I had just returned home from a weekend away and settled on my couch to start reading a book, given as a gift at a workshop. “The Game Of Life” by Florence Scovel Shinn. I was busy ear marking pages and writing little notes in the margins and possibly congratulating myself a little on the fact that “Yup! Got this! Do this! Mastered that!” Then I came to the chapter on Resistance. The self congratulations stopped, and I took a few deep breaths, because there it was, the “thing” that had been holding me back.
I had no word for it, but I knew that there was a certain inability to let things go. I knew this, and I was working on it. Resentment, maybe some anger, a relationship lost, hurt feelings. I didn’t know how they were holding me back exactly, but I knew they were impacting me in every as-pect of my life, even after having done the necessary healing and releasing. It felt like a heavy blanket and at times like a dense energy in my chest. Now, I had a word for it….. Resistance. After reading the chapter, I decided to take my puppy for a walk by the river. That has always been a way for me to clear my head.
Resistance, I realized, is the inability to trust that life is unfolding according to divine plan. It is the holding on to thoughts and feelings that no longer serve us. It is the struggle between your high-est self and that part of you that wants to control. Your highest self, your essence, always trusts in the divine unfolding of your life. It lives in faith. It lives in the moment. It lives in joy. The part of you that wants to control, your Ego, lives in a place of fear, anxiety and control. That part of you believes it has the answers for how life should unfold. It holds on to people, it manipulates to get what it wants and it plans incessantly. The bigger the divide between your essence and your ego, the stronger and deeper the level of your pain.
In my case, I knew what was holding me back. The resentment, anger, fear, loss of relationship, did not align with my highest self. Our essence, at all times radiates love to all people. The pain was being caused by the inability to love divinely that one particular person in my life. To love this person, after all the difficulties, with no expectations, was causing me to not live in alignment with my Essence. By feeling resentment for the other person, I was sending resentment to my-self. Life is a big old boomerang! The negative thought patterns we send out into the world are brought right back to us. By blessing the difficult people in our life, those blessings are returned to us. By wishing somebody else love and success, it is returned.
We are created to live in joy, peace and divine love. Struggles in our life are created by our Ego. Always. If we learn to lean in to the faith and trust of the divine, our life will unfold in the most magical ways. I have experienced this in the areas of my life where I have managed to let go of the control. That which is ours by divine right will always find its way to us. We just have to get out of our own way and allow for it to come to us. That can only happen if we have trust.
Letting go of Resistance is a practice. I have practiced it in some areas, but in letting go of somebody, I was challenged. Because I did believe that I knew better. Imagine that! Better than divine plan?! So walking by the river I created a plan for myself. It started with becoming aware. Awareness is always step one. We have to become aware that Ego snuck back in. I started noticing the subtle change in energy around the charged situation, the feeling in my chest, the prickly sensation of anxiety in my body. Then I started paying attention to how I was feeling. Did I feel open? Expanded? Or was I in a state of fear and constriction? If so, what was I telling myself in that very moment? Was this a feeling I needed to feel? Was it something unprocessed or a habitual response? If it was not something that needed to be felt and brought to light, I used a mantra I created for myself.
“I walk in faith. All that is mine by divine right, will flow to me effortlessly. I need not fear, all is well with the Universe”
By saying the mantra, it helps me get out of the pain body and realigns me with my essence. It is also a way to stop the obsessive thoughts that had built around the situation. Obsessive thoughts create super highways in the neural pathways of our brain. By stopping them when they happen, eventually the highways crumble and flowers grow on the pavement. It takes commitment and time, but eventually where the highway was, a garden starts to grow and we leave the obsessive, painful thoughts behind and return to our essence. We find peace, love and joy blooming there.
So, what can you do to bust areas of Resistance in your life?
1. Pay attention to how it feels in your body. Whenever you are feeling angry, resentful, jeal-ous, spiteful or anything other than open and expanded, you are in your ego mind. Change starts by becoming aware!
2. If it is, that it needs to be felt, feel it! All too often we bypass that part of our healing. Pain demands to be felt or it grows into a three headed monster. Feel it, release it and then move out of your pain body by connecting back to your essence.
3. Develop a plan for what you can do when the painful thoughts of resistance pop back into your head. Maybe sit in meditation to reconnect to your essence. Create a mantra for your-self. Take a walk. Call a positive friend to talk about FUN things. The goal is to stop the ob-sessive thoughts. Maybe start a Journal. Writing is a wonderful practice to bring us back to the present moment. By writing we learn to connect back to our inherent wisdom and our essence.
4. Have patience with yourself. After all, you are human! It took a lifetime to create this ego of yours and it takes patience, love and commitment to lessen its grip. Luckily, returning to your essence does not have to take another lifetime.
5. Get support! If there are feelings that are too difficult to work through on your own, a mentor is a wonderful place to turn to. Often times our Ego can be so strong and so second nature to us, that we are not even aware that there is another part to us. Finding a spiritual mentor, to help you on this journey of coming back home to yourself can be the best investment in yourself that you could make.
Lastly, have fun with this process. Our Ego, once brought to light, can be really quite humorous. Like mine…..thinking it has a better plan for my life than the Universe!
