I’m pretty good at making things more difficult for myself.
In my previous life in the corporate world, I frequently had to help my team solve problems. That was easy, so I started to try and do it without breaking step on the way to my desk.
If there was a study deadline, I wouldn’t start work until there wasn’t quite enough time left.
And going on holiday, I was generally packing as the taxi pulled up, and getting dressed as I locked the front door.
Essentially, I made simple things much more difficult by adding something extra to the equation. If it had been a sword fight, I’d have been the one trying to learn how to do it left-handed, during the bout, wearing a blindfold.
You might recognise this habit in yourself.
You know, it’s not entirely bad. I achieve more in the day when I am explicitly not completing my tax return than I do in the previous week. And it turns out many tasks can be done well in a surprisingly short period of time.
But then we come to the exploration of the non-dual teaching. And maybe we’re unwittingly still making it more difficult for ourselves?
Perhaps we’re still holding out hope that there is something that will solve life for us? The relationship, the qualification, the job, the client, the thing we learn.
Perhaps we’re so used to being defined by our distress, we can’t bring ourselves to see what happens when we don’t hold it tight?
Perhaps we think there is a hurdle to overcome before we’re worthy?
Perhaps we’ve heard about “Consciousness”, and now we’re trying really hard to get the body and the mind to act in the way we believe Consciousness would act?
Perhaps we’re really comfortable with weekly retreats into Consciousness, but we don’t think we can live in the world that way?
Perhaps…Perhaps, like I did, you have a subtle, lingering expectation that once you’ve arrived, life will be an out-of-body experience, where everything is bliss?
This is what “resistance” is. The attempt to start somewhere that isn’t “here”.
The rejection of the undivided and indivisible nature of Consciousness. The attempt to exclude the world, or the body (or some element of them) from what we understand Consciousness to be.
The effort to be at peace with all circumstances for reasons such as “They all appear within Consciousness, and so are allowed by Consciousness.” — forgetting that our frustration, disgust or protest equally appear in the same Consciousness. The temptation to make it all about “me”.
The refusal to recognise that we are the lion, not a sheep who needs to act more lion-like.
Resistance is the belief we are other than who we are, Consciousness, and the belief that there is something or someone outside of Consciousness. That is making more difficult the simplicity of “I am here, now.”
With Love,
Sara
