What is the invitation of persistent resistance? Are you one of those people who gets highly irritated by the saying, “What you resist will persist.”? Well I certainly have had periods of a love-hate relationship on hearing and saying this myself, depending on which side of the resistance I was standing on at the time. I often have to chuckle when I remember Gloria Steinem’s quote, that “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”! The irony for me of course being that the feeling of irritation is a symptom and sign of resistance in and of itself.
Now, for me resistance shows up mostly as a sensation in my body. It may be different for you, so I invite you to think about something you really are “against” and just observe if you can trace it to a place in your body. The human body is a barometer of information and is continually sending us information through our neural pathways and nervous systems to keep us up to date and ready to act. As I am primarily kinesthetic in my learning style, the signals come to me as a physical sensation or emotional feeling of resistance. Some other learning styles are visual or auditory.
For a while now I have been aware of this sensation of persisting resistance being communicated to me by my body. It baffled me because it did not make sense. By this I mean that whilst I have been choosing to experience a specific kind of lifestyle, I became aware that whenever an opportunity to experience this kind of living actually showed up, an intense feeling of resistance, if not a sense of dislike, would show up.
What really set off my alarm bell, was that I had found myself with this same kinesthetic experience in a situation which was definitely not what I was saying I desired. I was drawn to the perception that I was getting the same sensory feedback from two quite different and seemingly opposite situations. One which I enjoyed and was asking for more of, and another situation which I was choosing to move away from.
So what was the invitation? I found that the persistent niggle of sensation was there to catch my attention. It was my body’s way of letting me know that somewhere in all the mental concluding and judging and decision making, there was something that did not add up. I was out of alignment in my choosing. And so it was time to sit down and have a cup of tea with this feeling and find out what was true about this situation that was bothering me.
What I uncovered was a pattern of mixed signals. And when I took the time to look at it consciously and ask for clarity, the tangle began to unravel. The alarm was to show me that I had unconsciously collapsed the definition around “work” with two completely different meanings. Literally the sensation in the pit of my stomach was telling me that I had gotten myself into a knot.
Until I took the time to bring my awareness and conscious choosing to this knowing and get the information that was there for me, I could not be free and thus was in resistance and literally felt torn in two. That’s what happens when there are conflictual choices. Energy requires directing to move and for this it needs clear instruction. If not, it just hovers around.
To me, the invitation within the persistent resistance is …… there is something here that you need to take a look at and choose. And ……… until I take that time out and stop, breathe, listen and choose, the resistance will persist.
I came away from this experience knowing that resistance that persists is an invitation to take notice. To Be Aware. To choose. How to break through the persistence of resistance? Just keep on choosing!
May you enjoy the unfolding of your Choosing and Creation.
In Light
Trilby
If you wish to watch/listen to the audio version of this blog, please go here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N0omPFw8kE
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