Those relatively new to psychological and/or spiritual work often get so enthused with their initial breakthroughs (and alliances with others in the same arena) that they allow their passion for continuing such work to obscure their inevitable resistance to it, in much the same way that new lovers may allow their romantic intoxication to obscure what they don’t feel so good about concerning each other — that is, until the blunt intrusions of reality do their thankless job, deflating the lovers’ fusion-bubble.
Our resistance to our self-work and spiritual ambitions is, however, not really blocking or obstructing us, unless we let it do so — as when we identify with it, waving its flag in the face of our finer leanings. » Read more: Befriending Our Resistance
So where do we go from here?
Not so long ago there was no Earth. Not so long from now there will once again be no Earth. All in the blink of an I. Human beings come and go far far more quickly, of course, however much they might shine and extend themselves in their almost impossibly thin sliver of time, and however much they might resist the perspective implicit in the first two sentences, and however much they might deny that we very likely are a transitional species, regardless of evolutionary ambitions to the contrary.
Some men, recoiling from hardness, get stuck in softness and hypertolerance, drawing their soft-shelled carapace ever inward, ever tighter, squeezing the power out of their breath and the heat out of their anger and the meat out of their lust, trading in their power for approval and security, chronically caving in to prove their harmlessness, confusing surrender with collapse and emotional flatness with equanimity.
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Personal Fear
Imagine this:
Can sanity and insanity be distinguished, and if so, how? And by whom? And, furthermore, assuming that sanity and insanity actually can be distinguished, can those possessing supposed — that is, culturally sanctioned — expertise in making such a distinction actually do so?
In everyday speech pain and suffering are generally used interchangeably: to suffer is to be in pain, and to be in pain is to suffer. Suffering and pain are also synonymously conceptualized in much of psychological literature and spiritual practice. Nevertheless, pain and suffering differ greatly from each other. Yes, to suffer is to be in pain, but to be in pain is not necessarily to suffer.
It seems to be getting a little less cool to be cool.