When You're Not Okay With What's Happening
Cuando no estás bien con lo que está sucediendo
A reflection on how inner resistance signals something unseen, and how honest inquiry can begin to reveal what we are avoiding.
When You're Not Okay With What's Happening
A reflection on how inner resistance signals something unseen, and how honest inquiry can begin to reveal what we are avoiding.
The foolproof test
There is a foolproof way to know when you are avoiding something. If you are having a rough time, there is something you don't want to see.
By "rough time," I don't simply mean that there is a difficult situation, a lot of pain, stress, or aspects of life that are hard. That is not what I mean. What I mean by a rough time is the more common experience of feeling deeply not okay with what is happening, needing it to change, really wanting it to change. Even if what is happening is entirely internal.
And it is always internal, isn't it? What we call "experience" is always happening inside.
The trap of pretending
We can even pretend we are fine with what is happening while being completely tied up in knots. That is what I would call a state of very little inner integrity: pretending to be okay with what is happening, even when what is occurring at the level of thoughts and emotions is deeply distressing. The depth of how far repression can go is quite mind-blowing.
Refining the inquiry
Once we have done quite a bit of this work, it becomes more refined and more subtle. But the foolproof method remains the same. If I am not okay with what is happening, and with a bit of understanding I can recognize that "what is happening" refers to my own mental and emotional reactions, then there is something I don't want to see.
That recognition can open up a question, a kind of dialogue with our own seeing. I use the word "dialogue," but it is not an actual conversation. It is an exploration of the truth of what is happening. You could look and say, "I'm not okay with this. What am I not wanting to see?" If that question is honest, if it is true, if it is deep, if there is a genuine desire to see, things will start to become clear. It will start to reveal itself. It might take a few days, or it might be immediate.
The pull back toward denial
Often something I have seen happen, and it has happened to me in the past, is that you see it, and then the day after, you pretend you didn't. There is a huge interest in conforming back to our previous form of denial.