Resistance

This is my mind on resistance – cluttered. I know all who are therapists, or those who have had therapy, will have a hey day with this picture. It is my “work” space, where “creativity” is supposed to happen – and does. And yet, the space has become crowded over with the clutter of resistance. I am even resistant to de-cluttering it… And no, the rest of my house does not look like this – thankfully. Oh it has its little piles of things here and there that need to be put away – like clean laundry on the love seat – instead of love - and dirty laundry on the bedroom floor. We won’t go into those metaphors. :) And piles of books waiting to be read, or papers of interesting information downloaded off the internet stacked – waiting to inform me. The rest of the house is fairly sane looking. Especially my meditation space – the clearest place in the house! It’s only this particular space that is rather insane at the moment. (Well, except the basement, but that’s my husband’s domain.) Everyone has their space where they stuff their clutter it seems. And yes, the outer does reflect the inner. :) There is a part of me that is deeply cluttered, resistant and “insane” – ie: lacking clarity, wisdom and peace. And all that is bubbling to the surface this week – kind of like the oil in the Gulf – thick and gooey and not easily cleaned up - ugh. I haven’t seen these dark spaces within in quite a while. So it appears I’ll be bringing the light of awareness into the depths for a look see. But I already feel myself resisting that too…

It seems my awareness the other night about “no resistance” has become a portal into – resistance. Into seeing just how resistant I am. This week there have been several revelations in this area. And my “space” seems to be where it gets dumped, where I can deal with it later. Heh,heh, heh. Except, as it appears, it never really gets dealt with.

So what is this resistance…

There are several things I am resisting this week. My mother’s upcoming eye surgery next Weds for one. I’m dreading it, already feeling “responsible.” It is a day surgery in an office building “surgery center”! No more overnight hospital stays. She’s 82 and a diabetic. I’m already feeling resistant to having to take responsibility for her care right after surgery, which includes staying overnight at her house – which means little sleep (which will impact my own health issues.) I don’t mean this to sound uncompassionate. It’s not. It has more to do with my own fears of being “responsible” for others – which comes from being given responsibility way too soon in life. And the conditioning that if I was *responsible* I got approval and kudos from my parents. I was a latch-key kid before the word became popular – taking care of my 2 younger siblings at the age of 11. Even now I think, oh my god, so much could have gone wrong! I was thinking that back then, believe me. I was always thinking of what could go wrong and that I wouldn’t be *responsible* enough to know what to do. I became a little parent – and fear became my companion. I learned to try to control what I felt out of control with – which was most of life at that time! (And of course some things never change :)) Eleven! What was my mother thinking! And so resistance emerges now… What if something goes wrong – I’ll be re-spons-ible… clutter, clutter, clutter…

There’s another resistance that arose this week. As many of my regular readers know there has been some serious family drama with my husband’s family. Well, my husband decided, in the spirit of Aikido, after consulting with a couple of lawyers, that he didn’t want to resist what was happening (in a legal way). He wanted to try to reconnect with his sister, and meet her “half way” in New Mexico somewhere… My immediate reaction was resistance! Oh you better be careful. Are you sure you want to open that door again? Well *I’m* not opening that door! What if it doesn’t go well… yada, yada, yada. And of course he decided to meet her on Weds of next week. So there was the resistance that said – You’re not going to be here to support me! What about me! What if I need you! Oh dear – 11 years old again. I’m totally responsible and there’s no one here to support me! :) You get the idea… clutter, clutter, clutter…

So – what *is* this resistance…

Well, the first layer for me is fear. That seems quite evident as I write this. Fear of risks, uncertainty, fear for my safety, fear of being taken advantage of, fear of vulnerability, fear of the dreaded “r” word – no not resistance - Responsibility… :) Fear is the fuel that feeds resistance. I see this now…

