “Sorrow ages you prematurely . When you’re in emotional
debt, you’re pessimistic about the future and, even in your green years, long
to return to the past to remedy the shortfalls of love and opportunity you
suffered. Sometimes you yearn for more caring, for more time with
someone who is no longer here, for a chance to speak your mind and release
your emotional  burden, or just to resolve your confusion by finally
discovering what really happened to you.”
Untold numbers  of people find themselves in emotional debt that grows
larger with the passing years. Growing old is a psychological state in which
emotional debt increases until the body’ s coping mechanisms can no longer
deal adequately with present stress. The result is infirmity , sickness, and
death. It takes conscious work not to fall into this trap. Although every new
moment is unknown and therefore potentially threatening, there is no real
security in resorting to the past. As Viscott writes, “You can speculate, youcan lament, you can yearn, but as much as you may wish to return and
round off your emotional experience, you can never go home again. Your
real home is in this place, at this time. The present is for action, for doing,
for becoming, and for growing.”
Biologically , your body is perfectly set up to live in the present and
acquires its greatest joy and satisfaction there. Your body never knows what
its blood pressure will be the next second, so it has a built-in flexibility to
allow a wide range of pressure s; the same flexibility is built in to every
other involunta ry response. This is the wisdom of uncertainty , which
permits the unknown to take place and welcomes it as a source of growth
and understandi ng. We see this wisdom expressed in the spontaneity of
every cell and organ. The pattern of electrical firings in your brain is never
the same  twice in a lifetime, yet this radical uncertainty allows you to have
new, original thoughts. Every minute nearly 300 million cells die, never to
be seen again, and this stream of death is assimilated into the vaster stream
of life that keeps your body functioning. The mind, however , finds it much harder to accept uncertainty . It fears
change, loss, and death. This is the source of resistance, which the body
translates into stress. By impos ing mental resistance, you create a threat
your body has to cope with. Some people riding a roller coaster are
screaming from excitement, others from terror . The ride is the same, but the
ones who hold back and tense their bodies, generating a flood of stress
hormones, experience terror . The ones who let go and allow themselves to
be carried by the ride experience exhilaration. In the following exercises you will learn how to restore your awareness
to a state of acceptance, so that living in the present is as fulfilling as it can
possibly be. First, however , you need to get a sense of how much resistance
you are now in. Our psychological defenses are extremely good at hiding
this from us; by definition, stored-up emotions are the ones we can’t feel. However , resistance gives rise to a telltale behavior pattern—control. Having to be in control is a compulsion rooted in fear and threat. Even if
you cannot get at the threat, your controlling behavior gives away its
presence. CONTROL QUESTIONNAIRE
Put a check beside the following statements if they apply to you frequently ,
most of the time, or almost always. Some of the statements do not sound
very flattering, but try to be as candid and honest about yourself as you can. 1. I like to be in control of work situations and am much happier
working alone than with others. 2. When I’m under pressure, the easiest emotion for me to show is
anger or irritability . 3. I rarely tell anyone that I need them. 4. I tend to harbor old hurts. Rather than telling someone that he
hurt me, I would rather fantasize about getting even. 5. I have quite a few resentm ents about the way my brother s and
sisters relate to me. 6. The more money I spend on someone, the more that means I love
them. 7. I keep to myself how unfairly others treat me. 8. If a relationship starts to go bad, I secretly wish I could take back
everything I bought for that person. 9. If it’ s my house, the people in it should follow my rules. 10. I find it hard to admit being vulnerable. I don’t often say “I’m
wrong” and mean it. 11. It’s better to nurse my wounds than to show someone that I’m
weak. 12. I’m a better talker than listener . 13. What I have to say is usually important. 14. I secretly think others don’t take my opinions as seriously as they
should. 15. I have a pretty good sense of what’ s good for people. 16. At least once in my life I got caught opening someone else’s
mail. 17. People have called me cynical or negative. 18. I have high standards, which others sometimes mistake for
criticism.19. I tend to be a perfectionist. It bothers me to let a sloppy job go
out. 20. I feel uncomfortable if someone gets too close to me emotionally . 21. After a relationship breaks up, I look back and think I was mostly
in the right. 22. I’m neat and orderly . I like my way of doing things and find it
hard to live with someone who is sloppy . 23. I’m good  at scheduling my day and put a high value on
punctuality . 24. I’m good at caring for other people’ s needs, but then I get
disappointed when they don’ t think as much about mine. 25. I have a logical explanation for the way I act, even if others can’t
always accept it. 26. I don’ t care that much if other people don’ t like me. 27. In my opinion, most people don’t usually express their true
motives for the way they behave. 28. I’m not good at handling noisy or rambunctious children. 29. I still blam e my parents for a lot of my problems, but I haven’ t
told them so. 30. When I get into an argument with my spouse or lover , I can’t
resist bringing up old grievances. Total score ______
Evaluating your scor e:
0–10 points
Your personality  isn’t dominated by an excessive need to be in
control. You are likely to be comfortable with your feelings and
tolerant of other people. You realize that you are imperfect, therefore
you understand the failings of others. It is easy for you to let events
take their own course, and surprises don’t throw you off balance. You
probably place a high value on spontaneity and the expression of
emotions. 10–20 pointsBeing in control  is a frequent issue with you. You have more fears
and hurt feelings than you let on, but you don’t work hard to resolve
these feelings. Being in charge isn’t necessarily that important to you,
but having your way usually is. You consider yourself organized and
