Knowing is Growing
Resistance or Resilience. It is my choice.
Wayne Dyer once said “What you resist persists, what you look at disappears.” I’ve unknowingly tested this theory for many years. I say or think…“I don’t want to go through this” and I can be sure that although I will still go through the experience, I will surely not grow through the experience. Resisting what is, refusing to look at it by running away or numbing away, is a cruel game of self-negation that I will always lose. I know that the hamster wheel of resistance is consuming and exhausting. Having spent much of my life’s energy in this viscous cycle…I’ve finally taken a step off the wheel. My new mantra…”Fuck Being Stuck.” … Are you there yet? Maybe you’d like to join me?
Now that I understand that knowing is growing, I can find ways to make the past and present manageable so that I can process my experience in real time. Nothing gets repressed for a later (that closet is full.) I don’t go rummaging through the closet, but whatever falls out and come into my awareness, is dealt with in the present. It is not negated, but fully acknowledged, known, respected and set free. As the closet empties, there is room for growth.
Sometimes this requires taking one thought or feeling at a a time and asking myself…”What is the thought/feeling that keeps coming up for me? Who or what put that thought/feeling there? Is it true in my life now?” Whether it’s flashes from the past, or feelings in the now… I remain present and chunk it up into manageable bites. Bites that won’t set off a gag reflex because they feel too big to manage; bites that I won’t choke on or be tempted to spit out because they are laced with the bitterness of fear, guilt and shame. Manageable bites.
The only difference between how I was living a year ago and how I choose to live now is this…I now choose to be a willing participant of life and when I sense resistance, I inquire rather than run. It can take minutes, hours or days to see, hear and feel what is trying to express itself, but I know from years of resistance, that if I close myself off whatever is presenting itself will not go away, because it has no where to go. In resistance, there is no way of releasing. Stuff will keep coming up, it will make me sick, get stuck in my throat and projectile vomit itself into my life as anxiety and dis-ease if I continue to resist.
I choose not to live that way anymore. I know that I am worthy, loved and safe so there is no need to live in a state of hyper-vigilance, which is really another word for defensive resistance. Every day, I choose to step off the hamster wheel of resistance one foot at a time and live life fully. I invite you to join me. Know that it is possible.
