It seems to me we all graduate into adult life with miniature–or perhaps large–hells within us. We put boundaries around it. We push it from consciousness and push it from our daily lives. That is not who we are, not who we choose to be (hopefully, although some clearly do).
But we have to stay alert. In Christian notions, the Devil, temptation, is always there. You have to fight it. You have to keep the devil in the hole, as Tom Waits puts it.
This is misguided, in my view. God has not asked us to observe some strict and unbending moral code predicated on our abdication of all normal human instincts.
What is needed, rather, is an allowing: establishing a conscious contact with these feelings of rage, and anger and jealousy, and fear, and humiliation, and shame,. and violence, and despair, and sadness and disconnection, and AMPLIFYING THEM. This is Kum Nye. You find something small and pay attention to it. You merge it with the breath. You expand it and amplify it, and it becomes a cloud that eventually travels beyond you and becomes irrelevant.
I have discovered a new personal development method I am testing and will share if it bears the fruit I expect.
But I wanted to say that the goal of psychospiritual development is to erase the past, and to encounter and interact with what happens as it is, in the present; to bring nothing to the table, to have nothing within you which is “triggered”, to be perfectly present, perfectly responsive, perfectly perceptive. Life is fun in such situations, even when difficulty knocks on the door. You do not trigger despair: you trigger RESOURCES.
Most people lead lives of “quiet desperation” as Thoreau memorably put it. But it is possible to dispose of all unwarranted anxieties, and to do the OPPOSITE, which is learn to cultivate happiness, contentment, confidence, power, engagement, control, agency. Not only are you not acted on then, but the world, life, becomes a game, a game you can often win. That is what we all should aim for.