✧ Musing on Resistance ✧
Something I wrote after several starts and restarts in my meditation practice.
What we resist may become more firmly rooted.
One way to loosen its hold is to stop struggling against it and simply observe it.
Does it seem to have a shape, color, smell, size, or weight?
Where do you sense it in your body?
Could you draw it?
This kind of observation does not require us to change the experience or judge it as good or bad. It simply invites us to become curious about what is present.
Atithi Devo Bhava means “The guest is God.”
What if we welcomed this experience as a guest, or even as a gift from Source?
What might it teach us if we stopped resisting it long enough to listen?
✧ Resistance Through the Lens of the Doshas ✧
Resistance may express itself differently in each of us. Through the lens of the doshas, we might recognize certain tendencies.
Kapha-like resistance may appear as avoidance, denial, withdrawal, or refusing to acknowledge what is happening.
Pitta-like resistance may appear as trying to control the experience, overpower it through will, analyze it, or solve it immediately.
Vata-like resistance may appear as excessive talking, worry, distraction, procrastination, dramatizing the experience, suppressing it, or covering it with forced positive thinking.
These are not fixed rules or judgments. Any person may experience resistance in many different ways.
✧ The Invitation Within ✧
Bodily and emotional sensations can be invitations to pause, listen, and offer ourselves care. Sometimes they reflect emotions or experiences that have not yet been fully acknowledged. At other times, physical sensations may signal a health concern that deserves appropriate medical attention.
Emotional healing may begin when we approach an experience gently, allow ourselves to feel what is safe to feel, acknowledge what it has taught us, and release the need to judge ourselves for having it.
Perhaps the difficulty that continues to return is asking for forgiveness.
Perhaps we need to forgive ourselves first and then consider whether forgiveness of others is possible.
Perhaps the painful experience has served as the grain of sand within an oyster. Through time, pressure, and friction, it helped form the precious pearl we have become.
For me, moving through resistance is ultimately about acceptance, self-love, forgiveness, and expressing unconditional love toward ourselves, others, and life itself.
✧ Love with Discernment ✧
Unconditional love does not require us to accept every influence, behavior, or energy into our lives.
Inbound love and energy require discernment. I may choose to welcome only what supports the highest expression of who I am.
From that place of wisdom, love can live within every cell and fiber of my being.
I can offer love freely while remaining grounded, whole, and true to myself.
After all, beneath our differences and individual journeys, we are all connected.
We are all One.
✨🙏🏼❤️