So I get to practice “no resistance” big time this week – and this is just the first layer, the first plume of thick, muddy oil spewing out of the well within… As I mentioned in the previous post, just *saying* “no resistance” softly to myself brings me back to the awareness of that clear, clean space inside; to the present moment; to seeing that from this space of inner Presence I can pierce through all the mental clutter that’s built up, and *begin* to swath a path through the thickness to the light of clarity again – to sanity… The first level of environmental clean up has begun! I just need to remember to return to this clear, clean space of Awareness by whispering – “no resistance.” Of course, resistance still rises – that plume is still spewing its contents - but I can meet the resistance, the fear, with no resistance… Maybe. :) I’ll let you know how it goes…

~*~

"No Resistance"

I was mulling over life’s challenges at 1am this morning – our usual bedtime - feeling an inner unsettledness about many of our life situations at the moment. I know many of you can relate. :) As I lay there I brought my attention to the inner awareness underneath it all – the awareness of Awareness. I felt the pulse and flow of this alive, inner Presence running through my body. Some call it “resting in awareness.” But as always – this “other” awareness of where life is going, or not going, kept arising – and the resulting inner conflict because of the thoughts *about* that.

My husband and I discussed what little we know of Aikido in relation to our life circumstances. It’s actually a martial arts practice that can be applied to any conflict situation. It dawned on both of us that practicing the principles of Aikido – presence and fluidity - doesn’t have to be about a particular conflict with a particular person or situation, but can be applied to life in general.

As I settled in for the night the words “No Resistance” arose in me, like a clear, clean breeze. I could feel my body immediately relax its tension and I took in a deep breath. It was as if the phrase deeply resonated in my body – and had a physical impact - particularly the ‘No.” “O” is a very open letter – it allows and embraces all that is contained within it – which seemed like a good metaphor for life last night at 1:30am. I understand the concepts of “radical acceptance”, “resting in awareness”, and living “life as it is”, but there is no inner *resonance* with these words. They are nice mental concepts to me - *ideas* of how I *should* be doing things. But for some reason I had a felt experience of “letting go” with the words “No Resistance.” So this is my current mantra, my practice. Today when I started to feel inner mental and emotional conflicts about life, I brought my awareness to “No Resistance” - and something relaxed in me and I moved on. I also began to see just how resistant I am! I was actually pleasantly surprised by this today, as I sensed a shift beginning in my orientation towards life…

“Noooooooo”, which we normally think of as being negative, is really such an open word, I surprisingly discovered. When you say it internally, like a whisper, and prolong the oooooo sound – it opens something up. It’s not really a resistance word. Same thing with conflict. We are so conditioned to believe that conflict is negative, that there shouldn’t be any conflict in our lives, externally or internally, and we resist and fight it to regain a sense of peace and equanimity. And yet, conflict just is. It is just energy, patterns of energy that can be met just like anything else – with awareness. I see that if I’m just *aware* of what comes to me, and my reactions to it, without *seeing* it *as* “conflict” – as opposition, as preventing me from living the life “I” want :), as interruption, as something to resist, this changes how I meet it. I can *see* it as just an energy flowing through. The conflict *and* resistance to it are just energies… Seeing this changes my relationship with life. This is a principle of Aikido.

Aikido teaches the philosophy of acceptance, of embracing rather than trying to get rid of conflict. It is a blending *with*, a dance *with* the energy of conflict, which creates a new form of energy. By dancing with the energy of conflict with “no resistance” a flexibility arises which allows a response, rather than a reaction, to the new form that conflict takes. By going with the energy, struggle is avoided and the energy gets re-directed – seems almost magical. I’m a beginner in this area of “no resistance.” It seems I have tilted at the windmills of the challenges that have been presented to me my whole life, so changing this inner paradigm may take a while. :) I still feel a reactiveness underneath the surface. But by turning inward and acknowledging – “No Resistance” – it allows me to stay aware in the moment, and feels like a soothing elixir, relaxing the old, irritated, over-reactive neural pathways, and redirecting the signals to be in harmony with the way things are…

~*~

Drama at my door...

Just when I’ve declared that I want less drama in my life and am just about ready to cut all ties with drama queens and drama-making aspects of my life – drama comes for another visit and lowers a one-tow punch that leaves me stunned. I won’t go into the details, but involves my sister-in-law, formerly referred to as DQ, my husband’s family dynamics, his mother with Alzheimer’s, and family money. That should give you a good clue, any time there’s money involved (and a bunch of unconscious people) there’s drama. And what DQ was able to do was to get her mother to sign my husband out of his mother’s Trust. And DQ just happened to deliver the news on – Mother’s Day at 7:30pm in a very emotional phone conversation that lasted two hours with lots of drama...

