The sense of I, or of being, is the foundation of psychological stress, not physical stress. The moment we take ourselves to be an individual separate from the pure conscious awareness that we are by nature, stress, fears and phobias arise. Why? Because the sense of "I" is an artificial state that requires effort to maintain itself. This effort becomes a habit, or Samskara, that allows all other habits or Samskaras to form and take root. Nevertheless, it requires an effort to maintain. Thus, all of us, at certain times of our lives, find ourselves in our natural state of consciousness. It is a simple, peaceful and happy beingness - it is not a state as it is the foundation of all states. Moving out of the beingness is the same thing as indentifying with Ahamkara or the "I".
Many people are running around today giving "satsang" telling others that no effort is needed to return to their natural state. Sounds nice, no effort to remove all fears, stress, phobias and problems. Sorry, these people are either ignorant or lying. It is true that our natural state of pure awareness is without problems or pathology (Caraka Samhita, Sutrastana, Ch 1, 56). However, it is untrue that we can stop the powerful Samskara, or habit, of taking the shadow as the object (the "I" as conscious awareness). To remove this wrong habit, or wrong concept requires two steps:
1. understand the problem
2. make the effort to change the habit
On the vulgarized path of modern commercialized "satsang" people often understand the problem, but few or none make the tremendous effort needed to destroy the habit of indentifying with Ahamkara.
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