Delaying fundamental inner work until another time is a common practice. It can be tempting to falsely supplant doing the inner work (particularly dealing with emotional patterning), with the arrival of a particular event or achievement. When I get that new job. When we move to France. When I lose 30 lbs. When the kids leave home. When I find the perfect partner. “Then I’ll be ready!” If and when these events do occur, another event is summoned up to once more project the time for self-examination into the future. When I’ve retired. When I’ve read the complete works of Shakespeare. When I’ve got $250,000 in the bank. When I’ve learned to play the glockenspiel. And so the years roll on. This is untruthful. The time for the inner work is always now.
Continued deferment of the organic unfoldment of one’s spirit eventually results in a significant diminishment of self-esteem. The void sucks it out of people. Buried deep within the subterranean caverns of the psyche, a little voice repeats, “You are not following your true path.” This is the most terrifying murmur conceivable. To drown out these fateful tones, a persistent and sizeable over-riding pain is required. And this is exactly what people create, albeit subconsciously, by maintaining a highly dysfunctional element in their lives. It usually takes the form of a relationship, but it can take other forms, too, such as a particular environment, ongoing manipulated dramas, magnetized ill-fortune, or a psycho-somatically induced disorder.
With the dysfunction in place, all the resentment, anger, and pain that have accumulated from years of spiritual renouncement can be channeled into the object of dysfunction—the bitch, the bastard, the chaos, the pointlessness, the sickness, the soulless job, the evil empire. This distorted logic gives license for heedless self-indulgence.
This is perhaps the most insidious avoidance technique, and it can have ruinous consequences. As Nietzsche observed, “He who despises himself nevertheless esteems himself as self-despiser.” This gives a further insight into the mechanics of this ritual self-harming.