efficient, yet it isn’t a major event if things get a little out of control. You have found someone whom you can be honest and open with, but
there are limits to how much you can safely say or do, even with that
person. Over 20 points
You are a controlling person. You feel that control is necessary
because people hurt your feeling s a lot, and your memory of this goes
back into your painful childhood . To keep from being hurt more, you
try to control your feelings, which basically means you are very
selective about revealing yourse lf to others. Your overriding need to
be in charge or to have things your way drives people away from  you,
despite the fact that you work very hard to take care of their needs. The only emotion you show easily is anger or irritability . You
constantly expla in your motives and give reasons for why you are the
way you are, but somehow this doesn’ t help to get you what you
want, which is other people’ s love and af fection. The purpose of this questionna ire is not to label anyone bad for being
controlling. Losing control is an extremely unpleasant state for most people,
and we all exert energy to maint ain control. But there is a healthy way to be
in control and an unhealthy way. The healthy way is to be secur e enough in
yourself (meaning your worth, lovability , and achievements) that outside
events do not threaten your coping skills. The unhealthy way is to
manipulate people and events so that your weaknesses and insecurity are
covered over. You have to be honest with yourself to follow the first way;
you need to know your limits in various situations, which ones make you
feel weak and which ones bring out your strengths. Self-knowledge is an
anchor that makes unpredictability tolerable.A wise person once said to me, “If my approach to a situa tion isn’t
working, I have faith that there  is more to learn. Either someone else can
provide me with help or the flow of events will reveal what is needed. In
either case, I won’ t get to the solution until I first admit that my response
isn’t perfect.” Unhealthy controlling people lack this flexibility and
humility; they insist on being in charge of events and find excuses to make
themselves come out on the right side of every conflict. This behavior
promotes disharmony both within themselves and with their environment. Unable simply to allow , they pay the price of never truly expe riencing the
nourishment that comes when life is simply allowed to flow in, around, and
through you. Exercise 1: Fr eeing Y our Interpr etations
Your life can be only as free as your perception of it. Whenever we look
at a situation, we see our past in it, because every event gets interpreted, and
interpretations are rooted in the past. If spiders frightened you as a child,
you will project  that fear onto spiders today; if your father was alcoholic,
your judgment about someone who drinks will be clouded by your painful
past experiences. Just to realize that you are placing an interpretation on
everything, no matter how trivial, is an important step toward freeing
yourself from the past. Realize that you are always seeing things from one
point of view . If you find yourself fighting with someone, for example,
holding on to your point of view makes the other person a threat, while
acknowledging that two opposin g viewpoints can both be valid removes the
threat. Remember that stage 2 of the stress response—appraisal—is  the only
stage in which you can control your body’ s reaction. Once you have
interpreted a situation as a threat, your body will automatically  give some
kind of stress reaction. So it’s important to question your interpretations. Old ones usually  don’t remain valid beyond the original situation. The only
way you can end stress is by perceiving  it to end. There’ s much more to say
about how to accomplish this, but in my own life, I try to approach every
stressful situation with the intention of defusing its threat in myself. Five
steps have been immensely helpful:  1. Realize that you have an interpretation. In a conflict situation, I
try to tell myself that my view point is limited; I don’t have a
patent on the truth. 2. Set aside the old mindset. When I feel tense, I take this as a
signal that I’m holding on too tightly to my point of view . 3. Look at things from a new perspective. I focus on the feelings in
my body, and as I do, inevitab ly my mind starts to see things
slightly dif ferently . 4. Question your interpretation to see if it is still valid. 5. Focus on process, not outcome. Stress always arises if you
concentrate on how something has to turn out. This is the pitfall
of thinking that events can be controlled or forced into
predictable outcomes. To overcome this tendency to impose false
control, I remind myself that I don’t need to know where I’m
going to enjoy the road I’m on. When I go through these five steps, the daily annoyances that create
inappropriate stress dissolve very quickly . I try to be easy on myself;
sometimes a situation pushes too many buttons, and the stress response
begins before I know it. When that happens, the only sensible thing to do is
to ride with it; the body isn’t going to return to its nonstressed state until the
reaction has run its course. The exercise is to read and think about these five steps for changing your
interpretations and then apply them. At first you should apply these
techniques to a troubling event from your past. Think of someone who hurt
your feelings very badly and whom you cannot forgive. The five steps
might carry you into this line of reasoning:
  1. I feel hurt, but that doesn’ t mean the other person was bad or
meant to hurt me. He doesn’ t know my entire past, and I don’t
know his. There’ s always another side to the story , despite my
hurt. 2. I’ve been hurt like this before, and therefore maybe I was too
quick to judge this incident. I need to see each thing as it is. 3. I don’t need to see myself as a victim here. When was the last
time I was on the other side of the same situation? Didn’ t I feelpretty caught up in my own motives? Did I give any more
importance to the other person’ s hurt than mine was given this
time? 4. Let me forget my feelings for a second. How did that other
person feel? Perhaps he just lost control or was too wrapped up in
his own world to notice my hurt. 5. This incident can help me. I don’t really care about blaming this
person or getting back. I want to find out the kinds of things that
create threat in me. The more I think about it, the more I see this
as an opportunity to take responsibility for my feelings. That
makes it easier for me to forgive, since anyone who teaches me
something about myself deserves my thanks. When you begin to get into the habit of consciously and carefully
