If you keep staring the devil in the eye, you’ll only see the devil
People are so often afraid to open the Door to a ‘painful’ observation about themselves or their reality. They want to go on living in the matrix…
The devil they need to confront lies on the other side of the Door, yet they continue to leave it closed, afraid of what they will see.
The natural next step is being able to confront the devil head-on. The devil in this case might be past trauma, it might be the fact that you are not happy, that you are not satisfied with your life, that you’ve come to question your religious beliefs or your political views, or a great many other things.
We sometimes struggle with the part that comes next.
Once we’ve opened the Door and seen a new devil, we grow comfortable and used to that Room. The longer we sit with our demons, the more they come to define our identity.
Our ego, who I always characterise as a snarky journalist, one always looking to write a biased story, loves to have an excuse for why we can’t be more of ourselves. So the ego, that snarky journalist, says, ‘look, you see here! This is why I can’t improve! It’s because of this devil!’
If you keep staring the devil in the eye, you’ll only see the devil
It’s time to open the next Door. It’s time not to deny the devil, but to move away from identifying with it.
Don’t identify with a medical diagnosis, a mental health condition, a racial label, a nationality, a job title, or any single thing. Don’t identify with your problems.
You must transcend them, which means, you must open a new Door, knowing they were part of your journey, but have been left several Rooms behind.
You might begin by taking yourself less seriously
How do you put your journalist at ease? By laughing at yourself. Not by trying to combat the story, but by avoiding the need for the story altogether.
Say to yourself, ‘look at me, this silly monkey with all these fears who has been through these shocking and traumatic things. Look at the silly things I’ve been running around and doing.’
And then you can breathe more easily. Know where the devil is, look the devil in the face, but don’t continue to stare at your pain, as so many of these ra-ra spirituality and personal development junkies invite you to do, gathering to scream at the top of your lungs, singing kumbaya and needing to indulge in this radical nonsense.
Release it.
Go on to the next Room, and leave a Door between you and the devil. You can’t live a peaceful life in the Room your devil hides.
You must go past it.
