I'd like to continue in inquiry from last week, which was about how we can bring the power

of meditation to stress.

And I'd like to begin with one of the stories that some of you might remember that I

feel is one of the greatest illustrations of the phenomenon.

And this is a story of the magician Harry Houdini who traveled through Europe to all the

small towns and he would demonstrate how he could challenge local jellers to bind him

in a straight jacket and to lock him in a cell and over and over again he'd amaze and

astonish his audiences with how he could break out of a straight jacket and break out of

the cell.

But then he went to one small Irish village and ran into trouble because in front of a

whole flock of people he broke free of the straight jacket but no matter what he did

and he got tighter and more strain trying to get that lock open, he could not open the

lock.

So finally disappointed the townspeople left and the jeller, he asked the jeller, you

know, what kind of new complex lock was that?

And the response was, it was not, it's just an ordinary lock.

I just figured you knew how to do all these locks, so I didn't bother locking it.

In other words, he had been locking himself in and I think of this that his assumption

had been that he was locked in and so it is with us that we move through our day with

an assumption of a problem, you know, that there's something wrong that we have to figure

out.

And we tense up and we narrow our focus and we worry and we get busy and I mentioned

...