"There are three ways in which consciousness can flow into what you do and thus through you into this world... acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm. Each one represents a certain vibrational frequency of consciousness. You need to be vigilant to make sure that one of them is engaged in doing anything at all - from the most simple task to the most complex. If you are not in the state of either acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others." Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth (pg. 294-5)
Resistance shows up in many forms, and it is always a signal that we are seeing "Good and..." something not-good. When we are resisting, we are blocking the flow of Good. "Good Without Opposite" is one of our "names" for that One Power, One Presence which we sometimes call God. Three of the major attributes of that One Power are Omnipotence (All-Power), Omniscience (All-Wisdom) and Omnipresence (Everywhere Present). When we are resisting something we are saying, "This is bad, and I have to push it away. I don't like it, I don't want it, this is not how things are supposed to be." Once we've placed this negative judgment upon it, the human mind sets about doing what it always does when faced with something "wrong": it sets about trying to fix, avoid, or destroy that wrong thing.
The Law of Mind Action says that thoughts held in mind tend to create after their kind. In other words, wherever we place our attention, whatever we focus on, tends to create more opportunity for that experience. When we declare something to be bad, and then begin to fight it, where are we placing our attention? Yep- we're focusing on the need to fight bad things. Since that is where we are placing our attention, focusing on the necessity to fight the bad thing, what are we likely to start noticing more of? More and more bad things to fight. Since everything changes and passes away, the original "bad thing" we resisted may actually resolve itself and fade away. But will we be happy? Most likely not, because now we've also got all these other bad things to fight.
Where is the Good Without Opposite which is supposedly everywhere-present? It's still there, of course, but we can't see it because we're too busy fighting all that bad stuff. All-Good is still available; we've just effectively cut off the flow of Good to ourselves by choosing to behave in a way which creates suffering for ourselves and others.
What if we just decided not to label difficult things "bad"? I guess in that ideal state of mind we might say, "Oh Wow! Look what I get to work with today! This is SO amazing, and I am just SO incredibly blessed!", but that's certainly not my usual response. Most of us will fairly instinctively react with the thought that this is just another bad thing.
It's possible though, if we've been doing our spiritual work, at some point we might question the wisdom of naming it as bad, and choose instead to say, "Well... this is certainly not what I had in mind. I can't say right now that I see the purpose or Good in this situation, but this is what's in front of me. Apparently I have to deal with it." In that moment, the direction of our mental focus has shifted from resistance into acceptance. With that shift, we have again opened ourselves to the abundant flow of Good. We still may not enjoy the experience, and we certainly don't have enthusiasm for it, but we have effectively claimed our receptivity to the Omnipresence of Good.
We will always have "bad stuff" to deal with. It's our choice whether we increase our suffering - and the suffering of those around us- through resistance, or lessen our suffering through acceptance.
Blessings and Namaskar (the Divine within me blesses and honors the Divine within you)
