I went to a meeting the other day, arriving five minutes early.
On the door was a notice that the building was closed for maintenance for the next two days.
The door was locked.
I left. Arriving home, I sent off an annoyed email to the organizer.
I just got a response. The meeting apparently went off as scheduled. I don’t know what happened. It sounds like if I had waited around for five minutes, everything would’ve worked out fine.
This happens to me a lot. Things don’t go my way and I storm off in a rage.
So I just walked outside into the sun, determined to walk off my annoyance.
“Should I be angry at myself of at them?” I thought. “I guess I have to be angry at myself.”
I felt the tension in my face, particularly around my eyes, and released it. As I did so, all of my annoyance and anger disappeared. I wasn’t upset at anyone, not myself and not the organizers. As I walked, I found I could only feel annoyed if I tensed and compressed my facial muscles. By contrast, when I released unnecessary tension, I could only feel serene.
Every emotion is only possible with a certain alignment of the musculature. Anger, happiness, joy, serenity, disappointment, rage, all of these emotions require a particular alignment of the head, neck and back. Leave that alignment and you leave that emotion behind.
If you’re poised in your body and in your use of yourself, you’re going to be emotionally poised. If you are stiff in your body, you’re going to be emotionally stiff. All of the severe emotions require you to tense and to compress your neck. Let go of this compression and you let go of the severe emotions.
All beliefs are unnecessary muscle tension. They are an act of will imposed upon your natural state. If you lie in the sun and let go of all your unnecessary tension, you’ll find you have next to no beliefs. Get a good massage and let go of your body tension and you’ll find that you have next to no beliefs.
Experiment with this. Lie in the sun and think about a particularly strong belief you have. See if you can locate in the body where you are holding tight unnecessarily. Release the tension. See if your belief is as strong.
My belief that all beliefs are unnecessary tension is a belief accompanied by unnecessary muscle tension. When I let go of the tension surrounding that belief, I let go of the belief.
I’m not arguing that we should have no beliefs. I do think that most of us would be better off with fewer beliefs.
