Overcoming Resistance

We have resistance because we all have a happiness set point. That’s a grade of happiness that we are comfortable with having and have probably had for a very long time. Usually this would be the level of content that doesn’t threaten others like our parents or which fits in with our childhood belief system – whether we believe that we are either ‘bad’ or ‘good’. If we believe that this is a kind and supportive universe it’s because we have a high happiness set point. If we believe that it is a cruel and heartless universe it’s because our set-point is low. The Universe is the same: it will support us in whatever belief we have.

Two of the people who write about the happiness set point are University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin E. P. Seligman - in Authentic Happiness (Free Press) and Marci Shimoff from the DVD of The Secret in her book book Happy For No Reason (Free Press). Both say that we have a happiness set point and a set point for our weight. In both cases, we can improve or hinder our well-being, get happier or slimmer…but most people aren't likely to take long leaps in either direction away from their set point and, if they do, then the effects aren’t long lasting.

If you’ve ever dieted and then experienced the weight creeping back on, you’ll know that feeling. Similarly, if you’ve ever been in love or found the perfect employment and been certain that your life would always be roses from now on only to find that the same old issues came up and within a year or two everything was back where it was.

No matter what happens to us in life, most of us return to the happiness (or unhappiness) set point that we have had since childhood. Even dramatic external events don’t make much difference in the long term. I have direct experience of this from the death of my first husband where I was deeply unhappy but even so found myself seeking relief from all sorts of sources to try and rebuild my happiness rather than consenting to continuing to be so very depressed. I travelled halfway round the world because in those days I thought the answer was external. In Australia I found answers that I could have found less than half a mile from home. The secret was that I was looking for relief. And my ego was agreeable to letting me do that simply because it too was uncomfortable with that level of unhappiness and thought it might even be life-threatening.

There are, apparently, only three exceptions to our happiness set point returning to its usual level within three years of either a good or a bad experience. These are bereavement of a deeply-loved spouse after many years together, long-term unemployment or extreme poverty. But even so, everyone can do something about their happiness set point if they choose to do so.

The thing is that going to workshops that inspire us isn’t going to do it. They just give us a temporary high unless we do the follow-up work that nearly all good workshops suggest. Stuff like practising the therapy, meditation or continuing the study. So often we don’t do it. And that’s resistance.

Why do we get resistance? Because we are human. We are vegetable, animal and human beings and each level of us has different needs. The vegetable part needs light and warmth (we would die in seconds without the sun), air to breathe, food to eat and water to drink. Plants will grow all over each other in order to fight their way to get to the light which is probably why we love our sunny summer holidays so much and insist on a good sun-bed by the pool.

The animal part of us is mostly social – it’s about our place in the tribe. Even if you are a loner who left your family tribe a long time ago you were still raised by them and they taught you what you could eat, what hurt and what didn’t and how to get out of the way of danger. If you had a particularly dysfunctional childhood you have been forced to accept what would normally be viewed as some kind of danger in order to survive – abuse or unkindness. As a human child you couldn’t move away so you just did what you could in order to get fed and shown how to survive. And those experiences went deep.

The animal soul is the part of us that jostles for position – promotion or submission or ostracisation according to how we feel safest. Even the rebel is working from their animal and vegetable nature.

And of course, often when we go into spiritual or holistic work we just move from one tribe to another. You only have to look at the conflicts between different healing groups or traditions to see that most spiritual work is tribal. Look at the Reiki wars about which way to do it is the right way. Or the splits within Emotional Freedom Therapy people or the Flower Remedy people. Even in my own discipline, Kabbalah – there’s the Kabbalah Centre (where we don’t go), the orthodox Jewish (where we’re not allowed to go) and the Toledano Tradition (where we do go) None is right or wrong but it’s very easy to think that ‘the other’ is the incorrect one. And don’t we have lots of reasons to support that? But that’s the ego’s view.

Which brings us to the human part of us. Our humanity is very specialised – it’s the part of us that creates, reasons, is inspired, makes decisions and is capable of loving kindness and mercy. That part of us is not part of nature; it’s part of our God-selves. Animals don’t do those things. Don’t get me wrong; I’m a great fan of animals. They rarely hurt each other in the way that humans are capable of doing. Where an animal is savage it is either through a desperate need for food – or because we taught it to be that way.

