Someone once said, “Resistance is futile”.
In many ways, I think the Borg is right (wasn’t it the Cyborg from Star Trek who that said that, if the Cyborg is a “who”, so to speak ?). But exploring our habitual patterns of resistance is a Yatra (journey) very much worth embarking on.
It’s another powerful Mindtangle that seems to be a protector, and a jailer, all at the same time. A guru that works behind our awareness, covertly steering us toward status quo, turning us away from what seems wildly threatening or delightfully extraordinary. That’s sad because the unexpected, threatening, wild, and extraordinary is exactly the often necessary gifts from the universe that are needed for our healthy personal evolution.
The power and influence of Resistance is confounding and beatific. Often it communes with us using the voice of your mother or maybe grandmother : ). A voice we trust. So we become attached to it for love, protective direction, and “wisdom”. We try to predict the future with it. It assures us it will keep us safe. It likes us to be dependent on it, and at times it has worked beautifully for us so we will be.
I believe it is deeply braided into the core of our egos, which isn’t a bad thing at all, but it can make us painfully rigid and unable to appreciate-relax into the beautiful, dawn-light quality of unexpected personal evolution. For some of us more than others.
So what are we resisting? Oftentimes it is change, perceived as a threat rather than an opportunity. Perception of impending, unasked for change is a stimulus for strong emotions, usually ones of uncertainty. In general, humans do not prefer to feel uncertain about anything, especially things that are wrapped into the soul of our identity, perhaps as an ”expert” of something.
The way we relate to uncertainty is usually with major discomfort. People who put great value upon intellectual “knowledge”, being regarded as an “expert”, seem to suffer with receiving the “gift” of uncertainty quite a bit. In other words, being uncertain often makes us feel stupid or inadequate. Or maybe we just project that others will think we are stupid, a fraud, and/or inadequate if we authentically allow our uncertainty to show.
In this way, Resistance powers rigidity of thought-being and shutdowns down our natural, liberating willingness to feel, to live in, the entire range of human emotions available to us. This is how it becomes the jailer. The illusion of ”if I resist changes I did not ask for, have a plan to remove the change-threat with a sure-hard response, everything will be alright. No one will know that I wasn’t right or in complete control. If I treat everything as a threat first, and ask questions or clean up the mess later, I will be safe”. This is life on fearful autopilot. And often it leads to a crash and burn. Just like the Borg.
It’s the narrow way we relate to the guru of Resistance that could use a bit of fresh perspective. Resistance teaches us that having “student-mind” or relating to life with an openness to all the possibilities allows us the full freedom of experience, minus the fogged-up filters of “needing to know” what is impossible to really know anyway!
Pema Chodron writes of cultivating a “groundlessness” in how we approach life; we experience this as a willingness to embrace feeling uncertain every chance you get with a deep breath, a stretch of the body jar and mind, and opening to a sense of life-giving joy while in the experience, like when you open an unexpected gift from a loved one. It takes practice, and a willingness to feel whatever comes. You realize after doing this a while that you won’t die if you feel a heavy emotion, like embarrassment, or approach life with unconditional openness rather than a heavy shield of put-on expert knowing. Hearing the voice of Resistance then becomes a clue for “thinking bigger”, “loving bigger”, “living bigger”, using the power of discernment to relax into a safe but awake quality. Using Resistance to be awake is a much more productive relationship with ourselves, allowing us to trust the gifts of the Universe, rather than live in fear. We learn to use Resistance as a way to navigate the flow of life rather than to build dams of rigidity to try to control it.
We must be willing to swim and take a chance if we really want to live. Be like a fish in your ocean of grace.
Check out Pema Chodron’s Comfortable with Uncertainty. Be groundless every chance you get!
Namaste my friends!
