21 Sep 2013

Resistance: Our Best Frenemy…..

 

Resistance: Our Best Frenemy

 

I have been conspicuously away from blogging for many months.. I have been busy designing online workshops and touring with groups; working in my practice, singing, traveling and oh yes! I also have been maybe experiencing some blocks about blogging. 

 

Resistance….resistance. resistance! It comes up everywhere in our lives: in our creative pursuits , in our love relationships, in our friendships, in business, in play. 

 

Resistance is a universal enemy and reliable friend!

 

Without resistance there would be no process, there would be no growth, there would be no development of consciousness or of humility or of compassion. Resistance lets us know a lot ( without soft pedaling anything! ) about our fears, our anger towards our past, our self doubt and our confusions.

 

Without resistance, what would we ever learn about ourselves or others really? Unless our resistance has become so entrenched that we are imprisoned and cannot find the key. I think the key is always somewhere to be found. The question is just how and where to find it.

 

Well, what I learn about resistance in all these areas is this.. or this is some of it anyway:

 

I and many of us, are most blocked at the start of things; resistant to going to the class, to asking a lover why he said something that sounded off; to reaching towards a friend who seems aloof and not around; to sitting at the computer to write; to leaving the house on a rainy day… The list could go on for all of us.. right ?

 

 Once I am there, I feel myself and I know where I am and I can allow myself to feel compassion for myself and the other….which unleashes ideas, forgivenesses, connection and understanding and energy and fills me with spirit and light!

 

Fear of rejection, failure, nothing to say, criticism, loss and feeling unloved is only a short list of why resistance can be so tenacious. Sometimes we would rather lose an amazing love relationship at the start of the journey because of a small misunderstanding, than actually feel vulnerable enough to talk that moment through and become close.

Or to avoid ever starting the book we have in us because we are so afraid that what we write will be boring or simply bad or that it might be wildly successful and then what would we do!! Or we let the friendship go rather than risk a fight or  being disappointed or being disappointing….

 

Yes, we all have some baggage and so we become sometimes frozen in our own order.. the order that we think keeps us glued together. The order that came into being because of resistance. The order that often involves withdrawal or staying in the box.

 

From a book I love, “ The War of Art “ by Steven Pressfield 

“ These are serious fears. But they’re not the real fear. Not the Master Fear, the Mother of all Fears that’s so close to us that even when we verbalize it we don’t believe it. Fear That We Will Succeed. That we can access the powers we secretly know we possess . That we can become the person we sense in our hearts we truly are. This is the most terrifying prospect a human being can face, because it ejects him at one go (he imagines) from all the tribal inclusions his psyche is wired for and has been for fifty million years. We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are. More than our parents/children/teachers think we are.”

 

RISK……RISK IT….. RISK IT …..

Just show up and let it flow and see what happens….

 

 

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