chemistry is one of the primary reasons for the poverty trap as well. In this way
we are then likely to be caught in a trap of perpetual stress because we then have
to survive in a servile, subsistence or flatland-conformist way...that is “stressful,”
thus locking us into an endless recurring feedback loop of stress, impotency
and poverty.
Perpetual stress is like a tiger that won’t go away but that prowls around us 24X7
even if we are not consciously aware of it, we are always on alert for that tiger. To
break out of the quicksand of the stress trap we need to do something different—
what Dr. Richard O’Connor calls an adaptive spiral. That is a progressive path
in which the changes we make in how we think, feel, act and treat ourselves all
reinforce each other to catalyze lasting change. So instead of being caught up in
the stress trap, we can learn to generate an abiding recurrent creative potency cycle
instead.
John Pierrakos says that zest for life (Eros, libido) is rekindled through self-
revelation as we disclose ever deeper truths about ourselves, we open our body,
mind and soul to the divine. He says that everything we need for pleasure and
fulfillment resides in the core of our being and as we activate the core we bring
out the higher self. Meditation, especially sunlight meditation lights up the crystal
chamber, or central hormonal activation center in the brain. Hence it is only
logical that meditation should increase creative libido and artistic potency through
stimulating and balancing hormonal health. Even eight weeks of regular meditation
builds up the prefrontal cortex, especially on the left side, thus increasing our
potential for happiness.
Since it is stress and danger that often produce great artistic advances, it cannot
be simply stress itself that produces a decline in the productivity of the muse...but
perhaps it is the unrelenting aspect of it, the fact that we do not undergo the rest
and recovery phase of the stress cycle to a significant degree. The ongoing slow
ebb of our creative juices with little recharging and regeneration is perhaps the
culprit in the demise of imagination in modern man by producing a somewhat
permanently creatively neutered society and a perpetual creative-impotency-loop.
I am not referring to the sporadic triggering of stress response cycle, but a permanent
stress chemistry feedback cycle that atrophies neurons and organs and perpetuates itself
through its debilitating effects on behavior, enjoyment, relationship and circumstance.
I think to a certain degree our entire western culture is suffering from chronic ongoing
stress—such that we do not even recognize that we are stressed because that is who we
are, and we feel things are under control as long as we can keep up with our various
addictions (i.e.: negative stress management techniques).
The stress factor of relationship tends to have more immunosuppressing power
than non-relational stressors. So if we have a community, society or culture that is in
chronic perpetual stress, then the stressed relationships will reinforce this condition.
Whereas in healthy mammalian collective life, relationship is a major source of
stress “relief.” What this means in terms of integral art is that the reduction the sex
hormone production, coupled with damage to the hippocampus (memory/symbol)
and the hypothalamus (emotional-governance) will mean that ones consciousness