Resistance

photo: Irene Becker

The experience of resistance in life has many nuances.  It often comes from our human propensities to not want change or an unwillingness to move out of a comfort zone.  It also can manifest from an unknown part of ourselves who knows better, who is waiting, not willing to act just yet.  These sublime aspects of ourselves are a mystery very often.  Why not take that advice given by a loved one, it makes sense, is well meaning?  Why skip that daily walk today?  "Why" does not seem the appropriate question, but "where" is that sense of resistance coming from perhaps the more expansive approach. The "why" question to resistance is an open and shut, black and white, brief and easy dismissal of myself.  The "where in myself" approach produces a quiet, possibly still opening for further inquiry.

"Where in myself" is another direction. It drops me down into a deeper layer of the possibility of an understanding and the unknown that is resisting.  It is not a question to ruminate on (although that temptation is ever present).  It's a question that begs for more of me to be present with it.  It begs to just Be. There is rarely a cognitive response to "where", but a more fuller experience that unfolds if one can stay with it.  The problem is I don't stay with it.  Once the window of the the walk I am resisting has closed, I go on to the next thing.  Or after the initial  dismissing of the advice has transpired, I move on.  What is of value in resistance is the staying with it in a fuller, experiential way.

To stay with the resistance would mean to bring a subtler, more quiet attention to it, even if I have to move on to the next thing.  Staying with resistance means allowing the resistance to drop into the great unknown, the black hole of myself I have some practice already going to (hopefully).  The "I don't know" place that probably has some tension and frenetic energy waiting for me.  Because of my previous experience in this unknowing place, the tensions can be more minimal.  Possibly, it is not so frightening; perhaps patience may prevail.  I can even be intrigued to find myself there, knowing it won't be as endless as previously feared, that a time being in the dark also will inevitably change.

Who in me resists?  And who asks that question?

I am not as willing (I have resistance?) as I was to assume self-deprecatingly that it is the automatic, lazy, "sleeping", fearful or weak self that resists. It would be superficial, partial and truly automatic to maintain that position. This organism is dimensional.  How could I possibly know this if I limit the interest I have of it to trite write-offs.  Yes, it is automatic.  Yes, it often takes the path of least resistance.  And yes, a part of me is absolutely unforgiving of that.  It is this lack of forgiveness, the propensity to judge she who resists that keeps the bigger understandings from me. There is no room for the scary black hole to emerge, the "where in me" questions to exist.

Often in the healing moment working with others, there is a palpable trace of resistance present; of the next action to take, or comment to say.  It is powerful.  It is potent. It is a moment full of energy.  The middle ground.  The Unknown.  The moment of resistance brings me back to the present and what Is. I have come to fully respect the resistance that can be occasionally present in another.  The energy of the healing wants to move forward, but there is resistance.  The client is not ready, the client is fearful.  So, let it be.  In the holding of that, there is plenty of worthiness to be had.  It is not a missed opportunity.  Everything in its own time. Resistance is to be respected if for no other reason that it is a voice needing to be heard.