Years ago when I first started to dabble in spiritual concepts and worldviews I stumbled upon an idea that has stuck with me ever since. The issue at the time was that the guy mentioning the idea was a self-described channeler, allegedly becoming the voice for an interstellar entity relaying spiritual information to humans on Earth.
As an atheist I would have never listened to one of these lectures in full, but since I had already had psychedelic experiences that were gnawing away at what my ego had always perceived as "certain" I was hungry for new ideas, and to sort them for their validity. So I gave it a listen.
Pain and suffering
One of humanity's constant themes seems to be the proliferation of hardship and suffering. We feel pain, we feel disappointment, stress, challenge. Life can be full of experiences that seem too mighty to overcome, experiences that make us want to give up and just throw the towel in the face of setbacks and adversity.
And this is where the rubber band analogy comes in.
Imagine your level of progress in life as a rubberband under tension. It wants to move forward, it wants to expand and grow - but often we feel that certain situations or aspects in life are holding us back from progressing, stretching the rubber band back further still. New hardships can make us feel like we are moving the wrong way which often becomes a perceived obstacle in itself because we are endlessly judging where we "are" and comparing it to how much farther ahead we thought we would be already.
A mundane example would be a devout vegan who just can't manage to drop cheese off his menu and who hates himself for not being able to do so.
He is frustrated about his choices, he thought he was already "long past cheese" and his (spiritual) ego is complaining how irrresponsible he is for continuing the enslavement of cows through his pesky inability to be strong in the face of enticing cheese toppings.
Or whatever the ego narrative is, it's always something clever like that, well-disguised guilt about something that is important to us.
Relax, the jump is inevitable
We perceive "relapses" as a type of failure that is very concerning and as a sign that we are going backwards when in fact we might be getting ready for a quantum leap.
Pain and suffering will stretch our rubber band back - the tension rises more and more until it becomes almost unbearable. But opposed to most people's idea of pain this point of hardship could be the final drop that propels you forward by leaps and bounds.
A rubber band that has been thoroughly stretched back snaps forward when let go quite automatically - there is no extra effort needed. The mere accumulation of all the pain and judgments will be enough to propel you stages ahead of where you were if you can only find a way to let go of holding on to the pain and thus trusting in life to take you where you need to be. It's not that you weren't ready before, it's just that more pain was needed to finally dare to make the jump because your comfort zone has gotten that uncomfortable.
Celebrating hardship
This simple concept can become a GREAT tool for the mind, whenever you face hardship. Yes the situation may suck, yes it may be tough and unexpected and worrysome. But in the back of your mind the rubber band analogy will remind you constantly that even more pain now will only tense the rubber band more and more until you can manage to let go. Think of it as a "success-timebomb" waiting to explode.
Through this analogy I tend not to get swepped away by hardship, suffering and challenge as easily anymore simply because the accumulation of these negatives might be exactly what I need to finally reach the next stage of my path. I have experienced it many times.
So whenever you feel down, challenged or disappointed you may try not to get rid of the pain, but in fact stretch that rubber band a little more and smile while you do so.
Reaching the point of "don't care" can be a great liberator in itself, as is often taught in Zen. Reaching that point and seeing that life continues regardless can grant us great liberty in welcoming pain and challenge into our life, and to put negativity in its rightful place as a propellant.
The greater the move to the negative, the greater the inevitable move to the positive.
Bad experiences have thus lost much of their power over us, as we no longer see them as threatening obstacles to our progress but instead as a catapult to propel us forward when we are ready for the shift, despite or maybe because of all the pain that won't hold us back any longer.
Part 1: "Permission Slips"
Part 2: "Handling Adversity & Multiplying Prosperity"
Part 3: "Mileage Over Results"
Part 4: "Your Ego is not your Enemy"
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