The Addiction of Resistance
La Adicción de la Resistencia
A dialogue about recognizing the subtle, self-chosen nature of dissatisfaction, and how resistance to present experience creates a loop of narrative, emotion, and victimhood that obscures our inherent freedom.
The Addiction of Resistance
A dialogue about recognizing the subtle, self-chosen nature of dissatisfaction, and how resistance to present experience creates a loop of narrative, emotion, and victimhood that obscures our inherent freedom.
For meditation, you can leave your eyes open or close them as you wish. I mention this almost every meditation, because people who have meditated for a long time can develop a small attachment to the state produced when the eyes are closed. Exploring meditation with eyes open can be quite valuable, especially for someone who has practiced for a significant amount of time.
What we are exploring is very simple, and it is the most important thing. We have a sense that something is missing, that something is not right. You can experience it as a discomfort, an anxiety, something that we need. Often it is a very subtle form of dissatisfaction. See if you can recognize that in your current experience. It will be like a chameleon changing form, shape, sensations.
One way to investigate this is to feel into your experience right now. Ask the question: what do I need in order to be fully satisfied right now? Don't go into memories of past needs or past experiences. What is needed right now? Just notice what happens. What are the sensations? What are the thoughts?
Notice a part of the experience where there might be a pushing, pulling, trying to change something of what you are experiencing. It can be incredibly subtle: trying to change a sensation in the body that is uncomfortable, trying to change the kind of thoughts that are happening. That is the seed of dissatisfaction, the seed of suffering.
There is an experience of sounds, sensations, visual perception, thoughts, emotions, all of it happening in a constant flow, constant change, infinite motion, aliveness. And in that motion, something is trying to change it. It is this deepest, most subtle part of our experience that is the door to freedom.
We have chosen to believe in the value of resisting. A very subtle form of resistance. If you see it, you will notice it to be constant, very intimate. It is the seed of dissatisfaction, and it is the seed of the sense of self. The moment you see it, it will take a different form and hide again, in the form of noble, honorable intentions. Pushing to calm the mind. Pushing to relax the body.
Even when the mind is busy and the body is tense, our essence is at rest. If there is discomfort in the body, what knows the discomfort is at peace. When the mind is busy and anxious, that which knows the busy anxious mind is at rest, is peace and rest. It is not a treasure that can be earned. It cannot be achieved. It cannot be attained. It is already given. If there is awareness, there is peace.
Slowly and gently, come back to the group. Take your time. If there is anything you want to share or ask, you can unmute.
During my experience in the meditation, all these different things come in to keep me from looking at it directly. The imagination goes into, "What do I have to do to make this emotion different?" It sticks into the story: "Something about this identity is not good enough," and so on. There is also another strategy it uses, which is just to go into unconsciousness. There was dullness and sleepiness during the meditation as well, made worse because I haven't gotten as much sleep the past few days.
The mind as opponent
One of the ways in which you can get closer to this (and it is very hard to talk about) is that the wording, in order to address it, sometimes has to express it as something happening to you or coming from outside toward you, even if it is from the mind. So it gets expressed as "the mind is doing this in my experience, and it is out of my control." You experience it as something you are battling with, trying to see more closely, more directly.
I am pointing to that in the meditation as well, because I am bringing attention to a part of our experience. But the minute you do that, it becomes objectified as something that has an energy and almost an agency of its own, something you are battling with. That is one way to work with it, because it isolates it as something you can at least look into directly.
Progressive practice versus the direct flip
In this sense, you can approach things progressively. You work on calming the mind, which you can do through practice. It clears some room and space for you to look at something more subtle, and so on. That is a valid approach. But there is another aspect that flips it upside down. It is to simultaneously consider, contemplate, and see the possibility (which I would state to be true, but which should not be taken as a belief) that all of that is pointless. What you are actually looking for is already here, even when you are sleepy, even when the mind is doing what is uncomfortable.
That is the hardest thing to talk about or point to or recognize. Some practice can be given for it to become more and more obvious over time, but that seeing of what is ultimate requires no process, no progress, no time.
What you resist is what you are choosing
One way to point to it: if I remember correctly, you referred to your experience as "it," as this part of the experience or the mind, the activity that is difficult to see and difficult to stay awake for. Think of it instead as something you are choosing.
If the mind is active and you are trying to get to a different state, and there is this push and pull with the experience, you are trying to reach something that releases you from that naturally. In this part of the experience, there is a sense of "Now I am actively meditating, actively inquiring, actively trying to recognize something of this spiritual work that others talk about." And in that process, there is an attempt to change the way we relate to our experience. That is a very valid process.
But what I am ultimately pointing to is that all of that push and pull is actually something we are choosing and creating. It carries an energy of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, two sides of the same thing. By engaging in this dynamic (something is dissatisfying, then it becomes satisfying because there is a release, then something is satisfying, then it becomes dissatisfying again), we create the perfect addiction.
To see that requires nothing other than a choice. To see that we can choose to be on a path of meditation and spiritual work that could be infinite, and could infinitely arrive at nowhere, because it could be infinitely changing something to develop in a way that never actually arrives.
