There is a perceived discrepancy or cognitive dissonance between what you "have" and what you "want", between your existence and your essence, between personality and Self, between the finite and the Infinite, between your self-image creation and the original creation. This discrepancy , this difference, is called error or stress.

This discrepancy goes underground and appears in our body or in our environment as a symptom. The stress or tension of this dissonance is what we call a problem, a nuisance, a painful distraction, a stumbling block, an interpersonal barrier, an illness or disease, a life-threatening condition, an accident, an act of fate, a toxic or environmental influence, genetics, an accident, a punishment. All of these are referred to here as "symptoms."

When we get a symptom, we interpret it as a problem, and we seek for relief or a solution. Rarely do our conventional solutions reach the depth of the conflict between ego and essence. Our so-called solutions then tend to re-enforce the discrepancy because the message in the symptom is mis-diagnosed and mis-treated. It is mis-diagnosed because it has been encoded into bodily or environmental symbolism, into the language of the right-brain, into dream imagery.

When we experience this essential stress and do not rightly diagnose and "treat" it with transformative awareness, we handle it by such strategies, defenses or symptoms as :

1.Projection

2. Denial

3. Repression

4. Compartmentalization

5. Somatization

6. Acting out

7. Numbing

8. Anesthetization

9. Addictive behavior

10. Splitting into ideal versus shadow

11. Polarization

12. Rationalization

13. Emotionalization

14. Spiritualization

15. Power struggles.

16. Impulsivity

17. Withdrawal

18. Sexualization

19. Fixation

20. Compensation

21. Paranoia

22. Hostility

23. Rescueing

24. Scapegoating

Any or all of these reactions, defenses or coping mechanisms may become unconscious strategies for survival whereas they started out as temporary ways to handle stress or pain. But in every case we are only using "sight" to diagnose the condition and to prescribe our self-created treatment or solution. Then we may go to the doctor for more effective "treatment". Conventional medical or psychological "treatment" is directed toward the relief of physical or psychological stress and symptomatology..

Sometimes chemical and behavioral remedies can reduce the symptom annoyance or arrest the disease progression. However, sometimes this progression has reached such a degree that surgery, imprisonment, divorce or other drastic measures are used to control or eradicate the symptom.

The alternative approach of Infinity Theory that we are exploring here employs, in addition to sight, the method of vision. Vision reveals that whatever else the symptom may be, it is also a life-saving message from the Superconscious or soul level. If this message is not divined, decoded and absorbed into consciousness, the stress just goes deeper into the total organism.

What then is this dissonance or discrepancy between the existence and the essence level which we call stress? What is the causal factor in the error?

A number of spiritual researchers have traced this causal factor to false beliefs. These beliefs contain partial truth and partial fiction. These beliefs arise from the racial mind and from the personal mind. As discussed earlier, I have reduced these beliefs to three irreducible universal notions: (1) the belief in separation, which is the capstone of all false, error-producing ideas (2) the belief in lack, or insecurity, and (3) the belief in entrapment, fate, victimization, or loss of freedom.

These three beliefs appear to be involved in all of our human errors and stress. These three errors must be observed when they overwhelm our consciousness with proof from our physical and mental sight. These beliefs must be challenged directly and consciously with the truth which arises from the vision of oneness, abundance and freedom. If these errors are not challenged with insight into our Infinite nature, they will continue to widen the chasm between our ego and our Self, and we will continue to manifest symptoms to register such errors of mis-diagnosis and mis-treatment.

All of the medications and advice in the world will not be sufficient to keep up with our continuous re-creation of these errors. In other words, you cannot fix an error which you are constantly re-creating. If you believe in separation, all of the togetherness activities in the world will not satisfy you; if you believe in lack, all of the money in the world will not satisfy you; if you believe in entrapment, all of the angry rebellion in the world will not satisfy you.

Massage may lessen the tension in the neck and it helps, but the human mind can create more tension in the neck than an all-day massage can remove. The human mind has lightning speed and infinite power behind it. The mind must be changed. The human mind can make hell out of heaven, and does it all the time. Look what we have done to the paradise in which we live. This body and this earth is a piece of work! Incredibly engineered! And yet this body and this earth can hardly withstand the ravaging errors and terrors inflicted by the mind. Look at what the mind of terrorists did to the New York skyline on September 11, 2001! The human mind is more powerful than the human body any day. The human mind is more powerful than the earth any day. The body and the earth put up quite a fight, and for many years mother nature is able to renew, but in the end the human mind wins and we see ecological disasters and entropy (death) setting in. Creation succumbs to our counter-creation. But in the meantime, we get basketfuls of messages and signals and symptoms to warn us. And not only to warn us, but to show us how to use this infinite power for our own benefit. We do not act in our own best self-interest! Believe it or not!

