Resistance is a thing among us. We resist. We are, in fact, really good at it. We don't notice when we don't want to. We don't think when we don't want to. We don't listen when we don't want to. We don't even do what would come naturally for most when we don't want to (like eat when we're hungry, drink when we're thirsty, pee when we have to go, etc.). Most importantly, we don't speak the truth or do what's right when we don't want to. We are resistant. We are rebellious. We are J-U-S-T-P-L-A-I-N-D-U-M-B when we allow our fear(s) to trump our ability to think straight and do the right thing!
In therapy, I will often use the analogy of someone who comes to us and cries out, "I'm starving! Whatever you have to give me to eat, I'll take it! I haven't eaten in days! Please help me before I pass out!" So you run to your pantry, make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and pour a glass of milk. As you hand it to your starving person....he looks at you and replies, "What? No tuna? And I don't do milk! Don't you have any Diet Coke?"
Yep, like that. Looking a gift horse in the mouth and complaining about its bad breath syndrome!
If you're going to resist as a lifestyle, please don't involve the rest of us. It's so annoying! And painful for us to observe and/or experience with you oh by the way!
Resistance is not a new concept. People were resisting over 2,000 years ago just as they are today. Where we get it wrong is that when resistance works to actually save us in some way, we erroneously believe the practice can still save us when it has the opposite effect. Kind of like pain killers. They work until they start causing new and more intense pain than the original pain you began taking them for! That's how the practice of resistance as a lifestyle can really and truly ruin us and screw up our own lives worse than we could imagine possible.
Even though your personal suffering may be extremely intense and chronic in nature, which is worse? To stay as you are experiencing the same degree of suffering day in and day out? Or are you willing to actually "risk" making one or more positive changes that will mitigate your suffering to some degree? Well, as motivational guru Tony Robbins once said, "Change happens when the pain you are in is greater than the pain of change." Or words to that effect ;-) However he put it, he is correct. Without opening yourself up to making positive changes by actively working to overcome your resistance, you are pretty much doomed to remain stagnant and suffering just as you are now. Not a good look. Not a good lifestyle.
My "big" reunion from high school is coming up this fall. When I think of all the King and Queen Bees and Wanna Bees from that era, there are those who truly maintained and/or achieved their desired status because of all the work he/she/they invested in themselves since high school graduation. The "work" in this case may have involved spiritual growth and maturity, educational goals and pursuits, career aspirations, getting married and creating a family, charity/volunteer work, achieving optimum health status, maintaining and/or improving one's physical appearance...and I could go on. Good for them. There is no reason to ever stop doing your work, because we are all works in progress until we die.
Then there are those of us who graduated from high school all those decades ago...and who are even bigger train wrecks than we were back then. How sad is this reality? We may think and believe we did a whole lot of work, but instead what we did was choose the easy path to feeling good fast and without a clue as to its long term effect(s) on our own minds, bodies, and souls. Don't misunderstand, we all get dragged through the dung in this life; many of us have tasted that dung since our own infancy. Others, when our parents unexpectedly divorced...or a beloved parent/family member died...or when we were repeatedly abused and/or neglected by people who were supposed to love us. Doubt all of this when major mental illness and/or traumatic brain injury is present and...oh well! No time to think about any of that! Yes, I do understand how we can go from A to Z in a bad way without doing much else about our present state of existence....
YET......yet we still get to choose how we are going to "cope" with ourselves and the world around us in ways that are not supposed to add to or complicate our present suffering---but instead actually work to decrease it and/or eliminate it to a significant extent. And do we do what's right when we are resistant by nature? Hell no we do not! Because why should we? We have become comfortably familiar with our own bad selves and blah blah blah de blah we know better than you or anybody else knows or does anyway. Spare. Me.
Our fear(s) are not our masters unless we allow it/them to be. Besides that, our pride and arrogance feeds the beast of our own resistance because we really do believe we are smarter, better, more sensitive, and definitely more "right" than anyone else on this planet---including the Real "G" God who created us. (And as I have heard many times before, "What me? God!? Are you kidding? All that He did for me was let all this *$)_@ happen to me to *($_@# me up!")
How's that way of believing and living been working out for you so far?
Resistance as a lifestyle is toxic. You may have done it a whole lot to survive your childhood as I know I did...but it doesn't work now all that well when you aren't still stuck in the mire of your traumatic past with no escape hatch (as was true back then). Even if your own trauma-filled and disappointing past extends all the way back to your early childhood...or happened seven years ago when you found out your spouse had been cheating on you since you got married. Or your child died. Or you got diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Etc. etc. etc. Again, we all get dragged through the dung in this life. What are you going to do about getting OUT of the dung instead of continuing to allow yourself to be dragged through it now? And so often, by your own choices!
Stop resisting and start your work to get your act together. It's possible to heal.....to recover your real and authentic self...and to grow/mature from the inside out as the spiritual being you have been designed to be.
Start your work. It's never too late unless you are dead. Then it's too late. Just saying.
Until next post....