Tag: resistance

When strong experiences come up, and my personality doesn’t like it, at least two things can happen.

I can resist these experiences. Try to make them go away. Distract myself. And what I try to push away only wears me down. It requires a great deal of energy, and it tends to break down identifications as well – slowly and uncomfortably.

Or I can welcome them. Allow them. Be with them, as they are, as if they would never go away, with kind attention. The experiences work on me here too, but now in a way that seems more nurturing and healing. There is more receptivity. An open heart. Even gratitude.

So strong experiences work in me no matter what. If I resist them, they tend to break or wear me down. If I welcome them, there is an invitation of healing and maturing of my human self.

This is most easily noticed with strong experiences, but really happens all the time – even with (apparently) slight shifts into resistance or allowing.

Experiences usually appear one way when resisted, even subtly, and is revealed as something else when fully allowed.

In the first case, there is some discomfort, even if the experience is desirable to our human self. And in the second case, there is not.

As we begin to discover and explore this, there is a tendency to want the shift, to use allowing as a way to make the experience shift out of discomfort. But this is just another way of identifying with resistance. In wanting a shift, I am caught up in resistance to the experience.

(There may still be a shift, even if we are identified to some extent with resistance, but it is not full, so there will be some dissatisfaction there, and this is the feedback needed to discover a more full release.)

After a while, we may learn to more fully allowing the content of experience, as it is, including resistance and resisted, as if it would never change. In this way, identification with content is more fully released.

And as part of this, we begin to see, feel and love experience as it is, independent of its content. There is a taste of the equality of all experience. It is all just content of awareness, and it is all awakeness itself. It is awakeness forming itself into its own content.

As this happens, there is a shift into fully allowing experience because it is awakeness itself. There is no need for it to change.

I noticed sadness come up today, in a surprising situation. (Although I could also see what triggered it.)

And then the shift from a slight resistance and discomfort to fully allowing and a sense of sweet nurturing fullness. The same “substance” which initially appeared as sadness, discomfort, a disturbance, something I wanted to go away, shifted into this sweet fullness.

There is nothing new here, but it helped me see that any disturbance is its own antidote, in a certain way. Whenever I feel sadness, anger, pain or whatever else it may be, the “antidote” is in the same substance when the experience is fully allowed.

What I want when I resist an experience is exactly that sense of nurturing rich fullness that comes when it is fully allowed.

This is just one of many examples of the alignment of what my human self really wants, and noticing what I am as awakeness. Fully allowing experiences, including any resistance that may be there, gives my human self what it really wants, and it helps what I am to notice itself more easily since identification is released (somewhat at least) from content.

When I explore allowing, I find two forms of it.

There is awareness allowing its content, which is always and already here. Awareness already allows any and all of its content. It is built open. It is the unmanifest allowing the manifest.

Then there is the allowing which is experienced as more conscious and intentional, This one involves a release from being caught up in resistance, and also any beliefs and identities which does not allow particular content. This one is not always around, and is actually not fully here until there is a release from beliefs altogether.  It is the manifest allowing the manifest.

We can relatively easily notice both here and now.

First, can I find any place where awareness resists its content? I can find resistance, but this resistance too is content and awareness allows even resistance.

Then, what happens if I ask myself can I be with what I am experiencing right now? How is that different from when I actively resist experiences, when I identify with resistance and the beliefs and identities which fuels resistance? When there is an active resistance, what happens when I simply notice that awareness already allows?

Also, when there is an active resistance of experiences, can I see the difference between the inherent allowing of awareness, and the active resistance within content? What happens when there is a more conscious allowing, and the allowing of awareness is reflected in an allowing within its content? How do I experience each of those two, and the transition from one to the other?

For a few days, there has been no impulse to do any form of practice (apart from The Work last night, and then only because I went to a group doing it together).

So then, there is always just being with what is, as it is. Allowing it, as it is, for its own sake.

And this being with allows for quite detailed explorations of resistance.

Seeing how identification with resistance (taking it as an I) creates a sense of I and Other, a center in space, something substantial at this center, drama and struggle, something to protect, separation and alienation, physical tension, being self-conscious (conscious of a particular image presented to the world), and so on.

And then seeing what happens when identification with resistance is lightened up on, released even to some extent… a reduced sense of split between I and Other, of a center, of something substantial at the center, of alienation and separation. And instead, a sense of ease, clarity, a wide open field with less or no boundaries.

And finally, in exploring the effects of resistance and absence of resistance, seeing that resistance achieves nothing apart from a sense of drama. It is a spinning of the wheels. And that the clarity that comes when identification is released from resistance is fertile ground for actions in the world.

It may seem that we need resistance and drama to act, and action may indeed happen in the midst of resistance and drama, but it often has a sense of contraction and drivenness about it, a lack of receptivity and clarity. Without the resistance, the same actions may happen, but now from more receptivity and clarity.

And of course, if there is not even this being with, that is fine as well. If attention gets caught up into the insides of stories, and there is identification with resistance, that too is OK. That too is the temporary play of the awake void. That too is a part of the landscape.