The Good News is that the human mind can be changed, transformed, renewed. Like so many things in a throw-away society, the human soul is not a disposable item. It has to be renewed. It can be renewed. Renewal is our calling and our destiny. Renewal is our hidden power, our divine potential. The power of destruction can be converted into the power of renewal.

The infinite power of imagination can be used in either direction. No one is helpless, no one is powerless, no one is stuck, no one is alone, no one is lacking. We are infinite beings operating on a finite stage. We tell ourselves that God is somewhere else, that we are lacking and that paradise is tomorrow. What a crock!

Generalized anxiety is so generic, so basic to the human condition, that we can hardly even imagine being without it. In European thought, it is called angst or existential anxiety. It is still hotly debated among philosophers whether essentialism even exists. Any essentialist is considered naïve, idealistic, and stupid. Life is said to begin and end with existence. Man is anxious and should be depressed. If a person is not anxious and depressed, what is wrong with him? In a New Yorker cartoon, a pedestrian has stopped a policeman and pointing to a man across the street he says to the policeman: "What is wrong with that man, he is smiling, he may be up to something, shouldn’t you arrest him?"

Stress is so generic and normal that non-stress seems un-imaginable. Original sin, by whatever name it is called, is our baseline for normality. Neurosis is normal. Even psychosis is no shock. You would be crazy not to be crazy in a crazy society. In Rome you do as the Romans do. You have to be either a comedian or a mental patient.

A mental patient was being interviewed in the psychiatric unit. She was asked how she liked the people here in the hospital. She remarked "There are no people here, only doctors, nurses and patients!" Sometimes we feel that it helps to be crazy and funny.

This generic condition arises due to our programming, to our imprinting, to our mental photographs. Our mind is a photo album, notes Glasser. We have pictures of everything, and if something doesn’t match our picture of it, we either ignore it or lie about it, in order to make it match. All of our judgments and opinions in life are based upon these "impressions", upon these snapshots of people, things, and events.

Boredom and repetition are based upon this same phenomena. Hericlitus had it right when he said "No one ever steps in the same river twice." But we haven’t even caught up with him yet. Nothing is the same, and yet it seems to be so. How are You? "About the same." Is a generic lie. We just haven’t been aware. We are like Rip Van Winkle, asleep for 40 years.

When I was a youngster I spent many days fishing on the Satilla River in south Georgia. It was dark, deep, and wide, flowing constantly. It was bounded by wild lime trees whose branches hung over the edge of the water. Mists settle over the Satilla in the early mornings. Fish break the water chasing bugs. I "knew" every mile of that river, every creek and fishing hole. I fished and hunted there every year until I went to graduate school. Thirty years later I came back to the Satilla River and it was still dark, wide and deep, and it still flowed on and on, with its mist and lime trees, creeks and fishing holes. It seemed like the same great Satilla River. But it wasn’t the same river at all. It had never been the same river. It just fit my mental photographs of it. Even one minute later it was not the same river. And yet, it has a name and it exists apparently somewhere in south Georgia, but for me it exists in my mind where it always was and will be.

My grandmother’s farmette burned to the ground and is nothing but weed-covered acreage now, but to me it is still my childhood vacation spot, covered with fruit trees, a fascinating old barn with two Model A Fords in it, an old fashioned pump and a phone that has a hand ringer on it, an outdoor toilet, a few cows and a strawberry patch. Cottage cheese and a butter churn sit on the big screened-in porch, with a homemade checker board where I suffered many childhood defeats with my teasing grandfather’s smile.

But then there were the signs of existential angst in my family as well. There were stresses from drinking, from family feuds, from two divorces, from war stories, from noise about a cousin in jail, from church versus non-church issues. There were still stories about when my parents eloped to get married without telling anyone. There were instances of serious illness, and people died, even in their prime. One cousin ended up in a mental hospital for life. And my sister, a beautiful soloist and basketball player, died with peritonitis at age 15, and the whole county mourned, especially my mother, who had just had a newborn three months earlier, and I went off to college. My favorite pastor’s daughter got pregnant out of wedlock, and he had to move away. But people still "got saved" sometimes. For me, I couldn’t reconcile the spiritual experience I had at 12 tender years of age and the human suffering I saw in my small world. My extraordinary Dallas cousin was killed in the Air Force when his plane went down over enemy territory. Tragedy and suffering just didn’t fit with life on the Satilla River. I would spend my whole life trying to make things fit, trying to put together existence and essence with the incredible experience of a small town lad with the Cosmic Christ. I guess it will never be explained to my satisfaction, but neither can I ever stop trying. Neither sex, visions, music, poetry, existential theology, nor quantum psychology could satisfy this existential angst.