For the life of me I don’t understand how this family functions – or dysfunctions. I don’t understand the need to be so crisis and drama oriented. It is soooo bloody disruptive. But it seems the world functions on crisis and drama – have you noticed? :)

I create enough drama of my own that I often get stuck in it, forgetting to consciously check it at the door. It usually gets stuck to my shoe or my leg – like toilet paper. I hardly know it’s there until I embarrass myself. Drama is very sticky stuff. For some reason we love it. It can be addicting, giving that adrenaline rush, feeding the ego’s sense of self-importance. I have been noticing these things lately in my involvement with my sister and her issues, and how drama is soooo easy to do. It’s the path of least resistance actually. I’ve been watching and noticing how I create my own drama, and how I give in so easily to other people’s dramas. I certainly didn’t want to let this new visitor in – but she somehow slipped through the door. My husband was essentially blindsided and so is stunned himself. And in just a few short hours we have gone through the shock and awe of what happens when people are only interested in the bottom line – not the well-being of others – to anger, to numbness, to peace, then back to shock, anger and... in cycles of emotion and the resurrection of buried feelings and family baggage.

So – how to stay conscious when you’ve been lobbed a bomb over the back fence with a great deal of planning and forethought evidently on their part… It was intentional. Like the surgeon with a surgeon’s knife. In one fell swoop of a pen of a confused woman, the heart of her son has been cut out. Assisted no doubt by the master surgeon DQ herself. And I wonder what lawyer in his right mind would allow a woman diagnosed with Alzheimer’s to make that kind of a decision, unless of course he was bamboozled by a certain DQ who is known in the family as a troublemaker, stirring up chaos with her drama – oops, am I lobbing a grenade here :)

So how *does* one stay conscious, awake, open and not retaliate with another bomb… With a great deal of precision it seems to me, skillfully. But the mind wants to run with the drama! To be impulsive. Those thought juices are just flowing like crazy in a feeding frenzy of fight or flight neurons – mostly fight - and warrior synapses that want to defend “the territory” and prevent the “enemy” from pillaging and plundering in the name of the “estate.” But what about his mother! What about the fact that she is being manipulated in the name of protecting her money in a flurry of false accusations against her son, in an attempt by DQ to get back at him for past transgressions… You see how sticky this is…

It seems to me this situation requires a rational response: calling the Trust lawyer to see if he can be trusted :) and how this could have happened and why he allowed it; seeking legal counsel here for some advice on what to do about it, if anything. Or are we just up shitz creek…

For me it is about not perpetuating the drama by constantly talking about it, or allowing it to dominate my mind and getting worked up about it, spewing out my own venom, venting to soothe my offended ego that wants to let my family know how bad his family is, or giving my husband unwanted advice on how to handle the situation in an attempt to control. It requires some serious change in my behavior patterns in order to deal with this with equanimity, with an inner resolve to act with integrity and authenticity. And maybe even fierce presence in the face of those who would malign and wish harm. And certainly some serious cushion time is in order as well, sitting with The Buddha within, asking: what *is* this? And what is needed here? What do I need to see here?

It also means remembering that staying conscious and awake is through awareness. And not just awareness of the situation, the dynamics involved, the thoughts, or the feelings in the body, or my emotional responses, but aware of Awareness itSelf – the Buddha Nature – of what is underlying all this. To constantly bring my awareness back to this essential Awareness – to sit with The Buddha – Being – Presence (however one calls it) and *abiding* there – allowing - not fighting and resisting, as in Aikido where one goes with the movement of the aggressor, not against them. Allowing the aggressor to aggress and seeing where they go, moving with their movement, essentially disarming the aggressor without a fight. Skillfully.

So that’s where I am tonight at 4:45 am – listening to the birds chirping in the pre-dawn darkness - feeling a little punchy - needing sleep... Yesterday’s drama is already today’s present moment…