examining your old interpretations in this way, you create a space for
spontaneous moments of freedom. These are the moments when your old
mindset clears in a flash of insight. With that flash comes a sense of
revelation, because you are looking into reality itself, not a reflection of
your past. All the most valuabl e things in life—love, compassion, beauty ,
forgiveness, inspiration—must come to us spontaneously . We can only
prepare the way for them (a spiritual friend of mine calls this “punching a
hole into the fourth dimension”). There is great freedom in insight. I know a man who for years could not
go home for Thanksgiving without getting into a violent argument with his
father . Then came one Thanksgiving when he was 40 and his father 75. “My father greeted me when I got off the plane, and as always , we started
toward the baggage claim in a friendly mood. It takes about half an hour
before my father and I take up our usual sparring roles. I tried not to tense
up, but I knew that as soon as we got in the car, he would criticize my
driving, and I would start to boil. “We didn’t have  much to say to each other at the baggage carousel—
that’s usually when we run out of things to say to each other . My suitcase
came down the chute, I reached for it, and he brushed me aside to carry it
for me—another part of our ritual that hasn’ t changed in twenty years.“This time, however , he stumbled a little picking up the heavy bag, and I
noticed for the first time that he was getting old. You wouldn’ t think that
was much of a revelation, but I realized that I have been warri ng with my
father all this time as if I were still 7 years old and he was a hugely
powerful, strong  adult. I didn’ t take the suitcase from him, he’s a proud
man. But this time I didn’ t follow him to the car like a boy being shown up
by his overweening dad. I saw that he wanted to help, and this was his way
of show ing he loved me. It’s hard to describe how powerful that
transformation felt.”
This is a perfec t example of how shedding old interpretations enables a
different reality to shine through. In my own life, I began to notice on
speaking tours that missing my jet flights, which happens to me with
strange frequency , was causing  more and more stress. One day I was
running down the concourse, only to see the passenger ramp slowly moving
away from the plane. I stopped, feeling a knot in my stomach and a sense of
maddening frustration. But then it occurred to me to ask myself, “How will
my life be chan ged one year from now by having missed this plane?” The
effect was almost magical: My heart stopped racing, my breathing calmed
down, my muscles relaxed, the knot in my stomach dissolv ed, and my
intestines stopped churning. By questioning my interpretation, I realized that my unspoken
assumptions had been my stress, not the missed flight. My body was
conditioned to think, “Oh no, not this again,” which is true of most stress
reactions. They are anticipation s. You remember the last marit al fight, the
last criticism of your work, the last hostile question from a lectu re audience,
and a full-blown stress response  springs up. I felt like the rat that jumps in
shock even when the shock doesn’ t come, for when I examined it, this
missed flight had no significance. Breaking down the false interpretation
released my body from its old habits. Exercise 2: Peeling the Onion of the Past
The past is layered into us in many intricate layers. Your inner world is
full of complex relationships, for it contains the past not only as it occurred
but all the ways in which you would like to revise it. All the things thatshould have turned out dif ferently do turn out dif ferently in that place where
you escape into fantasy , revenge , yearning, sorrow , self-reproac h, and guilt. To get rid of these distractions,  you need to realize that there is a deeper
place wher e everything is all right. In Siddhartha,  Herman n Hess e writes, “Within you there is a stillness
and sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.” This
sanctuary is a simple awareness of comfort, which can’t be violated by the
turmoil of events. This place feels no trauma and stores no hurt. It is the
mental space that one seeks to find in meditation, which I believe is one of
the most important pursuits anyo ne can follow . However , even if you do not
meditate, you can approach this place of calm with the following exercise:
Write down this af firmation:
I am perfect as I am. Everything in my life is working toward my
ultimate good. I am loved and I am love. Do not pause to analyze the statement, just write it down. When you
come to the end, shut your eyes and let any response surface that comes to
mind, then write down the first words that came to you (write this response
directly under the af firmation). Y our first thought is likely to contain a lot of
resistance, even  anger , because no one’s life is perfect and it is hard to
believe that everything is working out as it should. (Typica l responses:
“Garbage!”; “This is nonsense”; “No!”) If your reaction shows similar
emotion, it is an honest one. Now , without pausing, write the affirmation again, shut your eyes, and
once more write down the first words that come to mind. Do not stop to
analyze or dwell on your react ion. Continue the exercise until you have
repeated the affirmation and your response twelve times. You will be
surprised at how much your reactions change; for most peop le, the final
response will be much more positive than the first. Essentially , this exercise
allows you to eavesdrop on the innermost levels of your awareness. Most people have the highest resistance at the surface of their minds,
because this is where their most public and guarded reactions operate. Your
social self, the one who behaves the way you’re supposed to, is superficial;
it was trained primarily to make a good impression and not to be toorevealing. Thes e upper layers of your awareness will not respond very
profoundly to such a strong statement as “I am love.” Going deeper , we hit
levels of the most recent frustrations, wishes, and unreleased emotion. When you touch these layers, quite unexpected or irrational reactions can
come out. The statement “I am love” may trigger an angry outburst that is
related to a recent incident when you didn’ t feel loved at all. Deeper still are the layers where your most entrenched feelings are
stored. If you feel basically unlovable, there could be a lot of pain and
resistance at this level. But bene ath even the most rigid conditioning, there
is a layer of awareness that agrees without equivocation to the words “I am
love.”
