We all have our own strategies for coping with the pain of life. It wasn't until I gained clarity on my approach that I became interested in what Jesus taught and how it applied to my life.
When we are in pain, our heads can lead us toward a solution that can be categorized as masking, building, or destroying. Examples of masking include compulsive eating or ingesting drugs; building may mean achieving at work or shaping your body at the gym; destroying examples include habitual gambling or even self harming. Over time, we will develop a preferred go-to behavior or two.
The most popular religions provide ways to accommodate these characteristics as well. One can build themselves up through their religious identity and can also destroy themselves and others through extremism. The religious person is also given rituals and techniques to mask their pain such as through prayer or scripture study.
None of these strategies can cure the affliction we are faced with; they are all coping mechanisms, evidenced by the simple fact that pain and suffering eventually returns to our lives. Nevertheless, the head keeps us coming back through its endless rationalizations and justifications. Thought cannot free us from these half measures and non solutions. It is thought that lead us there to begin with.
While the head pulls hardest for our attention when in pain, there is another option, which is the heart. The head offers comfort, falseness, and failure; the heart offers pain, truth and success. It is the heart that lets us know that we are still in the same place we were when we started, that the pain we currently feel is the same pain from the beginning.
Our heartache leads us to the truth. The drug addict doesn't free himself when he listens to the voice in his head that says he'll quit after his next high. He quits when he is silent and heartbroken. The one that tries to fix the problem with their head is always struggling, always in recovery. Once we are able to see the emptiness of our coping strategy through our heart, it becomes useless to us. The head, being dominant over the heart, will then guide us toward another go-to strategy until our heart can once again free us.
Eventually, if we are lucky, we gradually become more aware and more confident in trusting the heart. We see these strategies as basically all the same -- all coping mechanisms existing within the domain of the head -- and we reject all of them. When pain revisits, we refuse to be pulled into our head. The effect is we become more self aware. We realize the obvious idea that all pain originates within the body. This causes us to be more internally focused rather than externalizing our pain.
I believe Jesus is describing this process when he says in the Gospel of Thomas the following:
"Whoever has come to know the world has discovered a carcass, and whoever has discovered a carcass, of that person the world is not worthy." (56)
"Whoever has come to know the world has discovered the body, and whoever has discovered the body, of that one the world is not worthy." (80)
When we observe our pain within, we become more aware of our internal coping mechanisms and similarly how fruitless they are for solving the problem. We notice the unconscious tendency to escape from the pain. We notice the impulse to protect ourselves using anger. We notice how strong this pain-avoidance mechanism is and how much it dictates our personality and everyday behavior. We become less and less tolerant of these unconscious protective measures and feel more and more rebellious as the tension grows each time we experience suffering or unfulfillment. Finally, the next time we are in a pain state, we consciously resist our protective impulses and we bring our awareness into our pain. If we continue is this direction long enough, continue to be guided by heart over head, we will be cured.
I believe Jesus is describing this approach when he says the following:
"For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." (Matthew 16:25)
"Whoever is near me is near the fire, and whoever is far from me is far from the (Father's) kingdom." (Thomas 82)
I am not trying to convince you of the benefits of this approach - that would be trying to use the head to guide which will fail. I would encourage you, the next time you are in despair, to be conscious of how you are going about resolving the problem. Are you in your head? If so, consider bringing your focus to your heart and body.
When we are in pain, our heads can lead us toward a solution that can be categorized as masking, building, or destroying. Examples of masking include compulsive eating or ingesting drugs; building may mean achieving at work or shaping your body at the gym; destroying examples include habitual gambling or even self harming. Over time, we will develop a preferred go-to behavior or two.
The most popular religions provide ways to accommodate these characteristics as well. One can build themselves up through their religious identity and can also destroy themselves and others through extremism. The religious person is also given rituals and techniques to mask their pain such as through prayer or scripture study.
None of these strategies can cure the affliction we are faced with; they are all coping mechanisms, evidenced by the simple fact that pain and suffering eventually returns to our lives. Nevertheless, the head keeps us coming back through its endless rationalizations and justifications. Thought cannot free us from these half measures and non solutions. It is thought that lead us there to begin with.
While the head pulls hardest for our attention when in pain, there is another option, which is the heart. The head offers comfort, falseness, and failure; the heart offers pain, truth and success. It is the heart that lets us know that we are still in the same place we were when we started, that the pain we currently feel is the same pain from the beginning.
Our heartache leads us to the truth. The drug addict doesn't free himself when he listens to the voice in his head that says he'll quit after his next high. He quits when he is silent and heartbroken. The one that tries to fix the problem with their head is always struggling, always in recovery. Once we are able to see the emptiness of our coping strategy through our heart, it becomes useless to us. The head, being dominant over the heart, will then guide us toward another go-to strategy until our heart can once again free us.
Eventually, if we are lucky, we gradually become more aware and more confident in trusting the heart. We see these strategies as basically all the same -- all coping mechanisms existing within the domain of the head -- and we reject all of them. When pain revisits, we refuse to be pulled into our head. The effect is we become more self aware. We realize the obvious idea that all pain originates within the body. This causes us to be more internally focused rather than externalizing our pain.
I believe Jesus is describing this process when he says in the Gospel of Thomas the following:
"Whoever has come to know the world has discovered a carcass, and whoever has discovered a carcass, of that person the world is not worthy." (56)
"Whoever has come to know the world has discovered the body, and whoever has discovered the body, of that one the world is not worthy." (80)
When we observe our pain within, we become more aware of our internal coping mechanisms and similarly how fruitless they are for solving the problem. We notice the unconscious tendency to escape from the pain. We notice the impulse to protect ourselves using anger. We notice how strong this pain-avoidance mechanism is and how much it dictates our personality and everyday behavior. We become less and less tolerant of these unconscious protective measures and feel more and more rebellious as the tension grows each time we experience suffering or unfulfillment. Finally, the next time we are in a pain state, we consciously resist our protective impulses and we bring our awareness into our pain. If we continue is this direction long enough, continue to be guided by heart over head, we will be cured.
I believe Jesus is describing this approach when he says the following:
"For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." (Matthew 16:25)
"Whoever is near me is near the fire, and whoever is far from me is far from the (Father's) kingdom." (Thomas 82)
I am not trying to convince you of the benefits of this approach - that would be trying to use the head to guide which will fail. I would encourage you, the next time you are in despair, to be conscious of how you are going about resolving the problem. Are you in your head? If so, consider bringing your focus to your heart and body.
