Category Archives: Spirituality

Resistance

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I could feel it on the way to work today.  Resistance.  Not much, but it was an undercurrent playing in the background.  Yesterday morning I looked at my schedule for today and was pleased to find it was completely empty.  I had some things I wanted to do around the house in preparation for my out-of-town guest (arriving that evening) and having no clients would be fine.

Then someone snatched up the first slot of the day.  This would not have been any big deal if I was working at home, but I was on call from 9am to 4pm at the Hawaiian Experience Spa in Scottsdale. If I have to go in for a 9am massage, then it makes the most sense for me to stay at the spa rather than risk driving the half hour home only to be called back in.

As I drove in I acknowledged the resistance.  I had been trying to ignore it.  No sense feeling unhappy about the massage appointment when there was nothing I could do about it.  Still there was that undercurrent of not wanting to go in.  I wanted to have the day go my way.  That is really what it is all about.  I had a plan and I wanted it my way.

Running current through a material with high resistance creates heat. In this picture, a cartridge heater is glowing red hot due to resistance. Similarly, people with resistance tend to heat situations up.

Resistance is the greatest energy sap I can think of.  Resistance takes whatever joy is around and clouds it over.  When I speak of resistance, I am talking about energy that is just being used to fight against something that simply is. Sometimes the thing that “is” is something that cannot be changed, but other times it is possible to change the situation.

For instance, in my case, if I had seen the appointment and decided I didn’t want to do it, I could have called the office and asked for them to give it to someone else.  Instead, I decided I wanted to do it.  At least part of me wanted to do the massage more than I didn’t want to do the massage.  Rarely is any decision made with 100% of my being.  The resistance I was feeling was the drag the minority of me was putting up against the direction the majority of me decided to take.

That’s how it goes with resistance.  Many times I have found that part of me fights against something that “I” have decided to go along with.  Awareness is once again the key to peace.

I confronted the resistor within and affirmed my decision.  Then I turned my back on the rumblings.  The best way to get rid of unwelcome resistance is to focus on what is good and cultivate acceptance.

One trick I use is to “give thanks in all circumstances”. (A nice story about this can be found in my book, The Answers Are Within – Volume 1.)  I decided to believe that this day was being created in a way that really did serve me and all my needs perfectly.  This is an example of Reframing; another great way to get rid of resistance.  I chose to let go of my resistance (and these days it is easy for me – I’ve been practicing this for twenty years) and I resolved to be totally present for the massage.

How did it go?

Went great!  After the massage, I felt ready to leave the spa.  I trusted my intuition.  I decided to get an adjustment at My Chiropractor. When that was over, I decided to get some gas and then get air in my tires.  Before long, I found myself at home – still on call.  I opted to write this post and as I go to publish this I have made it through the day without being called back in.

So, actually a perfect day.  A nice balance of work and taking care of somethings I might not have done if I wasn’t “forced” out of the house.  But the true victory is not the positive outcome.  The true victory is that even if I would have been called back in I would have been peaceful.  Victory over resistance is a gem.

Reflection:  What am I resisting?  What am I saying, “No way” too?  Is it possible to be in faith and resist what is?  How is internal resistance and “drag” different from action directed at change?

What’s left after unveiling

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https://i0.wp.com/www.spiritualteachers.org/images/broberts_pic.jpg?resize=200%2C244

 

“Whatever we care to call the ultimate reality, we cannot define or qualify it because the brain is incapable of processing this kind of data.”

— Bernadette Roberts

 

The process of unveiling will eventually bring us in contact with ultimate reality – a reality we cannot define or talk about using words.  We can say:  we are not stupid and we are not smart, and we are not our body parts and we are not our thoughts, and we are not our emotions, nor our reactions, but we cannot actually say what we are.  Bernadette Roberts expresses this nicely in the above quote.

And who is Bernadette Roberts?

