Ep 131: Resistance, Barriers & Liberation

Ever grappled with that stubborn voice inside your head when you're about to make a big change, or felt an unexplained opposition to a new policy? We unpack the phenomenon of resistance in its enthralling complexity. We don't just encounter resistance; we live it, breathe it, and often, we're shaped by it. This episode takes you deep into the labyrinth of internal resistance, where personal ambitions clash with self-imposed restraints, and where our response to external pressures, like societal norms or government mandates, may reveal much about our intrinsic beliefs and fears. 

This exploration isn't solely about identifying roadblocks. It's an invitation to transform resistance into a stepping stone for personal growth and self-actualisation. As we delve into the dual nature of resistance, we explore its presence in your life, not as a force to be vanquished, but as a guide leading you to profound self-discovery and evolution. With the new year bringing its own set of challenges and opportunities, let's reframe our experiences of resistance. Join me to learn how this powerful force can become an ally in our quest for wisdom and vitality.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Truth and Transcendence brought to you by BeingSpace with Catherine Llewellyn. Truth and Transcendence, episode 131. Today I'd like to talk about resistance and as I was preparing for this conversation I'm going to have with you today, I was initially thinking about resistance purely in the context of do I want to do this or not? Am I resisting doing it? Am I resisting something? So, in other words, internal resistance to saying yes to something or to carrying out something, and inner resistance that really is to do with ourselves. But then I remembered there is another form of resistance, when we are resisting something coming towards us from outside of us, and I'm wondering whether this is also purely an internal matter. So let's explore that.

Speaker 1: 1:12

So the second one people talk about passive resistance, active resistance. Let's say there's some sort of government dictate of some kind and somebody might decide they want to resist that dictate. Is that resistance, purely resistance to something external, or is it a resistance to something internal? Is it an internal piece of resistance? I'm not sure. I think there are. I think there is an argument sometimes, for in the face of an authority, whether it's a parent, a spouse, in those cases where there's a sort of power imbalance in a relationship, whether it's a friend, whether it's a community, a peer group, an employer, colleagues, people outside of us, factors outside of us, powers outside of us influencing us and wanting us to do something. Sometimes we might choose to resist that because we don't agree with it, we don't think it's the right thing to do. Other times we might resist that because we're being difficult. It's not that we don't think it's the wrong thing to do, it's that we've got something else going on in us that wants to resist it for some other reason. So that whole form of resistance is something I'm less familiar with, because I very seldom in my life felt myself under an enormous amount of pressure from the outside.

Speaker 1: 2:49

I think for me the form of resistance I'm more familiar with is what I would call the inner resistance. So I'm faced with an opportunity, do I want to take it up? And it particularly comes up when there's something that I know is of interest to me, it's drawing me, I'm attracted, or it's something that within myself I've already decided I want to do, like, for example, choosing to lose weight after having gained some weight. The decision to do that, by and large, is one's own choice. I'd like to do that. I'd like to feel more comfortable in my clothes. I'd like my body to feel more loose, more relaxed, more capable All of these things.

Speaker 1: 3:35

When we decide to shift extra weight off our body, very often it's because we want to do it for our own reasons, so there's nobody outside of us trying to force us to do it. Equally, I know some of us have found ourselves in situations where somebody is putting pressure on us. You need to lose weight, you need to change the way you dress, you need to change the way you drive is a classic one here in the UK. I don't know if in other parts of the world you have a phenomenon called backseat driving. Well, over here we have a phenomenon where a passenger decides well, doesn't even necessarily consciously decide but they start behaving as if they believe they are a better driver than the person who's actually in the driving seat of the car and they start issuing directions and instructions and feedback, which is sometimes conveyed as a sigh or an intake of breath or a tut, and the driver might resist that because they find it annoying or it's difficult to concentrate on driving whilst concentrating on listening to someone else's feedback or whatever.

Speaker 1: 4:47

So, yes, there are two kinds of resistance. One is the internally experienced resistance of one's own resistance to something where we feel called to that. And then there's another kind of resistance where we are feeling pressure from outside to conform to something or to follow a direction and we're choosing to resist that consciously. So the one I want to talk about a bit more today is the internal one, where we're resisting something that we feel called to or invited to. So this is distinct from you get an email from somebody saying I've got a fantastic investment opportunity for you. I have got £3 million worth of, or dollars worth of gold that I need to get out of the country. Would you like to help me do this?

