If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark.
—St. John of the Cross
What is it like when force becomes the standard of conduct? The great attack the small, the strong plunder the weak, the many oppress the few, the cunning deceive the simple, the noble disdain the humble. The rich mock the poor, the young take from the old, and the states of the empire ruin each other.
—Ma Tzu
When we don’t want something that shows up in our lives, we typically do our best to resist it. This resistance can mean that we refuse to accept things that arise in our experience, or that we manipulate them, or that we fight against them, or that we even work to destroy any of the causes and conditions that might lead to anything we find undesirable. As we continue our climb, we begin to see that all of our resistance centers itself around a contracted, egoic intention of pushing away what is presenting itself and grasping at what is not presenting itself in order to either force or avoid a particular outcome. As with any form of grasping, this causes suffering.
Yet we have all the tools we need to break this cycle. Every one of us, for instance, can feel our resistance to what’s going on in our immediate circumstance if we just tune into it. Sometimes, resistance is a feeling that arises slowly in our awareness, as might an opinion about some issue that someone has expressed. Sometimes, it shows up with amazing speed, as might an evaluation of someone’s preference of a particular political view or candidate. The intensity of our resistance can vary, too. Sometimes it’s a vague sense of unease, while at other times it is brutal and fierce. Any situation where we might feel resistance arise, however, is a gift in that it shows us in a powerful way exactly what we are unconsciously trying to grasp. Once we can recognize our resistance, we can then bring the powerful energy of our observing presence, or Witness, right into the circumstance. Becoming aware of the Witness offers us the chance to be curious about whatever feelings are making themselves known in our experience. With a calm curiosity, we begin to identify not with the contracted feelings of our personal resistance, but rather with the flowing and conscious wonder of simple, impersonal, and boundless Awareness. It is exactly in this way that resistance, and any other feelings of negativity, can be surrendered. Once this surrender occurs, there is peace.
One simple way to practice this recognition of resistance is to simply observe any distraction while you are meditating. Maybe your neighbor is making noise; maybe the family pet wants your attention; maybe your knees hurt. Any distraction will do. First, recognize the situation at hand. For our purposes, we’ll look at one of my early obstacles to practice, the “itchy nose scenario.” Notice the extent of the itchiness. Notice where exactly the itch is. Notice the fullness of the entire experience. After this full embrace of the itch, recognize the resistance you might have to it. Notice the impulse to do something about it. Notice just how much you want to reach up and alleviate the itch. Notice especially how you might begin to feel about not doing anything about the itch at all. Notice your resistance to the stillness, to this teaching, to everything that asks you to not indulge your habitual tendency to scratch your nose. Explore with deep curiosity everything that is coming up in relation to your itchy nose. Then let this curiosity guide you to release all that is resisting the itchiness. Notice, with patience and wonder, how the energy of the itch eventually diminishes with each breath. Notice how the itch fades from the forefront of your experience into the background. Notice the release of the itch entirely, how it disappears, as you recognize, resist, and eventually release the itchiness of your nose. While this example is a relatively easy point of practice, over time we find that the technique can be applied to any arising annoyance.
