The Sacred Practice of Cringe Equanimity

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It’s a blessing that life is so embarrassing since that gives us many opportunities to practice the art of Cringe Equanimity, a sacred spiritual practice that brings about ultimate liberation. Any kind of shame can be used for Cringe Equanimity, any of the rich bouquets of ignominy you carry inside. The fresh green pungent shame of remembered misdeeds, the smoldering pain of recalled lies we told for no real reason. And, even more numerous, perhaps, are the constant examples of the embarrassing behavior of others, all the gross conduct on, perhaps, TikTok, which makes our faces crumple in revulsion.

Cringe Equanimity is easy. It can be performed in any posture, in any setting.

When we look deep into what makes us cringe, we find ourselves. We find out what our real principles are. We see beyond the comforting narratives we polish and deliver in company. We stop deceiving ourselves. We find that, though, in some sense, we may, as we say, be living for “truth” or “love” or “securing the bag,” we are also in constant flight, constant horror of being that particular thing we’re not allowed to be. All of us are acted on by three sources of gravity: holiness, pulling us upwards, convention, pulling us sideways, and cringe, keeping us moored, and thus we flail in space.

You always learn most by looking where you’re not allowed to. And cringe is that in the personal domain. It seems lethal; the initial contact with cringe feels like a warning glance from Medusa, informing you that your flesh is about to be petrified. But this is the lie that must be addressed. Shame cannot actually destroy you. You can’t actually die of it. Its initial touch is awful, but what lies beyond is the invigorating plainness of unveiled being.

Anyway, let me show you something. This is a video that was going around in the initial days of the invasion of Ukraine. People were more upset about it, seemingly, than the invasion itself. Massacres are one thing. But behavior like this is quite another. This is really unacceptable.

AnnaLynne McCord @IAMannalynnemcc

Dear Mister President Vladimir Putin…

Let’s say some things about her performance. Yes, it might be a little crass for this woman to suggest, as tanks are rolling into Ukrainian cities, that the real problem is that she didn’t breastfeed Vladimir Putin. Perhaps this is not a moment that calls for loose doggerel delivered in Poetry Voice. Maybe this is bad timing.

But why does that matter so much? Why does it injure you—or, if not you, since you are a saint, why did it so injure the average viewer?

Perhaps we cringe at this because we’re terrified of our lack of agency, and what we can cling to, in the face of this lack, is the role of the Appropriate Mourner, the person who emits the right noises about international tragedies—perhaps this a shock collar reminding us that, whatever our reactions to the news cycle are, they’d better not be in poor taste. We had better be concerned enough, the right way, loud enough for other people to hear, but not too loud.

Perhaps we cringe because this woman is beautiful. People love hating beautiful women. How dare she be both so attractive and so naive? Perhaps we feel a little bitter that we haven’t been granted the same resources, the same bold innocence that tends to obtain in those who live in a bubble of ambient desire. If we had this face, clearly, we would use it more tastefully, right?

Perhaps we sense that she has a point. Maybe all we really need is, actually, moms. Maybe it’s really the case that the most urgent problem is attachment disorders among powerful men, who look to fill the big holes inside them with the thrill of territorial expansion. And even thinking about that is embarrassing. There is something cringe about being the person who even considers the sad childhoods of dictators. Better to say something sophisticated about refueling a convoy or whatever. Maybe we just don’t want to think about our relationships with our mothers.

I don’t know, really. I’m just speculating. Look into your cringe and find out why it’s there. Try to impartially understand its nature. If this doesn’t make you cringe, find something else that does. It shouldn’t be too difficult.

That’s half of the practice, this first glimpse. The other half, the second step, which often only takes a couple of terrifying minutes, is melting the cringe away. What makes cringe melt is love. But not love of the warm and fuzzy kind, not the feeling-tone of romantic love. You don’t buy cringe a valentine or kiss it on the lips. Instead we are speaking of love as an existential stance—the practice of opening to another entity entirely, meeting it on its own terms, appreciating it like a noble sommelier finding the beauty in 7-11 wine. Look at the cringe, feel the pain, then look beyond, at what the pain is telling you, all with all of the warm equanimity you can muster. 

The objectionable remark you made during that romantic dinner. Was it really so bad? Maybe it was actually that bad, maybe you did say something cruel and offensive. But can’t that be okay, that it’s like this, that you are a person who says stupid things? Why have you kept that memory around, still dripping with acid? Is it so that you can ensure a kind of strained, resentful safety, by lulling yourself into tongue-tied silence, quietly lashing yourself every time you even think of being outrageous? Could you find this terror lovable? Could it be funny, beautiful, charming, that you torture yourself like this? 

Feeding love to the cringe is the key counterintuitive step. It is exactly the opposite of what cringe demands. Given that cringe is an anti-fragile aversive behavioral control mechanism, it tries to make you think it’s immortal. It asks you not to look behind the curtain, where, as in the Wizard of Oz, you will find something fumbling, adorable, and not at all formidable.

Cringe is a prison. It is the prison of being reasonable. When we cringe at ourselves, this is the signal that we’ve stepped across the boundaries of our inner enclosures. Less cringing, less enclosure. When we cringe at others, this is the signal that they remind us of the attributes we reject in ourselves. Less cringing, less rejection.

There is an end to the practice of Cringe Equanimity. Day by day, you can melt it off. You really can let it all go. As you unburden, you will find grief, desire, joy, spaciousness, luminosity. All of the emotions hidden under your contempt. It is possible to, one day, flinch away from nothing, to find nothing about yourself unwelcome. If considering that eventuality is painful, look at that pain directly.