Keep Going

People often ask: “If I understand my unhealthy patterns, why can’t I change them?”

I reply: “Because wisdom isn’t a realization, it’s a relationship.”

People think wisdom is the eureka moment when you see, for example, that you’re repeating your parents’ dynamic in your own marriage. But those kinds of revelations, while illuminating, aren’t truly liberating.

Liberation comes when you change your relationship to pain. If you know the causes of your pain but still hate it, you’re still stuck to it. But if you develop a relationship of curiosity and compassion to your pain, you can start to let it go.

In our culture, we’re very addicted to being right. When life’s hard, we’re more interested in someone telling us it’s not our fault than in changing our relationship to the difficulty. But the moment you cling to being right, you stop growing. Being right is like lying down in the road rather than continuing on home.

When people would study meditation with Ajaan Sao, he’d never tell them they were practicing correctly. He’d just say, “Keep going.” Because he wanted them to work on their relationships with their minds, not get stuck on being right.

“Keep going” is actually one of the best encouragements you can give yourself. First of all, you’re never doing as badly (or as spectacularly) as your ego thinks. More importantly, if you keep moving forward with whatever you’re working on and try to do it with more love and care, most of the kinks will work themselves out.

If that doesn’t happen, it’s time to ask for help. Because, of course, our relationship to inner difficulty is modeled on our external relationships. This is one way that Western psychology, with its over-emphasis on individualism, fails people whose healing depends not just on boundaries, but on learning to develop empowering relationships.

And yeah, it’s not easy, and not every relationship works out. But there’s no path to healing without different relating. Just keep going. Your ability to hold your own process with tenderness is a sign that it’s already working.

Painting by Frances McGowin