Bernadette Roberts is a self-made Buddha. She was a Catholic nun for 10 years following the Christian contemplative path. When she reached what the Catholics consider the closest you can get to God this side of the grave, she left the monastery with the intention of serving God in the world.  She went back to school, held regular employment, got married and had four children.

During the 20 years after leaving the nunnery, she reached full enlightenment without any formal teacher or guidance. She describes this process as the path to no-self. You can read the full story in her books.  She is refreshing in that she is a no nonsense person and expresses herself without any dogmatic bent.

The experience of no-self is the ultimate unveiling.  Identifying with negatives has gone, identifying with positives has gone and all that remains is the experience of being all that is.  How do we get to this experience?  I paraphrase Bernadette:

Since self cannot experience ultimate reality as it truly is, then the only way to do so is to be prepared to relinquish every last thing we know as self — everything we experience, in fact.

It appears that the key factor is willingness. It is the willingness to give up everything we experience.  Another word for this is renunciation.  Renunciation is disinterest in worldly things.  If we have renunciation, we would certainly be willing to give up everything we experience in the world.  We can say the same thing a different way:  with renunciation we are only interested in becoming enlightened or knowing God and think about that day and night.

How far do you want to go?  People talk about working towards enlightenment, but the true first step is becoming willing to give up everything.  Not many people are really interested in that.  They think enlightenment is keeping it all and getting more.

Unveiling

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Next week I will be visiting the Bay Area and catching up with friends.  On Sunday, August third I’ll be speaking at the Harmony Center for the Joyful Spirit.  To go along with my talk I suggested the movie Kumare be played at their Friday night movie get together.  It is a documentary about a fellow from the East Coast that comes to Phoenix and pretends to be an Indian Guru.  Once he has collected together a group of followers and indoctrinates them in his spiritual path, he does an unveiling where he reveals his true identity.

movie kumareIt is an interesting and complex film.  Kumare’s message is that we all have the answers wtihin us and don’t need external teachers to tell us what to do.  This is my philosophy as well and “the answers are within” happens to be the title of one of  my books.  The talk I am giving is called Unveiling and will go more into the process of uncovering or revealing our true identities.  (Video of talk.)

We all have an identity. In fact we all have multiple identities or perhaps it would be better to say, we all have a multifaceted identity.  Our identity is made up of the stories we have about ourselves.  Many of us on the spiritual path of awakening have noticed how our identity has changed as we’ve progressed.

For me, I was largely unconscious of my identity in the beginning.  As I became more aware, I began to recognize certain facets of my identity and then I began to question them.

For instance, I called my self “insensitive” for many years in my teens and twenties.  Then I realized that I was actually overly sensitive and had built up a wide variety of strategies that protected me from overwhelm.  One of those protective mechanisms was insensitivity.  So one of my identities changed from “insensitive” to “very sensitive”.

These days the question is, “Am I very sensitive?”  And the answer is no.  If I can say, “I am ______”, then I am not that thing.  The truth is that I am not anything that I can say in words.  All labels and description are just constructs.  I am not a construct.  These things are my identity but they do not come close to expressing what I truly am.

I have found the process of unveiling is more like an elimination process.  I never can see or express who I truly am, but I get close to knowing who I truly am by finding out what I am not.

During the unveiling process, I may have first thought I was stupid or fat and then I realized I wasn’t stupid or fat.  I replaced that identity with the idea that I was smart or shapely.  Finally I realize that I’m not smart or shapely either.  If I was smart and shapely then who would I be if I get old and no longer can think and my body is falling apart.  So, I am not smart or shapely.

Similarly I have found that I am not anger or sadness, I am not my reaction to anything.  I am not my form.  If you remove my eyes, I still seem to exist. So I am not my body parts.  If my brain stops working (I’m in a coma.) people point to me and call my name.  I still exist – so I’m not my brain.

There are many paths to enlightenment and here is another tool:  See if you can find what you are?  The easiest way is to eliminate everything you are not.  Tell me what you end up with.