Resistance as a Doorway
La resistencia como puerta de entrada
A student describes intense physical reactivity during meditation and a feeling of clinging to safety. The teacher responds with a nuanced discussion of gradual versus sudden approaches to awakening, and how discernment about one's personal patterns of avoidance is essential for genuine presence.
Resistance as a Doorway
A student describes intense physical reactivity during meditation and a feeling of clinging to safety. The teacher responds with a nuanced discussion of gradual versus sudden approaches to awakening, and how discernment about one's personal patterns of avoidance is essential for genuine presence.
What you were talking about is very much like this ongoing inner dialogue I have, on and off throughout the day. Maybe all of us do; maybe this is just what happens when you're unhappy. During the meditation, I would get a glimpse, a sensation, and then I would jump back. It felt like I was holding on to the side of the pool because I didn't want to go in, afraid I would drown, and you were urging us to let go and enter the water. It was really something. I could feel the resistance physically, very strongly.
Yes, it's like that with this kind of work.
Sudden versus gradual approaches
There are different approaches. One way to think of it is that you're learning to swim. You can be thrown into the pool, or even into the ocean with nothing to hold on to, and then you either make it or you don't. That's more like a sudden awakening. If it happens, it happens, and you have no control over it.
But when you're approaching this more consciously, it's different. You've been introduced to this. You've had tastes of it. So you have a more conscious understanding: "There's this thing I have tasted, and I want to learn to get close to it." Historically, there have been many cases where somebody has fallen into this fully, and it's an act of grace. But the report is also that it can be very difficult and stormy.
It always is, to some degree. But you can approach it as something that needs time.
The addictive nature of identification
If you're an addict going cold turkey, you might die. This is related to that, because there is an addictive nature to being identified with thought. It's hard to force. So the more you start to slowly get into it, the more you will have withdrawal symptoms.
When I speak about this and lead meditations, I'm quite aware that if someone is pointed too directly, all their reactivity will come up. That might be a good thing to see, because then you can become aware of reactivity. But it's tricky to find the spot where you are leaning into the reactivity, sitting with it, and still able to go deeper without pulling back.
Getting into the hot tub
There are many metaphors for this. I've used the image of getting into a hot tub. If the water is really hot and you jump in, you're going to burn. But if you put your foot in first and let it get used to the temperature, then slowly ease in, it becomes possible. Our true nature, in a sense, is like that.
There's a reason we overlook it. If it were all pretty and beautiful, we wouldn't be running away from it, which is what we're constantly doing. As you get close to your true nature, it burns, because it's a withdrawal from all of our addictive tendencies.
Discernment in working with reactivity
One of the ways to approach this (there isn't one rule that's best for everybody) is gradually. You try to let your reactivity be something you're going to be okay with. You slowly move into it: "It's just reactivity. If I'm not totally pulling back, then it means I'm going in the right direction." Like the sense of putting your foot in the hot tub and feeling it start to burn a bit.
So it's basically moving toward discomfort, toward fear, toward what triggers you, but with discernment. You don't produce discomfort for the sake of it. But when it arises naturally, you can work with it. For example, if you're sitting at home with nothing to do and you sit in silence, you're going to want to do something. That impulse to do is a kind of reactivity. But if in another situation you genuinely have something to do, then you do it. That's what I mean by discernment.
Knowing your own pattern of avoidance
You have to notice your own tendencies, because the mechanisms of avoidance work differently for each person. It's about understanding your own mind, your own reactivity, and what you are personally, specifically, avoiding, which could be exactly the opposite for the next person.
A rule of thumb: if it's easy for you to always be in a productive, doing mode, then push against that. Create moments and spaces where you do nothing. The discipline would be to do nothing for periods of time. But for another person, the difficulty is doing what needs to be done. For that person, the discipline is to act.
It's easy to think your pattern is the norm, but for someone else it could be the exact opposite. They could be very productive and unable to stop, and their work is to learn to be still.
Presence is found where resistance lives
Someone who is unable to face responsibilities will come into presence by doing what they have to do. They could be sitting on the couch all day with a sense that they're in presence, but they're actually not. For them, moving into doing what they have to do is moving into presence, because they would be facing their resistances and discomforts. That's what moves them deeper out of their delusion.
And vice versa: someone who is constantly in activity, doing exactly what needs to be done, is going to be avoiding something else, something that doesn't come up in activity but will come up in rest, in sitting and doing nothing.
We all have both of these tendencies. The art is to start seeing in yourself what's activating, and what your go-to escape place is. The more you do this work, the more you'll notice both directions: with certain things you escape into activity, and with certain things you escape by avoiding activity.
I'm using this as just one way of showing how to work beyond a group setting or guided meditation, how to work with what's happening in your day. But ultimately, it's all going to be about how you can stay in touch with the uncomfortable sensations, emotions, and thoughts that arise when you move into a more expansive space. For somebody addicted to being active, that expansiveness is found in stillness. For somebody used to inactivity, expansiveness is found in action. Everyone has tendencies toward one or the other, but really, both of these dimensions are at play for all of us.