We have a lot of different names for the resistance we offer the universe. We call them problems, or betrayals, or opinions, or judgments etc. etc. We’re so sure we know best that we actually expect to control the entire universe.
We say we don’t, but if we look closely, we act like we do. Evidence? We get upset if life doesn’t go exactly the way we imagined it. We think something’s gone wrong if reality doesn’t line up with our imagination. Doesn’t that feel a bit self-centered if we’re honest?
Face it. It’s true. We can’t be free until we own the fact that we do that. We can’t pretend we don’t. If we truly didn’t, we would never have been reading this blog because it would just look like a map to your own house.
People read this for the A-ha! moments. People read this because they want their problems to go away. We all want peace, right? And we think we’ll get peace in the absence of strife. Yet no life can ever be completely absent from strife. So that means the only way to be peaceful is to be okay with things even when things aren’t okay.
This can range from very small things to very major things. For example, on a smaller scale, yes, there are rules to the road that we’re all supposed to follow. But if we have any experience at all we should know better than to expect everyone to actually shoulder check and use their turn signals. We are all conscious of different things, but many people drive in states of very low consciousness that increase their odds of accidents considerably.
If we aren’t staying in the moment and conscious on the road, but instead we drive with a head full of thoughts and the assumption that everyone else will do what they’re supposed to do, then we are setting ourselves up for some suffering.
We are resisting the reality if we don’t accept that a large percentage of drivers are poorly skilled and many aren’t paying anywhere near enough attention. If we’re going to let that constantly exasperate us then the only thing we’ll do is drive ourselves crazy for as long as we do it.
The universe is infinite. It includes everything —including the opposites of all of our ideals. Those aspects of the universe are just as valid as the ones we prefer. This means we can fully anticipate that life will include legitimately terrible experiences for various periods of time.
Our job in life isn’t to work or pray or scold ourselves into being a perfect person in a perfect place. Our job is to accept that the world is made of opposites. The point is to be grateful for the ditches. For as bumpy and off course as they are, they nevertheless are the very thing that defines our own road to salvation. They point the way to a smoother journey.
We needn’t waste time our entire time with a friend in a restaurant, complaining about the wait staff. We could just as well be talking about the fun things we’ll be doing later that day. Life is made of those little choices, and too often we’re making poor ones about how to invest our consciousness for the limited time that we are here and alive.
If we’re always talking about how things should have gone, then all we’re doing is offering an opinion or judgment or resistance to what either is or was. We are literally arguing with reality.
Reality either has unfolded or is unfolding, and we don’t like what we see. We reject it. We asked for decaf and life accidentally poured caffeinated. If we discuss that ‘mistake’ as though it shouldn’t have happened (whatever that means), then our judgmental ego is mere offering resistance to what is and we absolutely will suffer for doing that.
Back at the restaurant, while our friend enjoys (or tries to) the taste of their food, we can still choose to travel back to 20 minutes previous, when the waitress took our coffee order. But why? It’s crazy. We can just drop it. If there’s no upside, why not shut up to others and to ourselves. That negativity will debilitate us and our relationships in the long term.
We must allow the world to flow. We can’t take everything so personally. So many great things emerge from tragedy, but we’re not taught to see life that way. But if a big yard-swing didn’t crush my head when I was five, I wouldn’t be able to help people through my courses, speeches, coaching and writing.
Lives and marriages have been saved because of that ‘horrible’ day when I was hurt. So was it a good day or a bad day? Depends on when and who you ask, which means like a wave-form in physics, it always has loads of of potential that each of us can turn into our own individual particle of belief at any given moment.
The realities we think into being only survive for as long as we actively believe in them. If I choose to look at my good fortune in being able to help you, then I am a happy and fulfilled person. But if I look at things I do not have, then I will feel a sense of want and scarcity, and like the Buddha said, desire is painful.
We should avoid offering the universe our resistance. Firstly, it’s far bigger than we are, and there’s no real reason we should think that we know which way we should go. In our lives we’ll all be likely to chose agonizing relationships, boring courses, untrustworthy friends, and jobs we’ll come to hate. Considering our own track record why wouldn’t we want to surrender into a flow rather than wrestling for control?
Since we’ve proven that we don’t know which directions are best, we are better to just go any direction, but to go that way consciously. That’s the secret of connection. It happens naturally when we stop thinking busy personal thoughts in favour of joining the flow via our awareness and consciousness.
The universe is waiting for us. If we can stop complaining about how we want things to be, we’ll be free to listen to the universe as it brings us into contact with near infinite wonders for us to enjoy. We just have to stop resisting the whole process with our personal thinking.
Quiet those words. Learn to simply Be. Don’t worry, it’s natural for you so it won’t be hard. You just have to practice. No resistance.
peace. s
A serious childhood brain injury lead Scott to spend his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and identity. It made others as strange to him as he was to them. When he realized people were confused by their own over-thinking, Scott began teaching others to understand reality. He is currently CBC Radio Active’s Wellness Columnist, as well as a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB where he still finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.
