Surrendering resistance, even to resistance
I read parts of Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be by Lama Surya Das a couple of days ago, and although the content is very good, something also bugged me. I got a sense of a hardness in the writing, of boundaries, which may or may not be there. (In any case, it says something about me now, that there is a sense of hardness and boundaries right here that I am invited to take a look at.)
Gradually, it dawned on me that the sense of hardness that bugged me (in myself, and possibly in the writing) seems to be a resistance to resistance itself, to suffering, to boundaries. And this is still a resistance, a splitting of the field into I and Other, a creation of boundaries in the boundless space, a not allowing of what is to be. Resisting resistance is resistance as much as resistng anything else.
Some of the ways resisting resistance shows up is in an identity as a good practitioner, as someone who wants to learn from suffering, as someone who wants to grow and mature and even evolve spiritually, as someone who wants to be a good student or teacher. All of this has the stench of Zen as they say in those circles. It makes one's practice just another way to redefine, create and prop up identities, creating a boundary, an I and Other, a hardness towards Other, a limitation of what is allowed to surface in experience, of who or what I am, and as a human being, an artificial limitation on how I can live and what I allow to surface in this life.
So whether this really is in the writings of LSD, I can easily find it right here. And it is something I want to take a look at.
Whenever resistance comes up, this sense of hardness, of pushing something away, of I and Other, can I allow it? Just be with it? Drop resistance to it? Befriend it? Allow it as it is?
Labels: resistance, surrender