The Real Enemy: Chronic Tension and Mental Fog

The Real Enemy: Prolonged Tension and Mental Fog

The endpoint of Marx-Zhuangzi psychology is to make money through play. Its opposite is neither playing nor making money.

This is also an old acquaintance of ours, the real “enemy”:

Chronic, prolonged tension and mental fog: sustained tension and high pressure + fogginess in body and mind.

1. Tension: anxiety, overthinking, anticipatory anxiety, entanglement in karmic obstructions, harshness toward oneself, self-doubt, self-attack.
2. Mental fog: inefficient study and work, no connection with the five elements or oneself, poor rest, and difficulty eating, sleeping, and playing well.
3. The pain of mediocrity: the suffering of being mediocre and foggy + the inner friction of refusing to allow, or disliking, one's own mediocrity and fogginess. The id loses connection; the ego wears itself down.
4. Mental energy: continually wasted and depleted, with no way to recover and maintain a surplus.
5. Running aground: thinking spins its wheels, and life's momentum gets bogged down and stranded. Trapped in a karmic field, unable to break through.

The Malaise of Inner Friction Under Capitalism

Precisely because the wider environment is fiercely competitive and does not allow mediocrity or mental fog, it ends up forcing people to stay tense, unable to relax or rest.

This is how capitalism and elitism manufacture losers: they require you both to lose and to accept that the fault is yours. They turn blame inward, individualize social problems, and intensify self-attack—destroying people and crushing their spirits. This is how they maintain order.

Alienation suppresses human needs.

The Key to Responding

1. Stop all narratives of striving, elitism, and seeking externally; accept mediocrity and mental fog. Otherwise, you are merely sustaining the ego's fantasies and the inner friction of the superego acting as an overseer.
2. People heal naturally. Recovery and awakening happen naturally.
   a. Confidence in natural healing is innate wholeness and the unity of humanity and nature.
   b. The key is the dissipation of karmic obstructions.
   c. Signs of improvement include the ongoing healing of inner issues, the restoration of a natural connection with the five elements, living in the present, being yourself and loving yourself, and bringing your focus back to your main path.

Where This Comes Down to Practice

Living in the present, taking good care of yourself, getting yourself into a good state, and maintaining a surplus of mental energy.

1. Leave metacognition and meta-level decision-making to your energized self.
2. Live in the present, accept and allow, gather your mental energy, and seek truth from facts.
3. Return to the realm of the Dao. Unconditional unity of humanity and nature.

The Malaise of Spiritual Practice

In my own case, because of my “master” ego, my “assignment-doer” ego, my “night watchman” ego, and external pressure, I forced myself to be mindful and refused to allow myself mediocrity or mental fog. As a result, I made myself tense and consumed by inner friction, mediocre and foggy.

When the restless mind comes to rest, that itself is awakening.