Resistance causes Persistence
Our lives vacillate between emotions that we like and are attached to and emotions that we are uncomfortable with and try to avoid. So we will preen with pride when someone praises us and recoil with hurt when someone criticises us. We will experience a high when we get what we want and a terrible low when we lose what we have. We seem to be buffeted and pulled asunder by strong emotions. Victims of mood swings. We identify with our emotions. We become our emotions.
It is normal to experience feelings, like anxiety, which make us uncomfortable. But trying to avoid it only makes things worse. Because what we resist, persists.
As Carl Jung said: “…what you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.”
So even if we try to forget our anxiety by distracting ourselves or immersing ourselves in work, the more it will persist. Till we just allow it to be. When we give up trying to avoid the feelings we dislike, we realise that it’s more painful to try to push away these feelings than it is to feel, experience and let them be. When we accept our anxiety and observe it rather than fight it, then it is possible to see how we have caused it and therefore what we need to do to change it.
Acceptance of feelings which we are uncomfortable with isn’t resignation. Acceptance is simply acknowledging the feelings as they are. One is not trying to control the emotions. Nor allowing them to control us. An emotion is merely something that arises, remains, and then goes away. Like the clouds in the sky. We need to just witness our emotions.
When a person is overcome with anger and is shouting at you, it doesn’t make sense to shout back. This will only escalate the altercation. If we try to resist the shouting with more shouting and think that we are pushing back the other, he/she will persist with more shouting. Resistance causes persistence. We rather need to silently observe the shouting so that the mad man/woman can listen to his/her own madness. The strength of a storm dies down when it makes landfall. The land does not resist. It just remains as it is. The storm soon loses its supply of energy, its warm water source, and weakens.
When we resist a kind of behaviour in a child, the child persists in indulging in the same type of behaviour. Resistance causes persistence. The child who needs love the most behaves in a manner where he/she will receive it the least.
When we try to meditate or concentrate, the more we try to resist our mind from wandering away in distraction, the more the mind will persist in pursuing its distraction. Resistance causes persistence. Whereas if we try to handle the mind like the way an angler handles the fish it may be more useful. When an angler senses that a fish has caught the bait he allows the fish to pull at the bait and allows the fishing line to be pulled away. After a while the angler senses the fish is no longer actively pulling the bait. So he starts to reel the fish in. Again as the fish persists in moving out the angler allows him to go. And again when the angler senses the fish is wearying out he starts to reel him in and so it goes on till the fish offers very little resistance and the angler calmly reels the fish in. Similarly we need to treat our mind while trying to concentrate or meditate.
We are filled with self -importance and self -righteousness. For instance if we are meditating and praying and get disturbed by some noise we get upset. And the more we try not to get distracted by the noise, the more distracted we get. It’s as if we want the surroundings to be completely conducive to our act of meditation. The world should revolve around me. Self- importance and self- righteousness. The irony is that without obstacles we will not be able to truly handle distraction. Obstacles are necessary to chisel us into finished diamonds. We need to handle noise and yet be able to concentrate.
Ajanh Chah a great Thai Meditation master said “If my mind doesn’t go out to disturb the noise, the noise won’t disturb me.”
Just let the noise be. Resistance causes persistence.
