What would you do if you weren’t able to cope?
Most of us survive rather than thrive as a dull river of misery flows slowly through the background of our lives.
Most of us do everything we can to avoid crises, because crises takes the dull pain and ratchets it up to a sharp, repeated stabbing. A crisis really gets our attention like nothing else. The pain gets intense – and then, when we’re in enough pain, we change our lives.
So the ego doesn’t want crises. It wants the dull river, the background roar of boredom, depression, hopelessness, and anxiety.
We become habituated to this river. It becomes “the way things are.” Oh, we say, “that’s just life.” We even laugh and joke about it: “Life’s a bitch, and then you die.” We are resigned to our fate.
The ego rubs its hands gleefully. This is perfect. Suffer, baby, suffer; the ego feeds on it. As long as we can endure a lifetime of low-level suffering, 60 or 70 years of mediocrity and subtly hating ourselves, the ego is in heaven.
Your ego thinks you killed God and so it wants to punish you with a lifetime of Hell followed by Oblivion. It has set up this entire world to fulfill that singular purpose.
But this world can be a Heaven or a Hell, as we make it. And that’s where coping comes in.
Coping is anything that lets you get away with continuing to endure the emotional misery. For some people, eating is coping. Alcohol or drugs are coping. Pornography, compulsive sex, romance novels, gossip magazines, trashy celebrity blogs are all coping. Smoking weed is coping. Watching movies can be coping. Playing music badly can be coping.
Obsessing over your weight, body size, shape, or appearance is coping. Being “spiritual” and always going on “spiritual” retreats and continually reading “spiritual” books can be coping. Gotta get your fix.
You can use almost anything to cope. The common thread is that you are using something in the world to keep you playing a small game, to keep you focused on the superficial and the profane rather than the Sublime and the Infinite. You are not playing your biggest game. You are not working from your Highest self.
You’ll know you’re coping when you get a low-level feeling of satisfaction, when your emotions are temporary dulled by whatever activity you chose.
You’ll know that it’s coping because you’ll have to do it over and over again, every day or many times per day. It does not bring a lasting peace. Once is never enough. Bet you can’t eat just one.
Whatever substance you’re eating or drinking, whatever activity you’re doing, you’re pouring into the bottomless pit inside of you that is impossible to fill because it empties into the dull river of misery that just keeps flowing through your life.
The ego loves this! You recognize that you’re just coping and it won’t bring lasting fulfillment or true peace, and you feel trapped, but you still can’t change it, even having this knowledge.
Now more suffering compounds your suffering. Knowing that you are enslaved, without any hope of breaking out of your slavery, is an even deeper hell than when you were ignorant of your chains. Now the ego is really delighted.
You go on like this, and you get more and more pain. You contemplate a lifetime of this and you become anguished. You envision yourself on your death bed, tubes coming out of you, skin melting off your skeleton, weak-souled and watery, regretting a lifetime of wasted opportunities and unfulfilled potential. Money never made or spent to help lift up those around you. Mountains never seen, rivers never forded, wildflowers never smelled, people never loved. What a waste.
The pain becomes unbearable. What comes next is crises. And crises is what saves you.
You are overloaded with pain and you go into crises. Now you have enough motivation to change. Now you have the courage to die to part of yourself, so that another part can be born.
Now the ego is in trouble.
You change your identity. This is what happens in successful resolution of your crises: you allow your identity to change. The part of you that is incapable of changing dies. The part of you that is too afraid to let go dies. You talk to it, you soothe it, you give it Love, and it slips quietly into Oblivion.
Now your Success Wall falls. Now a huge amount of energy flows back to you – energy that was being used to hold up your success wall, and energy that you were soaking up with your coping mechanism.
Now you have that extra energy. And that extra energy makes it easy to take the actions that this new person would like to take. Now, you have the energy to be great.
Now, you don’t have to cope. You don’t need that crutch.
By the way, the ego isn’t dead. It’s been defeated – for now. It slinks away with its tail between its legs, but it will be back. There will be more battles. Be vigilant.
Sometimes you can bring on a crises by taking your coping mechanisms away. Stop coping, and feel the pain more sharply. Let it build up until it triggers a crises. Resolve the crises, help the small part of yourself die, and allow your Greatness to be born.
But be forewarned: your success at this will tempt you back into coping behaviors when things get uncomfortable again. (They will.)
Resist. Do your best to stay free of coping behaviors. Let yourself feel the sharp pain of failure or disappointment, instead. And when you feel the pain, you will feel it freely and fully, as an enlivening bite that keeps you Present to the moment, rather than rushing to get a new coping mechanism to “take the edge off.”
Don’t take the edge off. The edge is all you have. (Tweet this) The edge is what allows you to cut through the world. It’s what allows you to create, and to make things Great.
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Also published on Medium.