But animals don’t make conscious decisions. They don’t consider which of two bowls of food might be the better one for their health or digestion. They don’t think ‘I won’t chase that pigeon because it’s obviously not feeling well and it wouldn’t be fair.’
They don’t look in the mirror and consider whether or not they’re beautiful. They don’t need to tell you that they are loving or kind or spiritual. They don’t worry whether you are.

They just are. And they are perfect as they are.

Recently I saw a profile posting on Facebook that said “My religion is love” and then under politics said “Mad at all politicians.” Both were animal statements not human or spiritual ones. Humanity does not need to say that it is loving or kind or spiritual. And it does not need to be mad at all politicians. It knows they are doing the best they can with the knowledge they have and peacefully gets out of the way instead of pushing.

No one who is spiritual or loving or kind at the human level would ever say that they are loving – or even that they are ‘coming from the heart’. That’s ego. If it needs to tell someone that it’s doing something out of love it isn’t! The human part of us simply doesn’t need to advertise kindness.

Resistance usually comes from the vegetable and animal parts of our psyche resisting the human. Those are the parts that work on automatic. Nearly all resistance is automatic. We don’t even realise we’re experiencing it a lot of the time.

It is subtle; devious and very, very clever. And it is not a fan of spiritual growth because spiritual growth is about stepping out of preconceived opinions and thoughts. It’s about becoming an individual and nature doesn’t go for individuality much.

Nature works with packs or tribes. It’s about survival and reproduction. One flower for example is in danger of being pulled up or trodden on and made extinct. A carpet of a thousand flowers can spare one or two if someone rampages through the field.

An albino animal in a herd will stand out and may draw predators to the herd so often it is thrown out of the herd in order to protect the others. If you’ve gone into spiritual work you may have made your family and friends feel uncomfortable. You’ve become an albino – or perhaps a blue monkey where they are only happy around brown monkeys. So you will leave that tribe and go and live around other blue monkeys. Or at least, greenish blue ones if you can’t find any the right colour.
Or you will strike out on your own as a hermit; eschewing other people’s society for most of the time. This too can be resistance because it is through experiencing ourselves through other people that we learn our strengths and weaknesses and we can grow.

So why am I banging on about the negatives? Surely all we need to do is focus on the positive and live happy lives. Yes indeed, but have you noticed how much resistance there is to actually doing that? Easy to talk about it; easy to say you do it – but do you?

I’m a great fan of the Teachings of Abraham and they are right in that all we have to do is think happy thoughts and life will be good to us. What we put out we get back. And they are right in saying that what is in our subconscious can’t hurt us. But that one used to confuse me a bit because so much of counselling and holistic work is about digging up the things that trouble us in order to heal them.

I finally worked it out when I did a short Sabbatical or retreat at home. I gave myself five whole days of doing nothing – and I was astonished at the level of chatter and negativity that was droning along just on the surface of my consciousness. I’d been completely unaware of it before.

What was revelationary was that it was a kind of set-point that I defaulted to whenever I wasn’t specifically happy or specifically upset. All the time, I returned to that just conscious yada-yada-yada. As if I had to.

The issue I’ve faced for years – and I’m sure you have too – is that from early childhood I thought it was normal not to feel particularly good. So had I stopped being alert to the warning bells my emotions were trying to give me. If nearly everything felt slightly uncomfortable, that was the norm, right? Okay so sometimes there were lovely things that happened but, after a while, everything would settle back to a vague feeling of unhappiness due to school, other people’s views of me, family squabbles and general ‘I’m-not-good-enough-ness.’

I suspect it’s the same for you too. So without even realising it we are spending a lot of our time feeling slightly less than good. That’s resistance.

What’s my answer? It’s simple. It’s ‘Do it or don’t do it.’ That’s all. It’s a quotation from Steven Pressfield’s magnificent book ‘The War of Art’ (Warner Books). Here’s the whole passage. If you don’t cry when you read it, I’ll be surprised…

From The War of Art page 165, "The Artist's Life"

Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action.

Do it or don't do it.

It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.

You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God.

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.
 

© Maggy Whitehouse 2011
www.maggywhitehouse.com