The reason you can love and be loved is that this layer of your
consciousness evokes that feeling; this is where the deepest human values
are known. Without such knowledge—not just of love but of beauty ,
compassion, trust, strength, and truth—these words would be meaningless. Love is part of essential human  nature. We recognize it becaus e it vibrates
in us, however far below the conscious level. Being able to live from this
level brings complete fulfillment, but that happens only when you resolve
the layers of conflicts and contradictions that constitute your resistance. When you resist the flow of life, what you are actually resistin g is your
own inner nature, for everything that happens to us is a reflec tion of who
we are. This isn’t a mystical statement; it is part of the apparatus of
perception. To perceive is to grasp the meaning of something. A rock isn’t a
rock unless you are familiar with the concept of rock; otherwise a rock
would be meaningless sensory input, like looking at Arabic or Russian
writing if you don’t understand those languages. You have to learn a foreign
language, and you have to learn about all the objects “out there” in the
world, but you do not have to learn how to exist. Being comes naturally; to
have a human nervous system is to be. Packaged with that nervous system
is huma n aware ness, knowing that you are human as oppose d to part of
another species. With this knowledge arises the primordial feelings that make us respond
to love, trust, compassion, and the other essential feeling states. They are
our beginning, but they are also what we seek, because each of them can
grow . Living from the level of awareness that says “I am love” means livingfrom a level where love can grow . In the early stages of personal evolution,
most people wonder about these essential states. They are confused about
whether they are lovable, trusting, strong, valuable, and so forth. You
cannot find out about these states by trying to prove them to yourself. Earning love by acting good, being nice, learning the game of social
attractiveness, etc., always ends in failure, because once you stop behaving
in those trained ways, the basic attitude you are left with is doubt, which is
where you began. The end of the search for love is beyond behavior , because in time the
mind decides to look inward, and when it does, the search changes into a
search for the essential self, the me that knows “I am love.” There is truth
about yourself at every level of your awareness, but after you peel back all
the layers of the onion, this is the most basic truth: You are love, you are
compassion, you are beauty . You are existence and being. You are
awareness and spirit. Any of these statements can be used as an affirmation,
which, as the word implies, is just a way of affirming something, of saying
yes. The technique is extremely powerful for reminding yourself about your
nature, but more than that, it reminds you of your purpose, which is to grow
to the point where “I am love” is at the surface of your consciousness, not
buried in the dark depths. Exercise 3: Living in the Pr esent
Everything you think and feel reflects who you are. If you think and feel
from a superfici al level of awar eness, that is who you are. To dive deeper
into yourself and, hopefully , to get to that place where you are love,
compassion, trust, and truth, you have to follow the path of your present
responses. Some one who feels unloved can still find love in its purest form,
but he will have to work throu gh the layers of resistance that block the
feeling of pure love. Your present emotions reflect the present state of your
nervous system  with all its past imprints. Whenever you have an
experience, these imprints enter into your response, which means that most
of your reactions are echoes from the past. You do not really live in the
present.However , at least you are react ing in the present, and that is where the
search for your true self begins. Your emotions are the most present-
centered thing you have. An emotion is a thought linked to a sensation. The
thought is usually about the past or the future, but the sensation is in the
present. Your mind quickly links sensations with thoughts, but when we
were infants, our first experiences and emotions were much closer to
physical sensatio ns. We had no inhibitions or second thoughts about crying
when we were wet, cold, lonely , frightened, etc. Our minds didn’ t know
those powerful words bad and no. Bad  teaches you that certain thoughts are
shameful; no teaches you to resist your own impulses. More complex words and interp retations came later. As adults, when we
deny ourselves the immediate experience of an emotion, a screen of words
is put up by the mind, and this throws us out of the present and into either
the past or the future. To feel an emotion fully and completely , to
experience it and then release it, is to be in the present, the only moment
that never ages. Stripped to the basics, emotions arouse only two sensations—pain and
pleasure. We all want to avoid pain and pursue pleasure; therefore, all the
complicated emotional states we find ourselves in are the result of not being
able to obey those basic drives. Psychiatrist David Viscott has reduced
emotional comp lexity to a singl e cycle that gets repeated countl ess times in
everyone’ s life. This cycle begins in the present, where only pain and
pleasure are felt, and ends up with complex feelings centered exclusively in
the past, such as guilt and depression. The cycle of emotions is as follows:
Pain in the present is experienced as hurt. Pain in the past is remembered as anger . Pain in the future is perceived as anxiety . Unexpressed anger , redirected against yourself and held within, is
called guilt. The depletion of energy that occurs when anger is redirected inward
