Resist Inner Resistance?
by Rev. Cory Coberforward
John 1:9-13
The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
Psalm 37:1-9 (Responsive reading for live service)
Do not fret because of those who are evil
or be envious of those who do wrong;
for like the grass they will soon wither,
like green plants they will soon die away.
Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him and he will do this:
He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn,
your vindication like the noonday sun.
Be still before the Lord
and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when people succeed in their ways,
or when they carry out their wicked schemes.
Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;
do not fret—it leads only to evil.
Read the written message below with music videos
Often, we pile resistance on top of our pain, which just multiplies the issue. Many tough things happen that are beyond our power to change, but we can’t seem to help to rail against them anyway (again and again). In fact, it’s not just pain and tough circumstances, we resist just about everything down to every single second. Yes, we tend to have a habit of fighting against the present moment, yearning for a future that will fulfill our sense of lack. Coming to know that Divinity itself dwells in the now, beneath our fears and our over-thinking minds, helps us to see that we’ve been missing life itself by getting so caught up in the wilderness of our thinking.
I don’t know many people that would relate coming into the present moment as recognizing Christ and receiving him, but I think it’s a case that he made himself. In fact, many sages point to this reality: that we find God by finding the blessedness of the light of awareness in this very moment, God never reveals their self outside of it. Christ told us to drop our attachments and our worry about the future. This means coming into the openness of our awareness and releasing our tight grip on the coming thoughts and sensations. It is in this moment that we can truly “repent” (turn around) from our old ways and find the freshness of love that is meant for us – which is the entirety of Christ’s message.
But we can read this and hear this and still over-power our tendency to control. Always for “good reason!” You may have a role in life where you feel that you “have to” shoehorn your ideas onto something or someone, but whatever our role, from fisherman to president, giving sway to our controlling impulses will only keep us out of a felt sense of the flow of providence, the flow of life as it unfolds in every moment. Our habit of holding people and things accountable to our mind’s sense of hierarchy and imagination keeps us and our organizations out of presence.
Like our controlling attitudes, our resistance to pain and tough circumstances often feels natural. But this resistance to what is only exacerbates the problems we have, placing us into a pot of anxiety and a lack of grounded presence, probably leading to inflammation and postponing the peace found in acceptance. When we release our habitual ruminating about the future and past, even our pains can take on a different light, and many of our ongoing issues dissipate for the figments that they are.
Take a moment to see this for yourself. Literally, take just a moment or two to drop your investment in the future and past-oriented thoughts that come. We can often trace these thoughts to our sense of “separated person,” and so notice your mind’s idea of who and what you are crop up at the roots of these thoughts and any unfortunate feelings. Notice that this sense of person is only imagination, a concoction that changes from moment to moment and over time. The only thing truly stable of ourselves in our experience, from sleep to waking and to eternity, is our awareness itself – all the things we know and experience arise within the light of life.
I’ve found myself resistant to many things throughout my life. But telling myself to just not be resistant would only be so helpful – we need effective tools to dissipate resistance as resisting resistance won’t help! This involves either focusing on the positive (the peace of the present moment) or looking at what is filled with resistance and darkness with openness and curiosity. When we notice our resistance come up, we should turn to it with openness and curiosity, as if a strange exotic bird has just landed outside in front of us. What are you about? What makes you tick and what makes you want to stay? What are your colours? As we learn about this exotic bird called resistance (or any others that appear!) we bring the light of love and openness to a place within that was lacking it, and we’ll be surprised as to where the bird then takes us and what the bird then becomes. On the other hand, continuing to fight this bird is like scaring it away by throwing its favourite food at it: it’s destined to come back soon, with friends.
Christ embodied the light of God, the light that shines in our understanding, according to the mystic Swedenborg, and the light which holds the love of God as well. Understanding is a vital part of all experiencing and all of our living, as all of our experiences take place for us as a type of knowing – “I know how I feel. I know that this is happening and has happened. I know that I am.” All of our knowing arises in the light of God shining into our minds, and you could say that the very seat of who we are is this light as we are the ones who perceive our thoughts (and not the other way around). This is why Christ called us “the Light of the world.” But he also tasked us with knowing this light while it is still “with us,” in order to discover eternal and infinite life. As an embodiment of this light, Christ exemplified all the things we can find when we come to know it better: healing, innocence, wisdom, and non-discriminating love. Even when this light appears dead it is ever-present and ready to resurrect in glory.
We are called to awaken to this light ourselves, realizing that we are one as this light. Christ’s message of unity wasn’t limited to him or to “Christians” but is a message we hear echoed throughout history, one that we’re tasked with coming into fully for our own sake so that our burdens can become light. Our sense of resistance to this very moment stems from a sense of lack within, which itself stems from our idea of ourselves as a separated, limited being. But Christ’s and others’ message tells us that we are greater than our idea of ourselves, that we are children of God, we are the light in which all things find shape: fundamentally non-resistant, wise, loving, and peaceful.
Blessings,
Cory