How Do You Respond When Life Doesn’t Go The Way You Want It To Go?

I was recently watching a movie where one of the characters posed the question: who are you when the chips are down?

This is such a great question because it shines a light on how we’re responding to things that don’t go according to (our ego’s) plan. And honestly, it’s just the question that I needed to be mulling over given how I’ve been responding to certain situations in my life lately.

It’s easy to be happy, grateful and loving when life is going the way we want it to go, but what happens when things change course? It’s our response to situations like this that define where we are in our path to dis-identify from ego.

If happiness, gratitude and love are not rooted in a deeper part of our being—the part that knows and experiences these qualities regardless of what’s happening in our external world— our ego is likely to rear its ugly head.

The bigger our attachment is to having something go a certain way, the bigger our emotional response is going to be if/when it doesn’t go that way.

The reason being: our attachment sets up a huge resistance to what is actually taking place.

This intense non-acceptance of what is sets up a negative pattern of thoughts and emotions that begin to wreak havoc over us…to the point of affecting our immune system. We can literally make ourselves sick (not always, but sometimes…especially if the resistance becomes chronic).

We become sad, angry, resentful, bitter, jealous and anything in between.

Our inner healing is to transform this pattern of non-resistance. Sometimes this can be done immediately by letting go. More often than not, more work is needed. The ultimate goal is to move from resistance to acceptance…from (attempted) control to surrender.

This lesson sucks to learn, but it’s needed if we’re ever to fully walk out of ego’s grip. And it’ll keep croppin’ up until we finally learn to surrender. At least that continues to be my experience.

With my own resistance on ultra high lately, my mind and emotions have been going to crazy town. Sometimes I feel so overrun by the internal pull of what’s going on that I can’t find my way out of the maze…at least not initially. However, without fail, the wave of darkness eventually passes.

In fact, that’s one of the tools that I rely on…knowing that it’s a temporary wave that will eventually subside. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to simply ride these cycles, trusting that they will pass. We have to be willing to address the root issue; otherwise, we’re allowing ego to persist in its dormancy.

The root issue is that our happiness, gratitude and love are not rooted in a deeper part of our being—the part that knows and experiences these qualities regardless of what’s happening in our external world.

Our inner work is to activate this deeper part of our being in our conscious awareness by bringing attention to it. Resistance snaps our attention away from this aspect of our being and keeps us identified with knowing ourselves as our ego, whereas acceptance allows us to drop more deeply into this part of our nature.

Be willing to accept all levels of what you’re experiencing (i.e., the actual events that are occurring and the emotions that you’re experiencing regarding your initial judgment of those events). Acceptance must occur on both levels in order to begin the healing process; otherwise resistance is still in motion.

Acceptance stops ego’s momentum from continuing to roll forward and build on itself and it also creates space for light to begin coming in (a necessary ingredient to the healing process).

To move into a space of acceptance, I recommend finding a place where you can be alone, undisturbed. Then, choose your tool: conscious breathing (slow deep breaths), prayer, meditation, silence or some combination.

The goal is to begin quieting the ego-mind so that you can move from experiencing yourself as your ego (i.e., full identification with all of its crazy thoughts and emotions) to experiencing yourself as the observer of your ego.

As you begin to identify with the observer, all of the energy that was previously fueling ego begins to dissolve. Light is allowed to enter the chaos and bring natural order to it via healing. To borrow a phrase from Eckhart Tolle, this process is “reclaiming consciousness from the ego”, which is the goal of healing.

The more that we’re able to do this, the closer we come to fully walking out of ego’s grip. I realize that anytime we’re dealing with ego, it can be frustrating…and tedious…and even more frustrating. But for the sake of your sanity (and humanity’s) stay the course.

Don’t wait for times of trouble to reach for these tools. Make prayer, meditation and silence a daily practice. The accumulation of doing so will help anchor you in a state of consciousness that fosters knowing the deepest part of your nature…the part of your nature that doesn’t react from fear when the chips are down.

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To responding with love (even when the chips are down),

Shanna

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