Speaker 1: 5:45

If we immediately say no, we're not interested in that, that's not resistance, that's just a choice. We just don't want to do it, we're not interested. However, if we get an invitation which says where a friend says I've just recently undergone a beautiful, transformative experience by doing whatever it may be they've just done, I'd like to invite you to look into it because I think you might enjoy it. If, equally, if our immediate response is no, I just have no interest in that, that's not resistance, that's just I don't want to do it or it's not the right time.

Speaker 1: 6:23

But if we have an experience of discomfort, a kind of itchy, irritated feeling, that could be resistance, because resistance is when we want to move in a certain direction, or we are naturally moving or called in a certain direction, but actually we don't follow that. That's when we experience resistance. It's an inner conflict experience, and the inner conflict is between the yes and the no within us. So the yes just wants us to do it and the no within us is coming up with all sorts of arguments, reasons, sensations, feelings and so forth to try and prevent us from doing it. That's the form of resistance that we most easily, most readily become unaware of and that takes place below our conscious level and which actually can take place also in our head, where it can become all wrapped up in rationalization and mental argument and sense making and why we're saying no. But if we consider that for the moment, why would we put so much energy into arguing ourselves out of something unless we felt a pull towards it? We wouldn't is the answer. If there was no pull towards it, there would be no resistance, because we would simply say no. So another way of framing this is to say that when we experience resistance that may well be telling us that we are in fact moving forwards, because otherwise there would be no resistance. Resistance is resistance against something, so our inner resistance is very often us resisting moving forwards, when we'll only ever experience that when we are already moving forwards. Otherwise, we would simply be comfortable where we are. So that's a very interesting thing to consider, because often when we experience resistance, we believe that what it means is that we are stuck. It doesn't necessarily mean that what resistance is actually saying is that we are moving, but we are noticing some friction, we are noticing some stickiness about the nature of the movement we are making. So when there's no resistance there and there's just the yes or maybe there's a yes and a no, but we notice the no and we say thank you to the no we're not going to follow that, we're going to follow the yes. So in other words, we're conscious of our internal vacillations on the matter. That's not resistance, that's just we simply move forwards.

Speaker 1: 9:14

I had an example of that in regard to creating this podcast not this particular episode, but the podcast in general. To begin with, I had resistance to doing it, and that was about me having an inner feeling within me of wanting to do it, feeling drawn to doing it, but resisting even getting started. So I was stuck. But I wasn't really stuck, because what was happening below conscious level was I was preparing to do it. I was getting ready to do it, even though on the conscious level I had no idea that was going on. So when the moment came, when the internal preparation reached a certain point, my experience was a sudden, unexpected yes to going ahead and creating the podcast. What I didn't realize at the time was that actually that was not an instant, immediate out of the blue thing. It was the culmination of a continuum of preparation happening within me, so that when I started to do it I was actually as ready as could be for doing something I've never done before. And then, to begin with, each time I went to do an episode I experienced some discomfort, nervousness, confusion, worry and so on, but I had already said yes to doing it. So that didn't act as resistance, that didn't stop me doing it at any time. I simply went in there and, with all the feelings going on inside me, which were quite uncomfortable, I just got the mic out, plugged it in and started recording. Carried on. This is now episode 131.

Speaker 1: 11:03

Clearly, the initial resistance wasn't all that strong and the individual bits of resistance along the way which actually were not powerful, because I had a big yes, contextually that carried me through, which meant that I could easily carry on. Another example is if somebody decides to take up a practice that if you will be beneficial, like yoga, dance, meditation, chess, running, cycling, whatever it might be that we think is some sort of useful practice, or it might be something more intellectual, like joining a poetry group, like my aunt did at the age of 90. And she said she did that to try and keep her brain moving, which was sensible for her to do that. So sometimes, in a case like that, we can actually support ourselves in terms of our management of our own resistance. Because, of course, why even talk about resistance if we're not interested in managing it better? Otherwise, why talk about it? And the reality is we can learn to manage our resistance more effectively.