creates depression. What this cycle tells us is that stored hurt is responsible for a wide range of
psychological distress. Buried hurt disguises itself as anger , anxiety , guilt,
and depression. The only way to deal with these layers of pain is to find outwhat hurts as the pain occurs, deal with it, and move on. Living in the
present means being honest enough to avoid the easy emotio n, which is
anger , and expose the hurt, which is harder to confront. When hurt is not
resolved in the present, the vicious buildup of anger , anxiety , guilt, and
depression can only grow worse. The exercise is to learn the steps of how to feel in the present:
  1. Realize that hurt is the most basic negative feeling. You cannot
be in the present without willingness to feel hurt. 2. Be with your sensations. Resist the impulse either to deny  what
you feel or to turn it into anger . 3. Say what you feel to the person who caused the hurt. 4. Resolve your emotion and move on. This may seem like an exercise in suffering, but in fact it is an exercise in
freedom. Being hurt isn’t pleasant, but it is real. It puts you in the present,
whereas conditioned responses of anger , anxiety , guilt, and depression put
you out of the present. Once you are in the present, you can follow the trail
of your emotions back to their source, which is not pain but love,
compassion, truth—the real you. There is no purpose in suffering except as a guide to your truth. In and of
itself, pain has no worth except  as a signal that will pull you out of pain. When an infant is hurt, it cries, gets the hurt out of its system, and then
relaxes. It rejoins the body’ s basic state, which is pleasure , ease, and
comfort. If you want to feel these things, all you have to do is be yourself,
but being yourself means getting  past the tendency to repress or divert your
emotions, which all of us learned in early childhood. Coming to the moment by putting your attention on the pain allows you
to release the pain as soon as it occurs. This release occurs naturally—it is
what the body wants to do—and attention is the healing power that triggers
it. Putting attention on your feelings gets you closer to the state of
witnessing; you observe the pain without getting wrapped up in all the
secondary blame, avoidance, and denial that usually follows. In the act of
witnessing, insight becomes possible. It takes detachment to bring
understanding, and if you get caught up in your hurt, you won’ t see thereason behind it. No one can hurt you today without triggering a hurt from
your past. Y ou have to see that in order to find yourself. As you learn to say, “I feel hurt,” and really be with that feeling, more
openness will develop. The emotions that frighten us are the complex ones,
because they overwhelm the natural release mechanism. You cannot simply
release guilt or depression. They are secondary formations that arose once
you forgot how to release hurt. The more hurt you honestly feel, the more
comfortable you will be with pain, because the ability to release it will
grow . As this happens, you will feel easier about all your other emotions. (To a blocked mind, feeling “positive” emotions such as love and trust is
often just as difficult as feeling “negative” emotions such as hate and
distrust. Both are lauded by old unresolved hurts.) Feeling easy with your
emotions means  that you won’ t get so entangled in other people’ s. Instead
of blaming the ones who hurt you, you will be able to for give. The lessons of this exercise are very profound:
•  Everyone is acting from his own level of consciousness. This is all we
can ask of ourselves or anyone else. However hurtful someone is, he is
doing the best he can, given the limits of his consciousness. •  Forgiveness of others comes only when you can release your own hurt. The more complete your release, the more sincere the for giveness. •  No one can really hurt you unless you give them the power to do so. This power lies in your own unresolved pain. You can take control of
the old pain and reclaim power over your emotions. Until you do that,
your feelings will continue to be tossed around at the whim of others. •  Outside even ts have no powe r to hurt you. The hurt comes when an
interpretation occurs in your mind. You can live beyond interpretation,
in a state of witnessing, the pure, untouchable awareness that is the
real you. Again, the reason this exercise defeats aging is that it puts you back into
the present, and present-moment awareness never ages. It is the same when
you are 5 or 85. The discovery of freedom in the present opens the door for
the perm anent experience of timelessness, in which past, present, and future
are revealed as illusions compar ed to the true reality , which is always here
and now . OceanofPDF .comPART 
FOUR
The Science of Longevity
OceanofPDF .comI’VE NEVER MET Belle Odom, but I’m looking at her picture in the morning
newspaper . She is a tiny old lady, smiling and waving a frilled lace
handkerchief. Belle is in the paper because she has achieved the remarkable
age of 109. Despite the fact that she is older than several states in the
Union, her eyes look clear and alert; the accompanying article says that her
mind is sharper than those of many younger residents at the nursing home
where she lives. I can imagine the fuss everyone  made over Belle to get her ready for her
moment in the sun. There she sits in a cheerful old-lady print dress, pink-
flowered with a wide lace collar , bought for the occasion no doubt. The
article rattles of f some statistics about people who live to be 100 or more:
80 percent of all centenarians are women
75 percent are widowed
50 percent are in nursing homes
16 percent are black (the general population is only 12 percent black)
This last figure is relevant because Belle is a black woman, born and
raised in rugged  Texas farm country .
