Sorry This May Be Too Personal, But I Was Wondering, Since You Give Great Advice And Have Such A Good

Sorry this may be too personal, but I was wondering, since you give great advice and have such a good grasp of the human condition, do you ever fall into the same follies of your askers? Do you have trouble applying the theoretically “correct” action to situations even though you understand dynamics so well? How do you reconcile such a high degree of self-awareness with sometimes making mistakes anyway? I just want to know if it’s possible to reach a point where life is easy because of knowledge

This is a common line of inquiry that comes up when one reaches a certain point in development and I’ve touched on it a little here and there. I can tell you about the experiences of many, not just my own. Throughout my life, I’ve encountered a lot of people who might consider themselves “spiritual truth seekers” in terms of wanting knowledge or answers that would, in one way or another, make life easier. I divide these people roughly into two camps: 1) those who had all they needed materially but were still deeply dissatisfied with life and didn’t understand why, and/or 2) those who sought relief from their long-running psychological issues (perhaps depression, addiction, abuse, etc). I cannot claim that I was as deeply dissatisfied with life as them (though I had my unhappiness) or that I suffered as much as some had (though I’ve had my pains). I was more of an observer because I am interested in studying how people construct meaning in life. Many of them had spent a lifetime reading books, listening to teachers/gurus, attending workshops, communing with fellow seekers, roaming the world on spiritual pilgrimages (if they could afford it). Yet, with all the claims I heard of having “learned so much” on their journey, for many, their problems never really went away or got that much better, and the act of “seeking” itself came to define their identity as it gave them purpose in life when they couldn’t quite find what they were looking for. I won’t criticize these people because I empathize with their motivation; doesn’t matter who you are, pain and suffering are not easy to deal with and it makes sense to seek a remedy.

The more time I spent around such people, examining their ways, beliefs, values, and emotional motivations, the more I realized that many of them were not truth seekers but actually “light chasers” - they wanted the “light” of knowledge to overcome the “darkness” of suffering. Some people may argue that “light” is the same as “truth” because “truth shines a light”. In theory, that may be correct. However, in practice, light chasers actually live in delusion because they only want to acknowledge what is “good” or “positive” in life and hope that this will somehow magically sweep away what is “bad” or “negative”. They believe in what is essentially “mind over matter”, that you can somehow wish away the badness. This often results in splitting oneself down the middle in order to get rid of the “bad” half. They construct a persona that is, for example, full of “lovingkindness” and strive to be it, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to be a better person, but what happens in those inevitable moments when you are most definitely NOT full of lovingkindness? I believe that how a person behaves in those moments is when you finally see the full truth of them; you not only see the light that they hope to be but also the darkness that they try to suppress. If you only understand the self in terms of “light” or “strength” or “intelligence” or whatever “positive” trait, it is like trying to know what the moon is by looking only at the lit side, the result is that your self-knowledge is only half of what it could be and there is another half that you disavow and thus have no awareness of. 

I’ve witnessed groups/communities of so-called “enlightened” people devolve into infighting, jealousy, backstabbing as soon as real disagreements arose, on par with office politics in any toxic corporate environment. Then the members would withdraw in extreme confusion and existential crisis, their entire world shaken because they could no longer avoid the fact that they were not the enlightened people they believed they were. Light chasing easily turns into a destructive impulse because you eventually want to violently “force” or “cut” the bad things out, to exorcise what you define as “evil” in yourself and the world. The world is unforgiving in that it does not hesitate to reflect the truth to you, which is why light chasers often confine themselves to like-minded social bubbles. But, eventually, a light chaser is confronted with the reality of darkness and they feel compelled to eliminate it in order to preserve the illusion of light that they have dreamt up. The more you try to push away darkness, the more it creeps over you until it consumes you in your weakest moments (this is what inferior grip is all about).

