This post is about the importance of overcoming adversity.
But the title is total click bait.
Haha.
Will I still share 3 things that improve with punishment?
Of course!
They’re at the end.
Building Resilience in a Soft Culture
There’s a whole world of overly macho, tough guy garbage that we’ve heard far too much.
This is not from where I’m speaking.
I’m speaking to the reality that we have very, very comfortable lifestyles. Let’s list some things:
- When you go “hunting” for meat at the grocery store, you almost never fail. Lions have a 25% success rate, by the way. And you didn’t put 10% of the energy they did to get their kill.
- You control the indoor weather. Most of the time, your body doesn’t have to work hard to cool or heat itself, which some people are saying have a lot of health benefits.
- You can get in a car to go where you want to go instead of walking; we are build to WALK A LOT.
- You have access to sugars, fats, and salts in levels human beings have never had access.
- Many of you can work from a chair and even work from home.
- You probably sleep on a soft bed, not a hard floor and not outside.
The list goes on.
Continue yours in your journal or in talking with a good friend.
How many comforts do you have?
Choosing Your Spiritual Friends Wisely
The Comfort-seeking Human
People often wonder how society has become what it is, but it is very clear to me that much of it is driven by a search for comfort.
The word comfort is frequently mentioned in so many places, including conversations around how much I wanted to pay for a mortgage–what was my comfort level?
We also talk about comfort through convenience, efficiency, and other things. If you go looking for this word and seek out which of your actions are based on comfort, you may be surprised how much this dominants your life.
And it makes sense.
In the natural world, comfort is rare.
Good luck finding a comfortable place to sleep in the high desert in January (it’s not yet 20 degrees Fahrenheit today as I write this). So seeking it makes sense because the natural world is constantly disciplining us.
But much of that discipline is gone.
Comfortable Thoughts and Ideas
It’s not just physical comfort we seek;
we seek psychological comfort as well.
We want to hear the same types of ideas and get the same types of feelings. We insulate ourselves from things that might challenge us psychologically, which is a massive problem on the spiritual path.
The ego is so busy trying to keep you
psychologically comfortable
that the truth has no way in.
Spiritual Truth and Paradoxes: Expanding Your Mind Beyond Simplistic Ideas
And I mean you.
Not Steve.
Or June.
Or Mary Sue.
Or Jose.
You.
The ego loves to redirect issues at others without looking at itself.
This desire for psychological comfort makes us unable to hear the truth, and that weakens and sickens us in so many ways along with creating all kinds of suffering from not dealing with reality.
Sickening From Comfort
We’re in the midst of a sickening culture.
People are sick from the comforts of sedentary lifestyle.
They are sick from the comforts of processed food.
They are sick from the comforts of social media without having in-person daily interactions with people with whom they are strongly connected.
Social media is socially-distanced connection;
Lots of it is not healthy for humans.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that people are physically sick and there’s a “mental health” pandemic. Those things were going on already. Trying to make ourselves comfortable is part of what makes humans sicker.
Facing Discomfort on the Spiritual Path
Inviting Healthy Adversity
Last night I went for a walk in 10 degree Fahrenheit weather (-12 Celsius if you want to know, 273 Kelvin if you really feel like nerding out).
I did not particularly enjoy it.
I wore two sets of pants, and my legs were still cold.
Stop laughing in Canada and the Dakotas. I know; it’s not very cold to you.
But then, that’s because you’ve developed the resilience to be with such things. Your body is stronger for it.
Oh and stop cringing in Florida.
You can gain that resilience to the cold like any other human being.
The cold is one of many ways where we surrender to the need to different forms of healthy adversity. The spiritual path, as always, is about seeing reality.
And the reality is that healthy adversity builds resilience, strength, and self-confidence.
Becoming a Spiritual Warrior Class
Inviting the Right Punishment
Okay. You’re not supposed to be hurting yourself. I’m just playing with the word punishment today.
In fact, I have to momentarily take an aside to talk to the people who are over-using their bodies and are actually punishing their bodies using activities.
You are not better off for having a traumatic brain injury or torn muscles and ligaments.
This culture of adrenaline seeking, physical punishment through repetitious motion, and various forms of self-destruction is the other side of comfort-seeking. It does no good. It simply destroys the body, often through denying the nature of the body’s actual limitations.
But jogging, yoga, hiking, dance, and all kinds of diverse ranges of motion are great for our bodies.
Being around diverse opinions and backgrounds stretches our hearts and brains.
Taking the time to cook our own food instead of seeking the comfort of fast food is another kind of work we need to add back into our lives.
When we have the right adversity in our lives, we get healthier.
When we can handle a little adversity, we can handle more because life can always give us more.
Spiritual Awakening and Resilience
I wrote a post on the topic of resilience and awakening some time ago.
The Importance of Mental Resilience After Awakening
So many people have become so comfortable that they have NO RESILIENCE when they come to me. They bail out on the spiritual path at the moment of any kind of difficulty.
Others have limited resilience. Sure they can handle realizing difficult things about their mother, but when it comes to having difficult conversations about how they run their business, they’re done. We’ve crossed the ego’s line in the sand.
Except the ego has about a thousand lines in the sand.
That means the person progresses nowhere in releasing attachments because they are endlessly defending themselves in every direction.
Those lines in the sand ARE the ego attachments
And we have to cross them.
Repeatedly.
And we endure the ego grind.
Again and again, we learn to be resilient to our own emotional reactions. In letting them run out of energy, we become free of that suffering.
If we cannot endure it, we re-energize it and reinforce it; continuing our suffering.
Accepting Your Comfort Addiction
I’ve been using the term addiction a lot.
It’s a tough term to hear.
People don’t like it.
But we have to accept it.
We are addicted to comfort, and we don’t want to give it up.
We are addicted to comfortable thoughts, emotions, and body sensations, and we do everything to protect that.
The world is not comfortable.
Some of those challenges are extremely healthy for us.
On the spiritual path, dealing with our attachments is not comfortable. It can be extremely uncomfortable.
We have to learn to accept that. If we can be with the powerful emotions, thoughts, and sensations that come up, we can become free of them and more resilient to other internal struggles. In this way, we also become more resilient to external struggles around us.
This earned resilience serves us well in living healthy and inspired lives.
Now onto the 3 things that improve with punishment. 🙂
1. Cabbage
I don’t know if anything is as improved as much as cabbage when it is pounded until it oozes juices. Then you salt it, maybe add some seasoning to it. Stuff it in a jar and weight it down under its juices for about two weeks.
The result?
Delicious sauerkraut.
Try it with ginger and turmeric if you haven’t already done so.
2. Rose Bushes
When it doubt, whack away a bunch of branches off that rose bush. It’ll come back stronger.
3. Wheat
Beating the crap out of a wheat dough that has a sourdough starter mixed into it is a great way to get the gluten to bind together. That creates surface tension and helps your sourdough bread puff up with those nice big air pockets inside when you bake it.
Dietary Shifts and Food Needs in the Spiritual Awakening Process