Existential angst. Generic anxiety. Modern stress. I have heard stories about meditating Buddhists who spend 40 years sitting in silence before the wave of a Zen Master’s hand brings them "satori." Suddenly nothing fits. The world of pictures is exploded. The gap between existence and essence disappears. What is experienced can never be told because words and pictures can’t even begin to comprehend the magnificence, the beauty of "Infinity in a grain of sand." Suddenly this seemingly godless world is nothing but God. The finite world is nothing but the clothing of Infinity. God is found under every rock. Peace is flowing forever like the Satilla River. Heavenly Fire is announced with each sunrise and sunset. Each breath is the breath of the Holy Spirit breathing me. Each word is about the Wordless. Each symbol of the moon points to the Moon. The Cosmic Christ is the truth behind each face. Each person is divine. Our suffering is just our ignorance. Yes, Jesus said that the thief would be with him that very day in paradise, and as for the rest of us he said that we are forgiven, for we know not what we do. We know Not. We Know Not. We Know Not. No wonder we have existential angst. We Know Not our own essence! Only a Snow Queen fairy tale from Russia could get the point across, which I now tell again here:

John Bradshaw

None of our self-image maps of the universe can match the actual territory of this divine creation. None of our shadowy images in the mirror accurately reflect what is there. We only see our mental programming, our existential "ignorance," in the shadowy mirror of human perception. We are so proud of our Information Highway and politically correct posturing; yet our stress continues. Hans Selye maintained that even stress can become valuable, eustress, or good stress.

Ah, yes, back to human anxiety. Even my theological idol, Paul Tillich, said :

Paul Tillich

Yes, basic anxiety seems to belong to existence itself, but is that just another piece of what we "know"? Infinity Theory maintains that we only know existence and that it is a misnomer. We only know our names, our words, our symbols, our maps about existence. We do not know existence itself, do we? We have a pessimistic map of the territory, but not a true map. If our map were true, for God’s sake, Jesus wouldn’t have had to die about it. Don’t kid yourself, he was killed about our human map of the world. He discovered the reality hidden by the mirrors of the mind. He re-discovered divinity everywhere. What he saw, he would not relinquish at any cost. We couldn’t stand the shock of his vision then, and we still can hardly bear it in the 21^st century. Pessimism still rules. The pain of the broken heart still rules. We don’t want to risk living and loving again. We are constantly struggling to find ways to rationalize being numb and dead in an "unjust, dangerous and sometimes boring universe." We are not yet ready to live at total risk, like Jesus did, are we? Are we ready to be the Cosmic Christ in our family system? In our cultural milieu? Are we ready to believe that Essence, Love and Creativity are the Bottom Line? Are we ready to stare our existential angst in the face until we see God there? Are we ready to move on from our known existence into our Unknown Essence? Are we willing to give up our precious maps and live in God’s Country? Everyone is dreaming of living in Florida, California, Hawaii, Arizona or the Bahamas except the people who live there who are still trying to explain to themselves why paradise isn’t working.

Jesus discovered the Door to Paradise in a remote desert area called Palestine, which was under the ruling thumb of the Roman Empire. When he announced his discovery of paradise, he was ridiculed as being the poor uneducated son of a working class carpenter from a hicktown named Nazareth. Yet have our modern departments of philosophy and science gotten beyond our academic preoccupation with existence to Essence Itself? Have we even discovered our ignorance, much less our wisdom and divinity? However, I will say that we have discovered our Shadow and some have even ventured to discuss synchronicity and a courses in miracles. Many are beginning to question our maps of human consciousness and a few pioneers are exploring the forbidden territories of human divinity and the universal immanence of God. A few have even asked if it’s all God.It’s too late to close Pandora’s Box now because all of the world’s ills have escaped and the only thing left to explore is Hope. Any such exploration, however, must include the mechanics of human perception and map-making, as well as our assumptions about existence as we "know " it.