_OceanofPDF.com_Ageless_Body_Timeless_Mind_-_Deepak_Chopra.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        Although listening to music in a car or as
“background noise” can be somewhat effective in stress reduction, it’smuch better to listen in a quiet room by yourself or with someo ne close to
you. Visualization  is simpl y the creation of an intensely pleasurable and relaxing
experience in your “mind’ s eye. ” Information on the power of visualization
with respect to aging can be found beginning on this page, under the
heading, “A T rigger for T ransformation. ”
Meditation  can take many forms, including breathing awareness and
primordial soun d meditation, which uses a mantra as a tool for quieting the
mind. More information on meditation is offered elsewhere in this book, in
particular on this page  under the heading, “Meditatio n Lowers Biological
Age. ”
Sleep  naturall y reduces stress and restores internal balance. If you really
need it, feel free to close your eyes at any time for a catnap. Many highly
energetic and successful people allow themselves this luxury. Contact with the natural envir onment  almost always reduces stress. If your
life takes place in an almost entirely man-made world, significant stress is
likely to accumulate in the course of your daily activities, though this
accumulation may occur outside your conscious awareness. Even if it’ s only
buying a potted plant for your office or taking a brief walk in the park each
morning, staying in touch with nature provides important stress-reducing
benefits. Relinquishing the need for contr ol is the principle that underlies all
genuinely effective stress-reducing techniques. If you begin to feel tense at
any point durin g the day, reme mber that trying to master every detail of
your situation is stressful and most likely counterproductive. Learn to relax
and go with the flow of events. Sometimes a good cry can also be highly
beneficial to restoring balance  and escaping the impulse toward total
control. For millions of people, life is so frustrating that their only hope of
relieving stress is by overeating  and drinking, while whole societies try to
escape their miseries by attacking other countries. Strife breaks out overissues that seem trivial to an outsider, but frustration and lack of control are
enormously painful conditions to live under. When someone close to you
suddenly dies, the unbearable heartache of grief is tied up in potent
intangibles: You couldn’ t have predicted the death, you couldn’ t have
stopped it, and in many cases there seems no way to express enough of the
pent-up feelings of loss and abandonment. This becomes particularly
painful if the person to whom you need to express your feelings is the one
who died. In medic al terms, the toll in sickness due to these elements is great. Dr. Geor ge Eagle, a psychiatrist at the University of Rochester, investigated
160 cases of sudden death that had no physical explanation: 58 percent took
place at a time of bereavement or loss and 35 percent at a time of threat;
only 6 percent coincided with a time of pleasure. It is not the stress itself
that is fatal, since the same losses and threats are survived by other people. The ability to withstand the stress is lacking. This vulnerability overrides
physical factors. When someo ne under 50 dies of a heart attack, for
example, half the time none of the classic risk factors for heart disease—
hypertension, elevated cholesterol, and smoking—are present. The leading
cancer in Ameri ca, lung cancer, is directly tied to smoking, a habit that for
most people is purely an outle t for frustrated emotion, a pleasure seized
upon the way a caged rat seizes a piece of wood to gnaw on. In the laborator y, animals that are less evolved than rats (frogs, for
example) do not respond to intangible stressors. The key factor  is memory. If an animal has only a primitive memory, it won’ t recognize the difference
between one situation and the next. Rats remember the unpleasant sensation
of being shocked, and therefore they can be trained to press a lever to avoid
repeating the sensation. When the lever is taken away, their memory is also
good enough to anticipate the next shock—they have expectati ons. This is
like the nervous  patient in the dentist’ s chair who jumps as soon as he hears
the drill; the mere sound triggers an expectation of pain that in turn
activates the pain response. In eithe r case the expectation is the stressor. This has enorm ous
implications for aging, because all of us carry around a world inside
ourselves—the world of our past. We generate our own stresses by referring
to this world and the traumas imprinted on it. There would be no stresswithout the memory of stress, for our memories dictate what frightens us or
makes us angry. We feel out of control and frustrated wheneve r a situation
reminds us too closely of earlie r times when we were out of control and
frustrated. The curse of memory  is that it ages us from the inside; our inner
world is getting older, shutting us out from reality, which is never old. The perfection of human memory is astounding. In the early  days of
psychoanalysis, Freud was amazed by the accuracy of his patients’
unconscious retention of the past. He might lead a depressed patient back to
a trauma that occurred at age 2, such as being left overnight in the hospital
by his mother for a tonsil operation. At first Freud found that the memory
would not allow  itself to be revealed at all clearly. Blankets of numbness
and denial cover ed over the original feeling of being abandoned, and yet if
