I like the focus on relaxation having an active component. And I will focus on active relaxation now. It is possible to actively relax. Anyone ever actively try to clear their head? If so, how did you do it?

There is a reason for some thoughts to come back over and over again. Ever tried to take a close look at those thoughts? I would not say they come back pointlessly, I believe if they come back they are trying to tell me something and they always do. Recurrent thought returns because of the tension your inner self is trying to get you to release.

I have several techniques. My favourite is sitting still and trying to follow the furthest sound from where I am. To be aware without restrictions.

Whatever gets you out of your own head to get you into your own “being” (in a literal, not metaphysical sense) works.

There are many valid ways of clearing your mind. It would be easier to list inappropriate ways to clear your mind, than all of the appropriate options.

One can allow themselves to relax, but “trying” to relax is fruitless. You make an important point. Trying to relax does defeat relaxation. The reason people get stuck in trying is that they believe if they relax they will cease doing anything at all. This is not at all true. Relax, and you keep breathing, and you breath better. The tools do help, but it’s important to remember they are tools. If they become necessary to relax, then you just replace one tension for another.

I must relax. We all must, but not by intellectual decree. Nature itself has set up all living things to be “resilient”, to have a capacity to “bounce back”.

I mean there is a contradiction. I can’t relax if I must do it. Ah, very true.

I think that just as tension is a constricting/tightening, relaxing is an expanding, and as one can deliberately tense, one can deliberately relax and expand. I agree. Where things get sticky is “deliberation”. Yes, you can do things deliberately, but you don’t have to deliberately have a brain, and life defined by deliberation ceases to be life. Is it fair to say that relaxation could also be called reflection? For every outward energy allowing a return?

Breathing? Enjoying? Yes. Is this process allowed to go on without interference? Is it allowed to endure as our center as we mature and go about our lives? The will to do is the will to die, yet paradoxically doing from our center is the will to live. Doing because we live and not confusing the doing for the living. Is this not relaxation? Is there a greater wisdom than this? They say that peace is the seal of the Sage, the hallmark of wisdom, but is the peace from having done everything there is to do?

Wu wei. Yes. Peace of doing what is our true nature.

I am not a critic of the intellectual. For me to try to limit my intellectual life just creates a pointless tension. If I allow myself to live from my nature, then I am a deeply thinking person. Likewise, I have met people who were doing people, and to try to analyze their doing over much again just creates a meaningless tension. It does not enrich their lives, and if they aren’t convinced by others that intellectualism is the only wisdom, they often demonstrate a wisdom all their own just as valid as any flight of thought. Both, if allowed to live as the whole being they are, will live in very different ways. But do they need to contend with each other? Does there need to be any tension between them?

We can learn from a different sort of tension between doing and thinking, and learn to do whichever we’re poorer at better. I would agree with you, but in that case it’s not tension as much as it is communication and exchange. Yes, we do all benefit greatly from interaction, and if I learn to do calculus and you learn to do calculus, though we both will be doing that form of math, our learning experience and even methods will indeed be different.

It feels like tension whenever we’re out of our element. But being out of our element can be good for us. Well, tension is not evil. Ignorance isn’t evil either. Wilful attachment to tension and ignorance, well… Though I don’t subscribe to the idea of evil, I don’t see an upside to wilful attachment to these things.

I hope there was something of value shared between us today, and will admit that now I feel the need to relax the tension of event hosting. 🙂

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~