Resistance Is Futile
The importance of overcoming resistance is a universal one, and it was brought into focus today on two separate occasions thus stirring in me synchronistic identifications, as is my wont when well-timed messages come in duplicate or triplicate.
I have recently embarked on a path of meditation and spiritual awakening resulting from a ten-day course in a meditation technique known as Vipassana, or insight meditation. A detailed description of the course and its affect on me is forthcoming in a series of posts to this blog.
But today has been about Resistance. I have been struggling with it since returning from the Vipassana course last week and truly, throughout my life. It manifests in many ways, particularly procrastination, but distilling it down to that one word, Resistance, has been the lesson of the day, and I am embracing that lesson.
The lesson began when the UPS man showed up at my door this morning with a delivery from Amazon, a book that when recommended by a friend, I knew I had to get immediately, and actually purchased it while on the phone with this friend, who found it sitting on the bar she worked at, a gift from a stranger. It is called ”The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield. Reading through the first few pages, the focus of the book is immediately clear: overcoming resistance.
My current resistance is to practicing the admittedly demanding meditation regimen of sitting 2 hours per day, one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening. This sounds like a lot, but the process has already revealed its value to me and I am convinced of the benefit practicing such a regimen will have on my life. Yet I have not managed to complete the regimen on one day yet. Once a day is all I have been able to muster and sometimes not even that much and none of the sittings have been a full hour in length. This angers and depresses my spirit yet here I am, at the computer all day, setting up this blog. Which is a valuable endeavor, to be sure, yet it is still a giving in to resistance.
This kind of situation is familiar to many I am sure. Pressfield starts things off with a list of endeavors that will stir in oneself the specter of resistance without fail:
- The pursuit of any calling in writing, painting, music, film, dance, or any creative art, however marginal or unconventional.
- The launching of any entrepreneurial venture or enterprise, for profit or otherwise.
- Any diet or health regimen.
- Any program of spiritual advancement.
- Any activity whose aim is tighter abdominals.
- Any course or program designed to overcome an unwholesome habit or addiction.
- Education of any kind.
- etc. etc. etc.
But it was a line on the very first page of the book that made me put the book down and know that I needed to get to work immediately and not at any point in the future or after this or after that: “Ever quit a diet, a course of yoga, a meditation practice?” This book found me at the right time.
And then the synchronicity continued. Struggling to continue my meditation practice in solitude, I had just sat down in my room and had been meditating for about 5 minutes when I remembered that there was a group sitting conducted by a local Vipassana teacher, Noah Levine in Santa Monica every Monday evening. There was just enough time to get there, so I left immediately. It helped a lot to do the practice among others, and after the 30 minute guided meditation, it was almost no surprise that the subject of Noah’s teaching for that night was, you guessed it, Resistance.
It is a habit of the mind and it will never stop, but it will rob me of everything I seek on this path if I continue to give in to it. During the talk, when Noah was talking about the inherent difficulty of a spiritual path he mentioned Don Juan, the teacher from the Carlos Casteneda books and his name for those that walked this path: Spiritual Warriors. As a warrior it is important to know one’s enemy. I now know my enemy’s name. This blog will be one of many tools I employ to help fight this war on Resistance. I hope it can serve you as well.