Therefore, if you want to pursue self-development, you cannot leave the dark side of yourself unexamined. Some people thank me profusely for giving them hope for the first time in a long time, while others accuse me of being too negative/critical and tell me to f**k off. I fully own both assessments and both are true, because I personally believe that you cannot achieve real lightness of heart without confronting the real darkness of the soul. Dancing around a problem or trying to transmute it into something more palatable to one’s sensitivities is just stalling or evasiveness. I believe that the real learning begins when your sensitivities get triggered by uncomfortable truths about yourself because then you are facing down your dark side. However, not everyone is at the stage of ego development where they are psychologically stable enough to handle seeing the truth of themselves, so I often say that the ideas on this blog are not for everyone. If you had approached me at 15 and revealed to me the full extent of my dark side, I might be in a prison or mental hospital today - there is a natural course of development that should be honored.Most people stubbornly want to see themselves in a positive light because ego is a fragile thing and it is much much easier to build heavy defenses around oneself than to forge real self-esteem. To really grow as a person requires nurturing strength and humility, a very tough combo to pull off. Strength is the willingness to bear the burden of knowing darkness but without succumbing to it. Humility is fully admitting ignorance so as to be completely open to learning the truth.

Self-development is not the same as striving for a perfect ideal. Thinking that you know what is “perfect” is like claiming omniscience, it is somewhat arrogant to believe that you (and only you) know what is the best path or the best way. You can always try your best or work to the best of your ability, but it is not useful to believe that you know what is The Best. Perfectionism is just another form of light chasing because it involves building a persona to hide your cracked self-esteem and/or trying to bully the world into being whatever makes you feel good in the moment - all about ego. Perfectionism easily devolves into a destructive impulse that violently strikes at whatever one deems “imperfect”. There is a subtle difference between trying to contort yourself or the world into an image of perfection versus trying to become the person you are meant to be. The former is fakery or delusion that makes almost everything into your enemy, it is a constant struggle against the tide as you deny darkness, and it leads to psychological fragmentation and a hateful attitude as you gradually succumb to darkness. The latter is discovering the truth of who you really are in this world, becoming mature enough to know that light and dark are two sides of the same you, and it leads to a deep sense of wholeness and empathy.

Jung basically believed that confronting individual darkness was the solution to collective evil. You are both the light and the dark. If you see the wisdom in this statement, there is nothing to “reconcile” because the dark will not feel as though it “haunts” you unless you only want to see yourself in the light. For instance, the prospect of making a mistake will not loom over you and produce ever-present fear and insecurity unless you desperately strive towards the image of “a person who never makes mistakes”. Ironically, the more you fear making mistakes, the more likely you are to make mistakes because your mind is too riddled with dark emotions to see clearly. When you fear making a mistake, you fear seeing your imperfection, you even fear feeling fear, then all of your effort is spent on trying to keep your inner darkness away - your ego becomes a black hole that sucks away your mental energy. When you accept that bad exists, then your mental energy is freed to think about how to handle it, as opposed to wasting energy on things like regret, rumination, complaining, or beating yourself up. As you say, my advice to others proves that I am well aware of the many pitfalls that people (which includes myself) can trip into, in fact, I could not possess some of the knowledge I possess without having fallen flat on my face time and again. Why is falling a “bad” thing if these situations yielded me so much useful knowledge? Because falling is painful? Yes, but not all pain is bad. Some kinds of pain are self-inflicted and some kinds of pain disappear quickly if you understand why they appeared, so it is necessary to become more discerning about the different kinds of pain, but you cannot do that if you just shove all pain away into the darkness at the first hint of discomfort. If you don’t appreciate that the pain of making mistakes can teach you invaluable lessons, then perhaps you may say that you really have failed.

You ask whether there is a point where knowledge makes life “easier”. If by “easier” you mean some ideal version of life where you are able to do everything perfectly the first time every time and nothing ever feels hard, then the answer is “no” because you are light chasing and denying the reality of human nature and what it means to live a physical existence. If by “easier” you mean that you are more capable of handling difficulty, disappointment, and failure, then the answer is “yes” because, when you no longer fear these “dark” things, your being is lighter and your mind more open to seeing and handling situations objectively. In living life fully, you cannot avoid every pain, challenge, mistake, setback, or problem, but you can learn to face the truth confidently, without undue fear, resistance, or self-loathing.

“There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it positively refuses to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life’s significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.”  – William James