Calming Down

Imagine a global invasion from outer space. A race of highly sophisticated, state of the art machines land on earth. They have come to work. To work with us, and for us - and as they demonstrate their multifunctions we can't believe our luck. They are user friendly and we welcome them with open arms. Not only are they fun to work with but it seems they can do everything we can do, only better and faster. The only departments in which they are bit slow is original idea creation and decision making. No matter, maybe we can teach them.

For twenty years we open our factories, workshops, offices and eventually the most intimate settings of your own homes to our friendly invaders. In two thousands years of recorded history it seems we have never had it so good. It's only in the third decade of their presence that we begin to realise their mission has a darker side. Not only are they consuming more natural earth resources than the indigenous population of the planet, they have the uncanny ability to reduce time and space to almost nothing as they communicate with each other. They trade in mountains of information, across vast distances, at lightning speeds. It's too quick for us to keep up with, and too complex for most of us simple creatures to understand. But most significantly, they slowly take over nearly all our functions and tasks at work. They can virtually replicate all our actions. And they are the centre of attention in our moments of leisure. We even teach them how to create more of themselves. Clever machines. They are so clever they tantalise us into wasting unnecessary amounts of our time, energy and money ensuring they improve themselves, and enjoy a healthier and happier life than the mere mortals onto whose home planet they have come.

They seem to wear an inscrutable smile on their facias as they sit on our desks, in our bedrooms, kitchens, accounts departments gleefully watching us painfully re-learn our three R's - Reading, Writing and Rithmatic! In the final decade of the twentieth century the arithmetic was simple and the writing was on the wall. More machines performing both specialist and non specialist basic work activity equals less quantity and less variety of work for us. Less people doing more work faster to keep up with "them", equals pressure and anxiety. Machines doing more work faster requires re-organisation of work practices, systems and organisational structures i.e. rapid change. Anxiety and pressure due to less people doing more work plus rapid change in systems and structures equals tension, uncertainty and stress. Tension, uncertainty and stress times performance equals inefficiency, unproductiveness and unhappiness. Inefficiency and unhappiness over a long period of time results in deterioration of mental and physical well-being. Multiplied by the whole workforce of an organisation or even an entire nation, and it all adds up to many sick people unable to work, soaking up lots of money and human resources.

We try to write new formula for avoiding the monumental stress and tension which afflicts nearly every member of our species. Retraining, longer vacations, new hobbies, new therapies, new age theories, vitamin pills, sensory deprivation tanks, visits to the moon, political scandals and many other weird and wonderful ways are introduced to distract us, to try to slow us down and relax us, in a machine driven world gone mad. But nothing works, each brings only temporary relief, as our stress and the abilities of those machines continue to increase.

This of course is not a science fiction, nor fairy tale scenario, it is the essence of where we are at now in the birthing moments of the 21st century. These machines are our creation, and ironically we hold them up as symbols of progress and hope for the future.

Consequently the pace of change is now explosive, and of course we can't keep up. We are not designed to work at the speed of Windows 2000. We were never designed to be so disconnected from our natural surroundings. We were not designed to make a hundred decisions a day in what was termed the nanosecond nineties and is now the millisecond milleneumm. A few have managed to adapt with some efficiency but the majority can't, won't or don't know how.

On top of all that we sit mesmerised in front of our electronic deities in our living rooms and our bedrooms! In glorious technicolor they bring us the world, the event, the disaster, the gossip, the worst in all the worlds daily events, in the universally palatable form of entertainment. No wonder we cannot cope with it in real life. We are desensitised to others pain to such an extent that empathy is a foreign language. Like a muscle that atrophies due to lack of use our ability to respond weakens and wastes away due to the lack of the practice of real living and interacting with real human beings. It means we don't know how to respond positively and wisely and strongly to the simple day to day challenges at work and at home when we have to. Molehills become mountains. What were small concerns becomes big worries which become fantazised catastrophies!

Solutions do not seem easy, but they are there. Recognising the reality of our relationship with technology and deeply understanding it is the first step. Then it is easy to see that the anxieties, tensions and worries are not actually caused by the machines, or by the speed of change around us, or even by other people. The feelings and experience of stress, which are different for each one of us, are rooted in the weakness and negativity of our own thoughts which we create in response to these external events, circumstances and changes. Pointing the finger of blame at others and at technology is our way of avoiding responsibility for our own thoughts and consequent feelings.

There are many myths about how to relieve modern stress and tension. Each one has an industry built around it. But the consumption of holidays, vitamins, special diets and the practice of exercise and hobbies are not the solution. They may bring relief to the tensions which have built up in our bodies, but they do not teach us how to think, how to respond more effectively to both the pace of change and the changes themselves.

In a fast changing and busy world the only solution is to strengthen our ability to respond. This does not mean throwing out our machines and technological toys. It does mean however not being enslaved or ruled by them. It means doing the work of thought and image creation with our own minds, and not allowing the media to do it for us. It means defining and challenging our personal values which underlie the way we think. It means examining our sense of identity to see how we see ourselves, what we identify with and how scared we are if we lose or are changed in our identity. It means building our inner strength, not physical, but the strength of our spirit, our consciousness, and therefore our ability to cope, adapt and respond more positively. And that means changing ourselves, our personalities and at the deepest level our sense of purpose in life…if in fact we have one! If we have no sense of purpose, and that is not a difficult achievement amidst the cacophony of images, messages and ideas then we need to take time out to see what it is we are here to be and to do. Otherwise life will be a series of accidents, continually happening to us, and we feel powerless to control our own direction.

To do all that does not require a journey to the gymnasium or the travel agent. A sense of well being can return quickly on a warm beach under blue skies, but it is superficial. It is much more challenging to be under the blue skies of the right thoughts and attitudes at every moment of the day. This requires some short but regular vacations to the heart of your own consciousness, allowing us to see who we really are and how things are working ‘in there’. The first discovery is almost immediate. There, under the surfaces on which we have been accustomed to living, is a natural peace, a perfect beauty and a source of power largely untapped. The method to release it and bring it to the surface is meditation and the result is the eventual transformation of the quality of your thoughts, feelings, attitudes and behaviour. We cease to be impressed and influenced by the complex technology around us because we have our own power back. We are able to correct our relationship with our hi tech toys from you master me slave to me master you slave. We have our life back. Machines and machine driven world, watch out!

How to calm down:
Be ruthless and decide to do nothing for a few minutes
Find a quiet spot and sit in a comfortable position
Close your eyes and begin to consciously relax every muscle in your body
Start at your toes and work your way up to your forehead
Breathe slowly and focus on your breath
Then try to listen to the silence in your mind, be aware of the space between your thoughts instead of the thoughts themselves
If many thoughts interrupt, just observe them, watch them come, and let them go, then focus on the space
Continue for ten minutes
Practice once or twice daily and soon you will be able to be calm at will