the patient was courageous enou gh, those cloaks could gradually be peeled
back. With the utmost clarity, the patient would recall exactly what had
happened that night in the hospi tal, not just every nuance of feeling but the
minutest physical details—the time on the clock, the numb er of steps
leading to the operating room, the color of the nurse’ s hair. But why
shouldn’ t we recall such details. They have been imprinted onto us like
microchips, adding their output to all future events. There are few if any simple stresses in human life, because as soon as a
new event occurs, the imprint of old memories becomes activated,
triggering the kind of stress we anticipate. Thus, stress beco mes a self-
fulfilling prophe cy: Our reactions fit our expectations. The fact that every
event cannot help but get imprin ted with an interpretation gives memory its
treacherous power. The Hormone Connection
The stress reaction involves the release of powerful chemicals that the body,
as I’ve described, must cut off before damage is done  to itself. Endocrinologists classify stress hormones as glucocorticoids,  which are
hormones secreted by the adrenal glands as part of the heightened arousaldemanded of the body under stress. The function of glucocor ticoids is to
activate the shift from anabolic to catabolic metabolism. Specifically,
glucocorticoids break down glucagon in the liver, a form of stored energy
that the body can use as needed ; when the glucagon is used up, the same
glucocorticoids go on to break down proteins. Under extreme conditions,
such as times of famine, the body must fend off starvation by starting to
consume its own muscles in order to keep up blood sugar, and again the
chemicals responsible are glucocorticoids. The best known of the glucoco rticoids is cortisol, which plays a hidden
role in the aging  of certain animals, specifically the Pacific salmon. After
hatching, young  salmon spend their first four years at sea before they are
mysteriously guided thousands of miles to the exact freshwater lakes where
they were born. After a heroic journey upstream over rapids and man-made
dams, mature salmon spawn and almost immediately die. What causes the fish to age overnight into feeble, spent creatu res is not
sheer exhaustion but an internal “aging clock,” built in to their DNA, that
bides its time until spawning, then releases a rush of corticoid hormone in
massive amounts from the adrenal glands. Cortisol is a potent stress
hormone in all animals; in salmon it is a death hormone. Its fatal release
occurs even if a fish is taken out of the water before its gruelin g migration
and allowed to spawn in peak physical condition. Aging clocks obey their own timetable, having no regard for the
environment. Taking a salmon upstream by hand, giving it adequate food,
and protecting it from all stress will not save it; after spawning, the fish’s
biological clock knows that the appropriate time for death is at hand. “Appropriate” is a very flexible  term in Nature. A mayfly that lives only
one day and a giant clam that survives over one hundred years each have an
“appropriate” life span. Nature balances many ingredients to arrive at the
life span of a creature. Size, weight, metabolic rate, food supply, predators,
breeding age, and number of of fspring, among other factors, influence when
aging will begin. A mouse might live a year or less in the wild, but within that year the
creature matures, breeds, bears a number of young, and keeps its species
going. In the balance of Nature, that is sufficient; if a species can keep its
population going before it ages and dies, its purpose has been fulfilled. In animals the onset of aging is tied to physical evolution. Each animal
has evolved to a given life span that accords best with its survival. If mice
lived to be 100 and continued to have dozens of offspring every year, the
world would be overrun by mice and the predators that eat them. Nature
does not allow such gross imbalances to persist, however; all the species fit
in to their own niche of life span and follow their own specific aging
patterns. Sometimes Nature’ s specific intent is hard to decipher—why, for
example, do tiny brown bats live for twelve years or more while field mice,
who weigh the same and share the same fast metabolism, struggle to
survive for only a season or two. The factors that influence the life spans of
different animal s are so complex and subtle that explaining how animals
age is difficult— more than three hundred theories currently vie for an
answer. Aging clocks are disturbing to the imagination because they are time
bombs that animals unwittingly  carry around inside them, the instruments
of their own destruction. Many biologists speculate that human DNA
contains an aging clock; if it does, it must be much more variab le than that
in salmo n, for humans die at extremely wide-ranging ages. In the Roman
empire average life expectancy was around 28 years; today it has risen to 75
years in America and 82. 5 years for women in Japan, the longest-lived
group in the world. This increase was achieved by the trait that sets us apart
from lower animals—free will. Our moment of death is not determined at
birth; humans defy fate by building shelters against the elements, planting
crops against starvation, inventing cures for disease. Yet the biochemical inheritance that we carry within us poses a constant
threat. Like Pacific salmon, our bodies have the ability to release large
doses of hormones outside our voluntary control. For example, a small,
nonlethal dose of cortisol is released every time we are in a threatening
