I took an ice bath today. Some days it’s relatively easy to do the ice bath. Today was not.
For me, the cold water represents, among other things, the hardest think I can think of doing — at least within the realm of things that are hard yet practicable.
Standing at the edge of the hardest thing a person can think of, there’s often fear. There’s a longing for comfort. There’s a small voice that says it’s okay to turn around, to walk away back to the known, comfortable world.
Sometimes I listen to the voice, but sometimes I can vanquish it, or pay so little attention to it that it has minimal bearing on what I might do. On days like this one, however, the voice is strong and bids me return to that which is easy, warm, and dry. Today, rather than try to vanquish the voice or to ignore it, I allowed it to go. I accepted that there was fear, and a longing for comfort.
I climbed into the ice bath, unsure of how far I would go. The voice came back, this time telling me that it was a good job to have come so far, though I had not yet fully submerged, and that it would be fine if I decided to get out, dry off, and call it good for the day.
This voice, maybe it is the same one that fills the head with ideas of grandeur instead of allowing what might be most genuine to flow. Maybe this is the voice that says not to keep trying or to try at all. Maybe it is the same voice that spoke to Jesus in the wilderness, during what may have been his dark night of the soul.
In the Bible, the voice is ascribed to the devil, and maybe we envision some red-skinned, horned, cloven-footed beast whispering or hissing temptations, or maybe we picture something else entirely, but I contend the devil speaks to us all, and we may also see it simply as our own thoughts, emotions, or longings.
The devil, as it did with Jesus, tries to lure us into mediocrity, or to tempt us into the kind of selfishness that perpetuates suffering, sometimes giving way to our own dark nights of the soul. Sometimes it can seem so enticing to choose power for oneself, even if it means dominance over others.
Standing in the cold water today, the voice came back and said those things, that it would be fine to quit. It presented the fear, the longing for comfort. The realization I had was that it would be okay if I didn’t vanquish the voice, if I wasn’t able to ignore it so fully that it had no sway. I decided that fear was fine, and then I sat down in the water, submerged to the neck in the icy water.
At the point of submersion, the breathing response takes over, and it can become simpler, or more obvious, to be present; a wandering mind does not mix well with an ice bath, generally.
After the focused breathing gives way to adaptation, a battle of sorts has been won. Not a battle against the cold — which, in Wim Hof’s words, is a harsh but righteous teacher — but a battle against the devil’s cull, against the addiction to comfort. It’s a quest for discipline that has been won, or at least a step of it.
I lifted myself out of the water — feeling good, grateful for the experience, knowing there are still more lessons to learn — until next time.