This famous dissatisfaction felt when events do not unfold as we would like…
As I write these words, I’m sitting at the end of my kitchen table on a hot, dusty Monday afternoon.
Spring heatwave of this jagged time.
Donald Trump guilty, Israel bombs…
Sawtooth or splits?
The world visibly lacks flexibility, we cling to the jagged teeth.
But deep down, that’s it! It is for flexibility of mind that I write this column.
In Larousse, psychorigidity: lack of flexibility of intellectual processes and inability to adapt to new situations.
We can see quite well what it is. I will not address cognitive problems here, but rather the tidal wave of negative opinions and dissatisfaction that is hitting our society head-on. This is my plea for a flexible mind. And I believe the best way to achieve this flexibility lies in a much deeper place than the intellect. After all, “opening the mind is not breaking the skull,” my friend Ariane Moffatt sang 20 years ago!
I feel more and more like I’m living my father’s life in reverse. For the record, Marcel was a secular Catholic priest until his late thirties, when he decided to lift his cassock and found a country! I arrived the third in a family of two. So for some I was “the accident”, and for my parents “the nice little surprise, you thing”!
Marcel’s spiritual background obviously stemmed from the New Testament, the hymns, the little Jesus, the lambs, “so bewitch”! And above all, the “holy” mass on Sunday. Of course we had to participate without complaining. But God knows we were grumbling inside!
So over time I developed an aversion towards the Church which led me to a complete withdrawal. What followed were years of music, rock’n’roll life, two children, a separation and bang! A desire to be serene. It was at age 33 (the age of Christ, as they say), during my first meditation class, that I developed a marked interest in spirituality1, or let’s say the inner life.
One of my favorite thinkers, Michael A. Singer2, disarmingly explains spirituality to a friend:
“Things aren’t going so well these days.
– How do you know ?
— Well, uh, I see it?
—So there is a detached part inside of you that is observing that another part of you is not doing well…”
It is at this precise moment that spirituality is born. As soon as you take a detached look at your little story inside you.
The English writer Jeff Foster uses the expressions your story a lot to name the ego, what you think you are, and who you really are to name your conscience or your soul. Note that the words used here are only guides to point the destination. “When the wise man points to the Moon, the fool looks at the finger3. »
So, if we dissect psychorigidity from head to toe, there is only one foundation left: individualism. There, don’t panic! Everyone tastes it. It is the I, the me, vis-à-vis life. For example, I observe that several of my friends react strongly and negatively when a trivial event changes the initial plan. Traffic, works, a storm, etc. As if the last 13.9 billion years of life should have adapted to us.
It is by defining ourselves as such that we feed the ego and the impression of having to control everything.
The opposite of this state is non-resistance. “Mickey” Singer cleverly says that stress is just the amount of resistance we put on what’s happening. So, flexibility of mind is born from letting go, from the acceptance of being part of a great whole on the surface of a small pebble which turns in an expanding universe. Each one is only a leaf from the same tree, a leaf which will eventually fall in the autumn of old days.
What are the major challenges of our time?
The distribution of wealth, wars, discrimination, mental health, ecology and many others. What is the common denominator? I will try to answer: individualism and its adjacent fears. Fear of change, of the unknown, of stagnating, of losing what has been acquired, of disappearing, etc.
Psychorigidity gives a false impression of strength, of holding on. Basically, it expresses a pathetic obstinacy of the ego.
“The wise man does not argue. » Very difficult to put this proverb of Lao Tzu into practice, but it is nevertheless the antidote to psychorigidity. When someone says something that doesn’t suit you, instead of jumping into the ring, humbly find within yourself the part of truth in the other’s statement. It is very rare that there is none and it is only in this area that real dialogue is possible. Generally, this defuses the situation and opens the hearts of both parties4.
“Get out of your way! » This is my favorite phrase these days and it applies as much to the mind as to the body. We all feel like we are our body and we have to control it. But this engineering marvel largely runs on its own and suffers more often than not from the stresses, emotions and control imposed on it. Loving your body and thanking it for being such a good vehicle is truly satisfying. Just like getting out of the way of our thoughts; strangely, when I give way to them, they immediately become silent.
Of course, I hear you groaning: “Another artist interested in spirituality… It’s Cormier’s turn to think he’s Harrison, Cohen or even the very tantric Sting! » I have no choice but to acquiesce. And that’s where this feeling of living my father’s life in reverse comes from. My children are grown up and I find myself preaching from town to village with my songs. Yes, I am becoming a yogi who really thinks about the Himalayas. Yes, I’m becoming “zen master J,” as my girlfriend affectionately calls me.
And yes, I am deeply happy.