situation. To many physiologist s, this implies that our bodies are not well
adapted to modern life. Also beyond our conscious control is the effect of
glucocorticoids in a host of other destructive processes: musc le wasting,
diabetes, fatigue, osteoporosis, thinning of skin, redistribution of body fat,
fragility of blood vessels, hypertension, fluid retention, suppression of
immune function, and impaired mental function. The above are signs of steroid poisoning, which looms as a danger if
patients are kept too long on large doses of steroid medications. In
situations where  a person canno t terminate the stress response or act it out,
his own body administers a tiny dose of steroid poisoning. The danger of
repeated inappr opriate stress is much greater, then, than any single
catastrophic stress. Meditation Lowers Biological Age
The connection between aging and stress hormones has been strongly
demonstrated, but the problem of how to control these hormon es remains. Because the stress reaction can be triggered in a split second and without
warning, it is impossible for us to control the molecules themselves. However, there is one mind-bod y technique that goes directly to the root of
the stress response by releasing the remembered stresses that trigger new
stress: meditation. Levels of cortisol and adrenaline are often found to be
lower in long-term meditators, and their coping mechanisms almost always
tend to be stronger than average. Before the early 1970s, these benefits were not even suspected. Meditation held little appeal for Western medicine until a young UCLA
physiologist named R. Keith Wallace proved that besides its spiritual
implications, meditation had profound effects on the body. In a series of
experiments begun in the late 1960s as part of his doctoral work, Wallace
took groups of mostly college-aged volunteers who practiced
Transcendental Meditation (TM) and hooked them up to monitors to test
critical bodily functions while they were in meditation. Subjectively these
young volunteers reported a sense of increasing calm and inner silence. Although it had been previousl y thought that it took years of practice to
attain a deep meditational state, the mantra meditation very quickly
produced profound relaxation and significant changes in breathing,
heartbeat, and blood pressure. TM and Primord ial Sound Meditation are based on the silent repetition of
a specifi c Sanskrit word, or mantra, whose sound vibrations gradually leadthe mind out of its normal thinking process and into the silence that
underlies thought. As such, a mantra is a very specific message inserted into
the nervous system. Since mant ras have been in use for thousands of years
in India,  their precise effect on the physiology is well known as part of the
science of Yoga, or union. The aim of Yoga is to unite the thinking mind
with its source in pure aware ness. In modern terms, “pure awareness”
means quantum space, the silen t, empty void that is the womb of all matter
and energy. Pure awareness exists in the gap between though ts; it is the
unchanging background against which all mental activity takes place. We
would not ordin arily suspect that such a state exists because our minds are
so preoccupied with the stream of thoughts, wishes, dreams, fantasies, and
sensations that fill waking consciousness. That is why the ancient Indian
sages had to devise the specific technique of meditation, in order to show
the mind its own origins in the quantum depths. When Wallace initiated his research, the mechanics of meditation were
poorly understood in scientific terms. He was the first to show that sitting in
meditation with the eyes closed  induces the nervous system to enter a state
of “restful alertness”—i. e. , the mind remains awake while the body goes
into a deeply relaxed state. (In the jargon of physiology, Wallace called this
state “hypometabolic wakefulness” to indicate that the subject’ s metabolism
had decreased while he retained wakeful consciousness. ) When first
discovered, the state of restful alertness generated considerable  curiosity in
the medical profession, becaus e rest and alertness had previously been
considered opposites. Sleep is a hypometabolic state in which oxygen
consumption decreases, heartbeat slows, and consciousness blanks out. The
waking state, on the other hand, is marked by higher oxygen consumption, a
faster heartbeat, and an alert mind. Wallace found that these oppo sites were united in meditation; while
remaining alert enough to push  a button every time they transcended (i.
Listening to music or using it as background noise can be somewhat effective, but it is not as effective as listening in a quiet room by yourself or with someone close to you.
According to the text, what is the most effective way to reduce stress?
The text states that stress is triggered by memories of past traumas, which can lead to the release of stress hormones and contribute to the aging process.
What is the connection between memory and stress?
The text does not explicitly state the key factor, but it implies that it is the animal's memory and the ability to adapt to its environment.
What is the key factor that determines an animal's lifespan?
The principle is to relinquish the need for control and learn to relax and go with the flow of events.
What is the main principle of all genuinely effective stress-reducing techniques?
The text states that meditation is a technique to release the remembered stresses that trigger new stress, allowing for a decrease in cortisol levels and a reversal of biological aging.
According to the text, what is the purpose of meditation?