The last thing you were talking about was that the only thing required is just the choice.
Yes. Consider it as levels of depth, or think of it as intimacy. The closer you get to your true nature (which cannot be created or achieved or attained, because it already is), the more everything either flows effortlessly or is seen as chosen. That is a bit of a paradox, but when there is a struggle with what is, consider that to be part of something you are choosing. Then see: what is the gain here? What is actually satisfying about this discomfort, this struggle? Because it has two sides. It is an addictive process.
Through our subjective experience, there will be a nobility to it, a sense of honor: "I am doing the right thing." For example, meditating. But we could be doing it in a way that engages an addictive process of satisfaction, dissatisfaction, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, with a sense of infinite progress. It is like a curve getting closer and closer to the goal but actually never being able to touch it.
The subtle victim position
Ultimately, what I am pointing to is the identification with a position that is not of ultimate responsibility. We become victims of our experience in a very subtle way. What I am pointing to is that we are not victims, but that is not something to be believed. We realize we are not victims simply with the choice: to see that anytime there is suffering, it is being chosen.
That is a very dangerous statement, because the mind can use it as a form of masochism. It could feed a part of the mind that says, "Oh, I am suffering now, but I am choosing this. That is because I am..." followed by all manner of self-negative talk. But what I am talking about is that this self-criticism itself is part of the same pattern. It is being chosen. It is being energized and engaged with actively. It is not because of our parents. It is not because of any life circumstance. Nothing of what happened in the past is the cause. It is right now, actively being energized, completely out of our free choice.
Everything I am stating now, which I state as fact or truth, take it as a "what if" when you are in the midst of it and it does not feel true or obvious. Do not take it as a truth to battle with. Just consider it as a possibility: what if I am actually choosing this? Why would I be choosing this? Feel into the experience. Where is there a juicy gain in that suffering, that tension, that contraction? Ultimately it is fueling a sense of self, but that is just an intellectual statement until it is seen.
I found this really interesting. I really connected with the idea of the choosing. For me it is like a confirmation bias in the mind. We are always looking for evidence to support our stories. If we have this idea of who we are or what other people see us as, it is almost like we are constantly defending it: "You are saying this because you think that," or "You are saying this and it makes me feel in a way that is not in line with how I see myself." Although most of the time whatever is happening is not really about us, we always think it is about us.
The loop of narrative and emotion
It is made about us, by ourselves. It is really about a very subtle "no" to what is happening now. Even if it is something that happened in the past, it is always now, because it concerns the memory of what happened. The memory is being invoked now because there is something being experienced that we are saying no to. Ultimately, in the felt sense, it will be a discomfort.
To say it very simply: right now I have a lamp here. That light, I could have a subtle "no" to it. That "no" is going to turn into a story. It is going to require a narrative about why what is happening now should not be happening. It could be a sound, an image, a discomfort in the body. In that "no," there will be a narrative that involves me, but it is the conceptual me. "That should not be happening because I am..." and so the narrative unfolds, which creates an emotion. The link between the story and the emotion is not going to be seen as a self-chosen fabrication.
There is going to be a "no" to something that is happening. The "no" takes the form of a narrative about why and how it should be different. That narrative creates an emotion. Because the link is not seen, the emotion then validates the story. For example, the inner dialogue says, "Obviously I am uncomfortable because of the light, because I have this emotion, this discomfort, because of the light." The emotional discomfort validates the story that the light should not be happening in that certain way. But actually, the emotional discomfort is created by the narrative.
Internally, subjectively, from this victim position, the emotion is seen as just a byproduct of the lamp. It is experienced as a direct consequence of the lamp shining its light in that particular way (I am using a random example). Or there is a sound on the street that I want to stop, and I feel a discomfort emotionally. I experience this as an inevitable consequence of that sound, as if it is completely linked to the sound. But it is actually linked to my resistance to that sound happening, which creates a narrative of why it should not be happening, which creates an emotion that validates the narrative. We are doing this constantly, all the time. I am obviously constructing a simple narrative to describe it, but each of us has our own very complex, constantly shifting stories and narratives and emotions.
That is what I am pointing to. Ultimate responsibility is to see that you are choosing all of that, and you are energizing and creating it.
So the way we engage in our experience and turn something into black and white, good and bad, is a form of self-victimization?
Resistance obscures creativity
Yes, and it simultaneously disempowers you from actual creativity. The clarity that is needed comes once all of that resistance to the now is seen as a choice. Then you will have the clarity to see what is actually happening so that you can co-create with it. By co-create I mean: dance with, manifest, work with the movement of the universe, which is in constant motion, so that whatever you see that really needs change, that you can be part of, you flow and act and move toward. It is an act of creativity.
It seems like the first step is just to neutralize our experience before one could co-create with something.
You are always co-creating. But because of this resistance to what is actually happening, the co-creation is suboptimal. We end up co-creating something that keeps validating and reinforcing the narrative, the contraction.