RESISTANCE
Today’s meditation is on resistance. I wasn’t expecting it to bring up my attachment issues but it did. Of course it did.
For our blog post today, I will account my process in facing my resistance and resulting attachments. This is a tough one…so, here goes.
THE RESISTANCE: ATTACHMENT
Attachment is a form of resistance. It is not wanting to let go.
Attachment speeds towards me like a ghost train. I turn around unassumingly and a silver streak is coming at me mauk speed. My hands up blocking my face and eyes wide aghast, I am helpless to do anything about it. The train of attachment impacts me with a force that lodges seeming permanence in my mind. It is there. He is there.
Unnecessary attachment. This has happened to me a handful of times in my life. It is a weakness of my mind. THE weakness of my mind; my kryptonite. No amount of logic or reason gets rid of it. It is a worm that invades my peace and creates chaos.
Thinking I had overcome this weakness, I was severely disappointed when it happened again. Truth is, I had merely been avoiding it. Once I was able to move past the self-criticizing phase, I viewed this attachment as my teacher. This mental challenge is presenting itself for a reason. In order to grow and move past this, it is necessary to look at it and dive deep. What is here?
THE PROCESS: IDENTIFYING UNWANTED FEELINGS AND STORIES UNDERNEATH
What did I find when I explored my attachments? My attachment is due to not wanting to feel and experience grief. The underlying story is that everyone I love abandons me. My fears become a self fulfilling prophesy. To guard against pain from loosing people I love, my defenses built up walls preventing people from getting close to me. Concurrently, when attachment forms, my need for love is stifling. Either I am preventing people from getting close to me because I am afraid of loss or I am wanting them so badly to love me it pushes them away. This has disabled me from fully experiencing that which I want most; love, friendship, partnership and community.
What is one truth in life? Everything dies. Everything ends. Impermanence is guaranteed.
Avoidance to grief and the pain that goes along with loss is understandable. However, I can assure you, the suffering that accompanies attachment is worse. Attachment, if allowed to, stops growth in its tracks. It keeps its tight fist closed around that which it is guarding. Not wanting to loose what it doesn’t have. Wanting things to be otherwise. Wanting things to be different. Wanting to own the un-ownable.
ACCEPTANCE: ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF WHAT IS
The wants that accompany attachment create a not wanting to be present with what is. Attachment prevents one from truly living a conscious life. However, another personal reassurance, one can realize these things, yet attachment remains. This indicates there is work to be done. What else is here?
I pride myself in living a life of service and care for others so this is a tough one to admit. Attachment is selfish. Picture two children fighting over the same toy. I want. Upsetting as selfishness is to acknowledge, it brings in the possibility of healing and growth. I wish to dissolve my attachment and I certainly do not want to be selfish. Acknowledging is part of the process.
Once I allowed myself the selfishness that is inherent in attachment, I was able to get to the seed of attachment, grief. My resistance to grief and the pain that is associated with loss.
FREE THE GRASP OF RESISTANCE
There becomes a circular stuck-ness that can happen when the mind butts up against the wall of resistance. It is difficult to look at what we do not want to see. However, when we are resistant to facing the difficulty, resistance is reinforced. The resistance is to the difficulty of resistance.
My attachment is the selfish desire for love. Freeing myself of the mental road block of attachment means setting others free and loving them unconditionally. The want for all beings to be free trumps my desire for validation. There is an inner wisdom that knows that no amount of validation from others will bring me what I truly want. The liberation of the soul and divine origins of love can only come from within; accessed through meditation.
SIT WITH RESISTANCE
Once the mental exploration was complete, I enter my meditation practice. I first set the intention and humbly ask spirit to free my mind of the delusion of attachment. Then, agree to bravely sit with the emotion I have been avoiding, grief.
I sit with grief. Instead of identifying it as my grief, I say to myself “the grief.” I repeat these words several times in my mind and notice where I feel it in my body. I feel it in my throat and in my low back. As I listen to the guided meditation on resistance, I breathe and soften into these areas.
By softening around the tension in my body, I soften my resistance to the grief. Not just my grief but the collective grief of society. Everyone experiences loss and feels the pain of grief. Instead of wishing only for my freedom from grief, I wished for all being to be free from grief.
As we process heavy emotions, traumatic experiences may arise. A story arose in my mind from when I was a child. I was sitting in the front room in an orange paisley armchair sobbing uncontrollably. My mother had stormed out of the house in an emotional rage. I remember this happening on multiple occasions. She would stand in the driveway and screaming at the top of her lungs. Every time, I would sit in that armchair, hug my knees to my chest, cry and wait for her to come back inside. That night I did not think she was coming back. I though she was leaving me forever. Abandoning me.
I was able to process this in my mind and sit with my younger self and tell her she came back. She did not abandon you. I was also able to see her grief. The compassion this arose for me, helped to heal my lingering trauma from that experience.
I returned to my current attachment. I visualized him clenched in my fist. Finger by finger, I released my grasp. I fully acknowledged that my fears were causing me to grip so hard at something that was not real. I let go, freeing him and freeing myself.
MEDITATION PRACTICE
Continue the process of freeing your mind of limiting stories by listening to the reading and sitting with the resistance meditation. Take your time with this one and notice what arises for you. It may start with a feeling in your body. Explore what has been arising for you during the day that causes tightening down. It could be as simple as resistance to working out or doing the dishes. Each resistance is a resistance to being present moment-to-moment in your life. By exploring resistance, you are freeing yourself and those around you from the grasping of things to be other than they are. Relinquishing the desire to control the uncontrollable frees the mind and body from the armoring of resistance and liberates the soul.
To your greatness.