(57) LIVING HERE: Not Joining The Resistance
“Whatever you resist, you become. If you resist anger, you are always angry. If you resist sadness, you are always sad. If you resist suffering, you are always suffering. If you resist confusion, you are always confused.
We think that we resist certain states because they are there, but actually they are there because we resist them.”
~Adyashanti
BEING WISE ON TIME
If nine tenths of wisdom is being wise on the nature of time, then the timeliness of “not resisting” is not only obvious but also very insightful in relating appropriately – not superficially – to the chaos in America today. To quote J.Krishnamurti: “It is no measure of health to be “adjusted” to a profoundly sick society.”
Rather than adjusting by joining in and adding to, the conflicted reactions around us (ours and so called “others”) we come to an inner spaciousness; we find a forgotten lightness of being that’s less closed and clenched and more open and giving. In a word: “inclusive.” With the dropping away of all argument with reality exactly as it presents itself, we find out what it means to be peace.
FIRST, DO NO HARM
We begin to be peace when we stop, unlace our gloves and step out of the ring, out of the fight; we recover our natural grace and goodness, and from that place – sitting high up, watching from the bleachers, so to speak – we become wide-eyed and compassionate spectators of whatever is actually and factually happening moment to moment, here and now. We sit in our natural peaceful place of, as Walt Whitman said,”neither preference nor denial” of the facts of our experience.
Being peaceful, we’re at once disengaged and engaged, vitally alert and alive to the reality of real living. We live there, on the living edge of life, not needing to control, to protect, to defend. We rest in awareness. In the flow. And yes, in a seeming vulnerability that comes when we live in an “awkward freedom” created by surrendering our limited opinions; to allowing that we really do not know. It’s at that point we may come to know right action.
We could call this openness a kind of “listening” or “welcoming” or “allowing” whatever is going on in and around us, to occur without a fight. We remain “at the still point of the turning universe” as W H Auden put it. We may discover that things and events happen without our being able to ultimately, reliably, actually, control them on any significant level. And yet, we are called upon to engage, to serve in small and large ways, knowing that truly, all is good.
It’s only from that loving and nonconflicted place that we begin to act appropriately to a given situation – not react, from conditioned, usually conflicted, opinions that are strongly supported by our popular “feelings”.(Those locally preferred and prejudged “media-head” relationships we’ve talked about at the last Whole in the Universe cafe.)
With the deepening of this recognition, we can effectively love and thereby actually heal, first our personal, then our social and global environment.
That selfless understanding is what is needed and necessary for regeneration, for sustainability; it gives us real freedom. Indeed, we’re free when we don’t have to scratch everything that itches…and that’s a great relief all around. Loving attention, without contention, is kinda like a hug – it’s actually, energetically felt. It affects us, it touches us, like John Denvers’ song: “Sunshine on my shoulder makes me happy.”
​As always, it all comes down to this: Be Peace, Make Peace.​ 🙂
