Thoughts on Life: Resistance versus Acceptance – Fighting versus Flowing

FIGHTING VERSUS FLOWING

RESISTANCE VERSUS ACCEPTANCE 

I was on the final 15 minutes of my hour spin bike workout, doing intervals.  There’s a point of non-resistance that has to be reached to get through those final intervals when the legs are burning and the level of fatigue makes you want to resist.  A coach once said, “Your legs should be burning–let ’em”.

There’s a point where you have to give up and surrender the battle to get the last few sets of intervals done successfully.

It’s acceptance.  The lungs are on fire and so are the legs and you’re pushing through to the end but if you fight this or resist it, you just can’t do it–you quit.

Today I thought about how this is just like life.  I mean, on the bike you accept it,  the “what is” of legs burning and the like and if you accept then the work is so much easier and you’re less likely to give up.  Or said another way what you ‘do’ give up is the resistance to ‘what is’–the burn or breathlessness or whatever.

When you give up the resistance and let the mind participate with the body, allowing the merging and accepting the fact that ‘yeah, it’s what it is, until it isn’t anymore’, THAT is so liberating, especially in those final moments.

Those hour long interval workouts are like the last moments of a race.  What really counts is what you do at the end when you have to dig deep and get to the finish line, especially when total exhaustion is so close.

When life becomes a crisis in some way and let’s face it, life presents challenges and if we deny this we are not living on this planet I think.  At those times do we surrender? Or do we fight it? Do we want to deny what’s happening and thereby struggle against it?

We make life harder for ourselves if we struggle.  I make the last 15 minutes of my workout harder if I struggle against.

This applies across the board or that’s my position in writing this.  No matter what life presents us with at any given time (and sometimes life is like those last 15 minutes of an hour long interval workout at the gym–rough!)…. point is that if we feel like we have to battle it or take a position of struggling against it, we find it’s all so much harder.

So many times in life we think something shouldn’t be what it is.

We deny reality or fight against how things ‘are’ and use all kinds of tactics to deny reality somehow.  It’s exhausting.

We can make this comparison with the Christian way of thinking about life being a struggle against a devil and having to fight the evil–this kind of mentality.

Another way of thinking is to simply not think–but what I really mean is allowing whatever ‘it is’ to be what ‘it is’ without the judgment.

Judgment is the christian way of dealing with life I think which comes from an idea of an ideal perfected state that we all must strive for but know we will never achieve (because they tell us that in their dogma), rather than the opposite which is giving up that fight and becoming free.

Does that mean that we don’t try to be better humans or that we stop doing our best?  That’s not what I’m saying.  

I’m talking about not beating one’s self up because of ‘what is’ or what isn’t during any given moment.  I’m writing here about not struggling against it or making the self wrong somehow in the process.

The last 15 minutes of intervals my legs burn and I’m breathless–it’s part of life at that moment and I accept that and don’t fight against it or resist it.

When anything in happens in life, I can draw from that ability to accept what is actually happening without judgment or without making myself or Life Itself wrong.  It is, after all, what is.

When my legs are burning, I don’t attach to the feeling–I let them burn.

When I’m right on the edge of breathlessness, I let it be and don’t fight against the feeling.

If I grunt or groan or tense my muscles or make a face, it’s only making it harder to simply flow with ‘what is’ in that moment.  Life is like that.  Life ‘is’ and there’s a certain amount of being okay with it and not judging it but simply noticing it that is very freeing, liberating.

Someone thinks a lot during meditation time.  No need to fight that.  Simply notice it without assigning a meaning or beating self up in any way.

Someone feels angry.  I’m not saying to act the anger out and of course we shouldn’t totally repress it but one way to handle it is to notice it as simply being ‘what is’ in that moment.  Or maybe for the whole day the feeling is there.  In noticing it one is standing outside of it and this juxtaposition is causing separation from it emotionally.

