The Difference Between Creative Desire and Resistance
La diferencia entre el deseo creativo y la resistencia
A question about the recurring feeling that life isn't quite what it could be, and whether the desire for something more vibrant points to something healthy or to an unresolved resistance.
The Difference Between Creative Desire and Resistance
A question about the recurring feeling that life isn't quite what it could be, and whether the desire for something more vibrant points to something healthy or to an unresolved resistance.
I've been thinking about a kind of psychological pain: this sense of life not being exactly what you want it to be, or what you'd hoped, even if it's pretty good. A desire for something else, something bigger. Even as I say that, I'm pretty satisfied with my life. But I occasionally experience a desire to live more vibrantly, more fully, existentially on fire. And I know that can very much be an illusion, and that what you imagine some alternate life might be like is fictitious, and any life you can imagine would have its own difficulties.
You have to be careful here, because the devil's in the details. We're using language, and first, it's impossible to communicate fully in language. Then once something is communicated in language, it's impossible to interpret exactly what is trying to be communicated, precisely because it was impossible to express in the first place. That's where we can start splitting hairs around different kinds of desires.
There's an aspect of what you're describing that is very positive. The big difference is this: there could be a desire for more life, abundance, vitality, and that's healthy. But the problem arises when what I'm desiring is a reaction to what is now.
Okayness as the foundation
If where I am now, there's a deep okayness with it, and it has to be real. The problem is we can tell ourselves we're deeply okay with something when we're really not. That's what I call inner integrity. If you're being honest with yourself, and there is, to a certain degree, an okayness with how life is, then it's more likely that what you're desiring is coming from a deep creativity. That creativity will involve imagining what isn't. That's creation. The imagination of creative thought in service of creating is a beautiful thing. It is very worthwhile and should be pursued.
Sometimes I ask this question: what does life, as you or through you, desire? The sense I'm trying to invoke is something that's not the desire coming from limited thinking. Life, the universe as you: what does it desire to live through, or as you? This is playing with language to inspire a connection to an expansive creative drive.
The creative drive that moves through everything
That drive is coming from an important place, and it moves through every being because it is life. If you're alive, this is moving through you, and you're either pushing against it or going with it, to some degree, and at some point more one than the other.
The common problem I'm describing is that we often have a deep resistance to what is now, and we experience that resistance in many different ways. From that place of resistance, we imagine something better, simply because it's not what is now. There's a "no" to what is. That's the problem. Contrast that with a "yes" to what is, and an openness to create something different: bigger, simpler, whatever the calling, whatever the movement. It could be traveling, work, a hobby, a relationship, a family. The possibilities are infinite.
But it could also be that the family becomes the imagined solution to what's missing now, because now is the problem and I'm resisting this. Then you find yourself with a family, and the same problem is still there. It hasn't resolved anything. That doesn't mean having a family was a mistake. It means there's something deeper you haven't addressed, which is the fundamental "not okayness" with what is, the "no" to what is, and seeing how deep that goes.
The shapeshifting nature of resistance
Is what you're saying that the "no" to what is, on some level, probably originated somewhere in the past and is not necessarily specific to one thing? That it can shapeshift depending on your life circumstances?
It's a total shapeshifter, and there's an addiction to it. The mind has become trained to find where the problem is, to create it in a sense, and then if there's no evidence to sustain it, to find another one. It's self-convincing: creating something that's not okay, something that's missing. Then we have preferences, different ways in which we're attached to that dynamic.
This did start very young. I could describe generally why it's happening at some level. It's a way in which we control what we're feeling at a deeper level. This is more of a psychological matter. There's also a level where this is happening spiritually. By distinguishing psychological and spiritual, I'm talking about different depths.
Repression and the origins of the pattern
At the psychological level, this is what psychology is all about: repression. We've gone through difficult, scary experiences as children. There's trauma. By that I'm using the word broadly. I simply mean an experience that is too much for us to fully feel. When it's too much for us to fully feel, we start to fight with the experience. We push away and control the emotional and feeling aspect of it, because our mind gets overwhelmed. This happened a lot as children, because the mind of a child doesn't have the strength; it's too young to process everything. So it's natural.
The way in which we do this is through a lot of beliefs about what I am, through the creation of a narrative and a character. There's an aspect of that which is healthy and necessary, but there's also an aspect that is a coping mechanism. What helped us survive then becomes a crutch.
Revisiting what was unfelt
So really addressing the sense of "my life's not quite right, I want something else" has to do with going back and revisiting those periods, and feeling what was unfelt. I'll describe it in my own words, and I don't want you to experience it exactly how I describe it. For me, my life was really not okay. Something was really missing, until it started to be beautiful. Even with everything that was missing and everything that was wrong, it was just beautiful. There's a love there. That didn't take away the desires for different experiences, for creativity with life.
Two orientations toward life
The difference would be: "My life is really not okay. I need to change it, and here are my strategies, my best attempts at that." Versus: "There is this beautiful awe and love with this life, and I feel drawn to living in these directions."
What happened for me, and I think it's happened to nearly everyone who has had these deeper shifts, is that you go into a certain kind of alignment. When what you're moving with is the deeper, universal life desire, it's coming from something beyond the body-mind. In a sense, it's more in touch with and aligned with the universe: something freer, deeper, and actually more vital. Compare that with something coming from only the limited mind, in reaction to the universe, in an attempt to control and avoid something that's only happening internally in the body-mind. In that case, there is also an alignment, but it's an alignment with friction.
I'm describing this in somewhat black and white terms, but usually it's a progressive opening: opening and listening more deeply, trusting more, feeling more well-being and love. For some, that shift is very dramatic.