“The amount of stress in your life is determined by how much energy you expend resisting your life.” – Gary Zukav
In spiritual teachings “resistance” is a regular topic, and to understand the effects of what resistance creates within our bodies, it may be helpful to look at what resistance means in physics.
In an electrical system, resistance is created by a component (usually called a resistor) that is designed to resist the flow of electricity. Some simple examples of resistors are the tungsten filament in an incandescent light bulb, and the nichrome spiral of an electrical stove top.
These metals are not good conductors of electrical current, in fact they resist the flow of electricity so much that they heat up and start to glow enough to either light up a darkened room or even bring a pot of water to boiling point.
Resistance, by its very nature causes friction and stress within a system. This can be useful if applied to provide light or cook dinner, but very unhelpful if resistance is the default state of our nervous system.
Similar to resistance in an electrical system, a nervous system that is in resistance also restricts the flow of information. In an electrical system if the wiring heats up, the heat causes the plastic insulation to become brittle and break, creating short circuits and miss-firing. So too does a nervous system in constant resistance cause the myelin sheath around neurons to wear thin and break, creating miss-firing and miss communication within the system.
Are you perhaps frying your wiring?
What are you in constant resistance to?
This might not be easy to answer. It might not be obvious at all, so to try and form a clearer understanding of the concept of resistance we’ll look at it through the eyes of multiple different teachers:
“I am a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality. We can know that reality is good just as it is, because when we argue with it, we experience tension and frustration. We don’t feel natural or balanced. When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.” – Byron Katie
“To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly” – Eckhart Tolle
“The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life. The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is.” – Eckhart Tolle
“Whatever you resist you become. If you resist anger, you are always angry. If you resist sadness, you are always sad. If you resist suffering, you are always suffering. If you resist confusion, you are always confused. We think that we resist certain states because they are there, but actually they are there because we resist them.” – Adyashanti
“Change is never painful, only the resistance to change is painful.” – Gautama Buddha
In the conversation about letting go of resistance and softening into surrender, the question about taking action is often not addressed clearly enough though, and the question might sound something like this: “Does surrender mean that I never take action?
Surrender becomes available to us once we realize that our latest set of actions have been mostly unhelpful. That in our resistance to reality we’ve been doing nothing but splashing up a storm in our pond, and that the only route back to clarity is to take a step back and for the moment do nothing but wait for the water to settle. Surrender doesn’t mean the absence of action but it does mean the absence of splashing, and being committed to only act when it’s clear where to place the next step.
“Accept the present moment as if you had chosen it. Accept, then act.” – Eckhart Tolle
There is only one thing harder than having acceptance, and that is not having acceptance…
A few affirmations to help you release resistance and embrace life:
- “I can find peace in reality just as it is.”
- “I let go of resistance and embrace the flow of life.”
- “I release my fear of the unknown.”
- “I am open to change and growth.”
By cultivating a mindset of acceptance and non-resistance, we can reduce stress, improve our mental and physical health, and unlock our true potential. It’s time to unplug from the constant struggle and reconnect with the flow of life.
– pierre –
Today’s LIVE meditation is: Surrender