How does one cope with all the white noise in one's head?
Whether it's anger or craving or jealousy or fear or depression, the idea is not to try to get rid of it, but to make friends with it. Or so Pema Chodron suggests in her book, The Wisdom of No Escape.
Making friends means to get "to know it completely, with some kind of softness, and learning how, once you've experienced it fully, to let go."
It does not mean (am I glad to hear this) beating myself up for being a bad person. Nor does it mean bolstering myself up by saying, "It's good that I'm this way... Other people are terrible, and I'm right to be so angry at them all the time."
How refreshing is this. So, our hangups are our wealth all along!
According to Chodron, our neurosis and our wisdom are cut out of the same cloth. If you throw out your neurosis, you also throw out your wisdom.
Is it really possible for me to befriend my hangups? To make friends with my quick anger at those who tell me what to do with my life, or my smouldering envy at those who dare to speak their mind, those who are prettier, slimmer, smarter etc?
When I am down in the dumps, can I remind myself of Chodron's words, "There isn't any hell or heaven except for how we relate to our world" and that "Hell is just resistance to life.
When I encounter a deadlock and lose my lust for life, can I remind myself of her words that "Life's work is .. to let the things that enter into your circle wake you up rather than put you to sleep". In other words, "to open, be curious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything that comes along, to get to know its nature and let it teach you what it will. It's going to stick around until you learn your lesson."
As Chodron says, you can manipulate your world until you're blue in the face to try to make it always smooth, but the same old demons will always come up until you have learned your lesson.
Drats.
