In laboratories men have tested various creatures and have come to the scientific conclusion that: “Nobody likes stress” --   not mice, not monkeys, not man,
and even though he cannot get outside of himself (nor this universe)
to make an objective determination,
man is world wide convinced  --  beyond any uncertainty  --
that he lives under a special stress like none other,
(just believing that is so is enough to cause stress, don’t you guess).
 

And what could be more stress laden than a curse –
which is precisely what myths from immemorial eras tell men in all areas
that they are suffering under --  a curse from the gods.
Such tales varying in their version of what brought on the curse,
and how it specifically is manifest in men’s lives,
(which are all irrelevant distractions to entertain children listeners),
the significance is solely in the  saying that there IS an actual something  --  a curse:
some pressure, burden or stress which men constantly feel, but cannot clearly define,
thus have they conveniently called it a curse.

The story has survived the ragginess of history and retained legs into
contemporary times under the color of the Psychological/Sociological trauma  --
a more scientific curse for modern man.
Rather than the curse issuing from supernatural forces,
the trauma-curse is said to be caused either by the untoward behavior of one’s
familial up-bringers or one’s political/economic conditions,
but in both instances, it is a stress that is real, and brought on by
influences outside the person and beyond their control,
(meets all the requirements of a curse,
[and there are even splinter notions of the curse:
tales that have men unwittingly slaving for the benefit of unseen extraterrestrials,
(divine curses for the science fiction buffs)]).
 

But you can forsake mythology and academic psychology, and look solely to yourself: even if you do not favor the word, curse, consider:
do you feel like you live under some sort of constant pressure which,
if you stop for a moment and mentally dissect your life,
is separate from the commonly identified, everyday pressure men say they experience from their job; their family obligations; their financial obligations;
their commute to their job; world wide political and economic uncertainties, et al;
if you are one of the few capable of being clear eyed amidst the normal conditions
in which ordinary men squint and look at things catiwonkered,
there is no question but a persistent, pervasive and undefined pressure
lays all around your life;
it is there when everyday conditions go well, and there when they are bad;
it is a pressure totally apart from circumstances, and has nothing to do with your job, your debts or anything else identifiable in life;
it is just there  --  always impeccably there.
And by now your old Uncle Elmer in The Attic may be saying that it is nothing more than the natural stress of wanting to live:
the manifestation of the survival instinct,
but man looks at other animals with the same drive to live and sees no sign of any similar stress;
they live AND die with nary a whimper or any indication that
even in the throes of death they feel, stressed-out, or cursed.
(Whether this be correct or nay --  so man perceives.)
 

So if it is not a supernatural retaliatory curse;
and is not a persistent under-consciousness stress of
psychological or socio/political conditions,
what is this omnipresent, non specific & inescapable pressure under which
all normal men feel themselves to live?
(Here, by the by, is yet another quaint undervalued quirk of homo superceedius:
his asking total strangers such quite personal questions as this!   --   strangers  --   like his own thoughts.)
 

No ordinary mind, regardless its intelligence or training,
can fathom the situation that gives rise to the question:
ordinary minds (as above noted) do offer answers to the question –
but answers are not understanding, and on major holidays when they have a few quiet moments alone, everyone is aware that none of the answers really answer anything and pacify the original agitated curiosity.
Only an outlaw mind --  one fresh and expatriated from man’s
routine mental city residency can fathom from afar this fog that surrounds life
in that normal neural abode;
only one free of jaundice can diagnose the yellow ill,
and only a man not under the curse and hold sees what it is.
For those with such a man’s potential, this pressure, this burden, this stress so natural to man is not (of course) a curse, but is more properly thought of in terms of a hold,
(in the beginning when it must be thought of in words). 
 

and more accurately termed for present expediency: got a hold on my mind,
for the type of simple survey possible for the few reveals,
(as vague as it may at first feel), that this pressure is not experienced directly by your body;
it can, if the matter is not seen to & comprehended, be ultimately felt in muscles,
but the original target of the pressure is that about man which has no sinews.
 

Truth is, while ordinary men can say they want to be free --
they are not built to tolerate it;
if their minds were suddenly made so  --  their sphincters would evacuate the premise.

Breaking-the-hold is what the secret lives of the unknown few are really about;
note that the whole scam includes: knowin' and doin’;
first you gotta know about the hold;
you gotta know what it is; what it is specifically applied to;
how it is manifest and experienced  --   then it's on to the easy part – the doin’  --
the breaking-the-hold, (“easy” is an insider’s little joke inasmuch as compared to ever knowin’ about the hold adequately enough to undertake to break it,
the breakin’ IS easy  --   it’s just that it is almost  impossibly-easy).

It’s easy to say: “Hey, jump off that cliff” -
and it’s easy for the person to understand what: “Jump off the cliff” means,
but actually jumping is something different from the talk describing it,
but then again  –  that’s fair enough  --  all talk is is talk --
no matter whether it’s about feeling blue or blue chip investment strategies.
 

If you are one of the few who once upon a time just happened to stumble across the idea that said: “While man believes he is free and awake, he in fact lives captured in a dream, but through certain efforts can awaken from the dream and live free” and were instantly overwhelmed by it, indeed, joyfully embraced it like the never known, long lost true friend or parent whose here to now, untitled absence had been a gnawing hollowness in the-depths-of-your-soul (as the popular saying goes),
what you discovered was some previous man’s realization of the hold, and his experience of breaking free of it, no matter how temporarily it may have been.
In the right person  --  just a moment of freedom from the hold is all it takes to 
never again be its complete, compliant captive.