resistance.

Lately, the theme I find brought to me most frequently to work with, is the theme of resistance.  In mindfulness practice I was taught that suffering = difficulty + resistance.  Difficulty alone is not suffering, the suffering comes from all the ways that we resist the difficulties that arise in our lives.

So what is difficulty exactly?  If feels like it should be an easy definition, but I found that once I started to peel back the layers, I was surprised by how many subtle places I find difficulty in my life.  The easily identified sources such as work and relationship challenges give way to more nuanced difficulties that I often find myself in denial of. Through meditation I’ve discovered new and dramatic things that I find myself resisting, and in discovering where that resistance lies, I’m slowly peeling back the layers of self-created difficulty based on fear, lack of confidence, and disempowerment.

In no particular order, this week I’ve discovered that I resist my creativity, I resist moving forward but I also resist staying put, I resist my own meditation practice, I resist growth, I resist raw emotion in others, I resist authenticity, I resist openly accepting love, I resist being fully independent, I resist my own power.

It’s eye opening to me the full spectrum of fear that wells deep within me, and has been coursing through my existence for my entire life.  Cycles and cycles around the sun, carrying with me a fear of truly being myself, a fear of deeply knowing and understanding myself and others.

I knew that I hadn’t spent the time on it, I knew that I had been so busy with various mind-numbing but thoroughly engrossing other things.  What I hadn’t expected was my surprise at how much I’ve been masking, how much I’ve been afraid to deeply see myself, how much fear there is in taking a deep breath, closing your eyes, and letting go.

It could take me a lifetime to work through, but each day I will chip away at the mask and inch closer to myself – knowing that even though I might not like what I find, the act of finding and seeing and holding is closer to true than I’ve ever been in this lifetime.