Just like “the leg’s are burning, let ’em” that happen during my workout.  It is what is and nothing last forever!  ‘It is’ until it isn’t anymore and the less we can attach to it and the more we simply notice it without emotion or resistance, the realization comes clearly that nothing last forever.  That’s the nature of reality:  impermanence.

And impermanence is a blessing.

Acceptance of ‘what is’ in any moment is liberating and elevating.

Judgment of what is in any moment is attachment and suffering.

That’s one difference between Christianity and Buddhism although there are many good similarities as we all know.

Acceptance is surrender and surrender is Divine!

Just my two cents, hoping to have expressed this in a way that’s understandable.

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Words from the Life of a Psychic and Form is Emptiness

Form is nothing but emptiness

Emptiness is nothing but form

Word from the Heart Sutra which holds my life together.

Form is Emptiness

Here I go again–using this blog to sort out my personal life.  Therapy for an “off” day here and there I suppose.  Maybe that’s it.  Write it out and it is released.  Not energized further.  No.  Released, that’s all–sorted out and seen for the silliness that it is, the illusion that it is.  Maybe this post could be called something like ‘The Life of a Psychic’ or some such.

BLOG INTENTION, ASPIRATION:  Yeah, but in the spirit of Tonglen, knowing others out there feel this way from time to time or there are those who know this feeling right now just as I do.  Hello to you and may this feeling for us all and package it up and see us all being free of it, having compassion for you and for all those who feel a bit disoriented or perhaps are also in the midst of a move… whatever it is you are experiencing may we know that we are not alone… there are always many others who also go through this and may we all be relieved of this suffering or uncomfortable feelings such as they are… and may we all come to contentment and peace and may I be part of that process through my love and compassion for us all as we move through uncertain times. May this blog in some way be helpful to you.

Here it is, this feeling I’m sorting out or trying to heal.  And the internal feeling comes from attachment to  STUFF, yeah, form appearances–things.  Actual material things.  I told you this is silliness being sorted out here!  I already feel better really looking at this using some logic and intellect to soothe the …. well, the what?

Beyond what words can show, it is.  How about a picture to describe it?  A bit like the scarecrow from the story ‘The Wizard of OZ’.   That scene where parts of him were over here and over there and some he didn’t know where!

No, I’m not falling apart but rather I am realizing this whole Buddhist thing about the non-self and yeah, attachment too.  How can part of me be in a storage unit (we took a lot of boxes and things, forms) and loaded them in the vehicles and unloaded them into a storage unit.  As I tried to fall asleep last night I kept flashing on the dark rainy rows of storage structures and the number on my own with the lock and my things inside.  Yeah, it felt like parts of me were there, haunting my ‘things’ in some way.

Another part of me was hanging around my sister’s apartment, haven spend some hours at her place over the weekend helping her clean and pack.  Yet still, another aspect of consciousness was hanging around the new apartment that we’re going to that is getting updated appliances, new carpet, paint and so forth–do I really belong there?  Where is my place when I also see flashes of the last few things leaving this apartment unit.  I’m all over the place!  Like I said, silliness in the life of a psychic.

I’m feeling a wee little bit like crying (its mild), but have no real down-home authentic reason but for the fact that I’m feeling homeless and even without a self, more like a floating spirit neither here, nor there, everywhere and nowhere.  And the Buddhist teachings speak of emptiness in view of it holding form and formlessness such that everything is actually non-real as if it were a Moon’s reflection in the water.

I think again of that song of enlightenment, “All these form, appearance emptiness; like a rainbow with a shining glow…”

And one of the other lines is “Just let go, and go where no-mind goes.”  

I guess I’m having to do that a bit as I feel pulled in many directions like taffy.  Pulled, stretched, thinning out…. and definitely no place to ground.  The lessons of impermanence and non-self and forms being emptiness by appearing just the same… these are all being re-enforced within me.

At the same time, it feels like my solar plexus is torn a bit.  Here I am looking at an application, another one, for an apartment that I applied for on April 2nd and last week I found out my application was nowhere to be found.  I now have to fill out a new one!