Speaker 1: 12:13

So when we don't manage our resistance at all effectively, it mostly takes place on the unconscious levels and mostly manifests in discomfort or or and becoming oblivious to the invitations coming towards us from life, where the resistance is so strong that we don't even notice the invitations and the effect of that is life becomes more narrow, our comfort zone actually shrinks rather than expands, and life becomes more gray, less vital, less vibrant. At the other end of the continuum of managing our resistance effectively, we notice it very vividly. We notice it in thought, forms, body sensations, feelings, emotions, assumptions that we become conscious of, strategies that we become conscious of, etc. And so forth, and that provides us with an enormous amount of data about ourselves, about the situation, about the time we're in, and so forth, which allows us to make choices. So in neither of those two cases do we actually get rid of our resistance.

Speaker 1: 13:26

In the first one, we are allowing our resistance or our relationship with it to diminish us, and in the second one, we are leveraging our resistance in order to help us to expand. And how do we do that? We do that by when we notice resistance, diving into it, like diving into a deep pool. Only, this pool we're diving into could be turbulent. There could be cold hatches in it, there could be hot patches in it, there could be bubbles of air coming up through it that dislodge us and turn us about.

Speaker 1: 14:06

Because the whole thing with resistance is it's there because something in us thinks that we are not safe if we continue in the direction we're going in. That's why it comes up, and very often it's because of some sort of pre-programmed response which comes from something that happened way back in our past. So it's a survival mechanism. Now the thing about it in the present day, we've probably completely forgotten about all of the components and building blocks and memories and experiences from past that have created that resistance that takes place today. What we can powerfully do when we dive deep into it, like diving into a deep pool of turbulent waters is we can open ourselves up to discovering and remembering those past experiences, those past decisions, those past strategies that from long, long ago sometimes, or sometimes not very long ago, and we can actually dismantle them. By dismantle them, I mean we can understand them in a way that really then takes away their power over us. So what I say dismantled, what I mean is they are softened at the edges, they are made less powerful over us. They're still there, but they're still there in the sense that you watch a movie and you might remember the movie, but the movie does not control you and run your life.

Speaker 1: 15:34

So, yes, resistance is a massive topic. I realise, as I'm talking about it, that there are many, many layers to it, more and more layers to it. So I suppose my main message in this is the value of being aware of the two types of resistance, one type being the external resistance, where somebody says I want you to do this and you know you don't want to do it, and you insist and you say no, rather than simply complying, and what we're doing there is we are giving ourselves our own authority in our lives and we are honouring our own authority in our lives. And the second form of resistance is the internal resistance, which usually starts at an unconscious level and which tends to occur when there is something that we are drawn towards and we are therefore moving forwards in some way, whether or not it's manifesting in actual behaviour or actual decisions.

Speaker 1: 16:39

There's a moving, there's a moving forwards taking place within us, there's a yes within us and there's also a no within us that's coming up, and while all of that is at unconscious level, we can't help ourselves very well with it. But when we bring it to conscious level which, by the way, is an ongoing practice we will never get to the point where we are always immediately conscious of all the layers of our resistance, because there's always more in there for us to learn and to become more self-aware about. So every time that we do that, every time we become more conscious, we grow our capability and our capacity for understanding our own resistance, which is a way of understanding ourselves, and then the next time we can more readily and more quickly dive into that pool, knowing that we will re-emerge with new wisdom, expanded capacities and probably a lot more energy, as resistance squashes our energy because it has to in order to stop us moving forwards. So I hope that's been an interesting piece of contemplation for you today, and if you've noticed yourself experiencing any resistance while I was talking, that could be suggesting well, it could be suggesting that you just find me annoying and that's totally acceptable. On the other hand, it could be suggesting that there's something about this that is worth exploring for you.

Speaker 1: 18:12

And at this point in time, in early 2024, it's a great time actually, I think, to really be noticing our resistance. For some of us, there's a resistance to actually going outside because it's cold and windy and wet, so but when we get out there and then we walk around, we breathe the air and we look at the beautiful birds flying above us and we look at the hedgerows and where I live, we're starting to get snow drops starting to poke their heads up out of the soil. We notice the life around us and the reality around us. We feel so much better when we come back because we follow the yes. So exploring resistance a wonderful theme I invite you to explore across the year and thank you for listening and have a wonderful week.