Meanwhile, I am trying to visualize how I will fit all my necessary “stuff” into the master bedroom of the apartment that I’m sharing with my sister and her daughter, a teenager!   I feel grateful to have a place to go.

GRATITUDE:  I CAN DO this, of course I can and am so grateful to have some shelter so that I’m free to go without having to break a lease just as soon as I get a call from one of the many places upon which my name is on the list.

And so the story goes.  Maybe I feel a bit better for writing it out?  My tummy is still topsey-turvey but I’m telling myself to enjoy the experience such that it is.  I’d better get that application filled out (another form—“all these forms”— and anyway get it resubmitted.  Forms are only emptiness.

 

“…just let go. And go where no-mind goes!”  

Form is nothing but emptiness

Emptiness is nothing but form

How much power and control do we have to create our reality? What about karma? Life lessons? And what the “haves” say to the “have not’s”

How much power and control do we have to create our reality?  What about karma? Life lessons?

And what the “haves” say to the “have not’s”

Lo!  I do struggle with that one just a bit more than some—from what I’ve observed it’s the “have not’s” who are more concerned with this question.  The “have’s” just go about having and don’t think about it much I suppose—well, maybe they do and that’s why they “have” in the first place.  OR having or not having is not their karma in this lifetime—maybe it’s something else their soul struggles with.  Hey, we’ve all got our own personal bug-a-boo I suppose.  I’ve worked with many clients who have plenty of money—an excess in fact—and you should see what their worries are!  To us “have-not’s” those things can appear pretty laughable and to us their so-called problem seems easily manageable, but I have to be careful not to minimize their dilemma any more than I like the “have’s” to minimize my “have not” issues.

I do notice though that those “have’s” who want to give me some type of “have not” advice almost always come from a place of having daddy’s inheritance, a hard-hard working and high-income producing life partner, or live on huge retirement benefits–those types of things… I’m just sayen’.  I try to be patient.  They mean well but usually don’t understand or even if they did once, they’ve forgotten.

It’s simple—make a plan, create your reality, affirm your will—right?  Yes.  And; No.  There’s the laws of karma and causality and energy that must play out no matter what you affirm or how much will you demonstrate.  Yeah, I hear ya’.  If that’s what you believe, you say, then that’s what you will experience.  I know all that but I’m talking about what some would call “Divine Timing” or what in Tarot Card language we’d call the “Wheel of Fortune” card or perhaps we could use the word “destiny”.  Astrology is my new ‘thang’ more-or-less lately (besides swimming) and more than anything else it explains things like… well, that classic book entitled, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”   Essentially, one can see the karmic patterns and the timing of the events and what the soul is learning which ‘splains quite a bit and helps one work with the soul’s plan rather than making one of one’s own and working against it.

Do we make a plan or go with the flow

Flow

Someone says,  “Well,  make a plan”,  and I laugh because …. Well, what’s that line, “… best laid plans of mice and men”… tell the Universe your plans and make the gods laugh.

I have faith and trust that The Divine Assistants know our mind and heart ‘help us to help ourselves’.  And believing that we do have that assistance working on our behalf, I am assured.

Yet I’ve also realized that we are here working through the energies that have already been set into motion so that the best plan we can make (if we make one) is to find the way to be at peace with “what is”–and that’s not easy task some days!  Our heart’s desire is the plan and if we trust that  while having faith that the path will be cleared and the way will be shown and known to us in exactly the right timing, this is the best we can do until the energy shifts to align with those intentions and the soul plan.

Like the old saying goes–make your intention and express your will and then let go, and let god.

That last step, surrender, is what us “have not’s” get pretty good at over time—something the “have’s” may no nothing about.

Or maybe they do.

Meanwhile, as a “have not”, I usually flow with whatever happens while holding the general outcome desired in the mind and heart,  following guidance daily as it comes–for me its the best way to fly.   If you ask if I am making a plan, that’s my answer–it’s worked thus far.