Positive Energy Guide

Decades ago I worked with a spiritual teacher who read whatever I was thinking. He would give me practices to do, and leave the building. When he came back he would yell a me for something I was thinking half an hour after he left. For a few months I was on silence, or just “yes” and “no.” I was not allowed to ask questions. Every number of days, however, this teacher would sit me down and answer the questions that had built up in my mind. He answered them one after another, almost verbatim to the way I thought them.

This experience would be wonderful for everyone ready for it to have, say, for a good solid three days, at least once in their lives.

We carry on AS IF we can have castle walls and partitions. We partition off parts of ourselves and things we don’t want to know about or be in touch with; parts that we can’t have in the same room at the same time. Then we pretend that just because we ourselves are out of touch with a particular part, that other people cannot see it either. This is one of our various conceits. We try to look certain ways and imagine all the things we think we can get away with.

Our personality defenses are like a series of castle walls and partitioned rooms. Having someone view the contents of our minds, objectively and without partitions, is like helicopter-view access. From the top, all these partitions, walls and defenses do not matter.

The experience of being VIEWED like that is fascinating. After the first day or two of denial, testing, and so forth, comes the scrabbling terror, like a cat that seems to have twenty legs when a child tries to cram it into the toilet. The ego starts to freak out, thinking: No this person can’t possibly see in me what I refuse to see. Your defenses come up.

Suppose the person who sees you completely has no interest whatsoever in these defenses. They are unimportant. They are irrelevant. The person just carries on viewing you completely—and even has a sense of humor about it.

The horror of finding all of your conceits and defenses ineffectual finally begin to relax.

You then become able to realize a few things: You see how much time and energy and tension goes into maintaining these defenses. There is great freedom in this. You realize that your defenses stop self knowledge and growth from happening. You surmise that the person viewing you sees and has seen other humans before. S/he has seen minds and hearts much dirtier than your own. Maybe you’re not so bad.

The net result, to a rational person is: Maybe I can just accept myself as I am. Maybe I can relax and let these things BE here, because they ARE here. This other person sees them anyhow—maybe I can admit them.

Contemplating this experience, you can begin to imagine living without partitions, divides, and defenses; coming to peace with whatever is inside. You now have a real opportunity for sincerity and significant growth. After this experience you no longer assume that people CAN’T see inside your mind and heart. We never do know who can see, hear, and feel what is going on inside us. We transmit clues all day long.

Of our various conceits and illusions, not the least is that we have privacy of mind. As a society, we go along with this conceit, and protect one another within it. Graceful social buffering is often necessary, particularly with those who are not consciously on a path of growth.

I’ve been around quite a few people who routinely pick things out of my mind or read my atmosphere. If it used to make me uncomfortable, at this point I’m not sure I feel fully connected around people who do not.

For an advanced intuitive, it’s as if the contents of one’s mind are floating around in the room and they have to walk in it. It’s not as if they are going IN AFTER it, trying to FIND it, invading you. There is nothing to be huffy about.

You begin to realize when you are walking around that your mind is relatively accessible. Even if you think you are closing yourself off it does not necessarily stop someone noticing what you are thinking and feeling. This realization can change your relationship with people and with yourself. You have to relax with yourself or you will go nuts. You also have the opportunity to clean up the things that you are not happy about instead of thinking you can shove it in a corner. Moving through life with cleanliness of mind because you are not defending, protecting or denying anything is more joyful.

How do you react to being so open?

What does your reaction mean to you?

Life conditions and circumstances can be excruciating. The spiritually advanced people to whom I have been exposed have not had easy lives. They do not flinch from the hard realities. Neither do they become enmeshed in difficulties. They learn bring peace into the world by cultivating peace internally, in the midst of life.

One spiritual teacher I know teaches learning to maintain one’s spiritual attunement through life’s conditions and circumstances. He maintained his rhythm, practice, open heart, and positive approach in the face of financial crisis, loss of a son, and cancer, all three within about eighteen months. (Remind me not to teach that!) He deepened admirably, inspiring his community.

Those who are spiritually advanced are not necessarily better people. Owing to their experience, they make useful role models. Addressing the wounds, resistance, fears and challenges that keep us from fully participating in life is an ongoing process. It takes time, intention, and courage. And under some conditions we just can’t bring those resources forth. If we can still practice generating wholesome energies, such as compassion, forgiveness, and peaceful power, our process becomes easier.

Acceptance of life as it is is not something we arrive at and then own. Acceptance is an active and living accommodation. Acceptance is supported by practicing discernment, and developing a stream of Guidance that helps us to sense what is ours to do and what is not. When we recognize what we can and cannot do, it is easier to release the things over which we have no direct influence.

Involvement in life is as much a matter of Being in ways that make a difference than of engaging in external projects and events.

If we view participation only with respect to what we DO, we miss much of importance. As we age, for example, we can aim to radiate love and wisdom, whether or not we are able to engage fully in external affairs. Our value is not determined by Doing. BEing matters at least as much as what we DO.

Feeling and caring is Being. Prayer, everyday habits that support the planet, and breathing in ways that create a calm or loving atmosphere can be just as important as taking up service to a cause. If we take up too many causes we dilute our ability to do good, exhausting ourselves and dissipating the energy that underlies our positive influence. Living with intention, resting and nurturing our bodies, and accepting our limitations are ways of Being that serve the world too.

Spiritual growth can and does result from what we think, choose, and enact. It is perhaps most greatly expedited by intentionally cultivating particular types of energy. Meditation cultivates calm, even, positive energy. Meditation on Beings who have become spiritually illuminated is even more direct—if one is drawn to it. There are numerous ways to cultivate positive energy.

As we grow spiritually, it helps to keep power and love in balance, by developing them alternately. When love is stronger, compassion may make it painful and overwhelming to keep an open heart. More power is needed. When power is more prevalent than love, we may become insensitive or strident, calling for increased love and compassion. Although not linear, this aspect of spiritual growth is like climbing a ladder, hand over hand, with alternate rungs of love and power.

The more mastery we have over our own energy—and hence our state—the more power and influence we have. This power must be tempered by wisdom if it is to be of benefit without causing problems. As wisdom matures through life experience we realize more vividly how vital it is to sense when to act and when to reserve action and temporarily surrender expressions of personal will for the Highest Option for All Beings.

Do you feel your value when you are BEing, or must you DO to feel you are worthwhile?

How is your current balance between power and love?

From a spiritual perspective, safety is largely a factor of what we identify with. When we identify with things that change, we feel more threatened by change. When what we think we ARE may be eradicated by change, change is frightening.

Profound spiritual growth is more threatening than superficial growth. Patterns and personality, likes and dislikes, or our profession may change. We feel threatened if we identify with these things. Then, when they change, we think we will no longer be the same person.

Essence is not threatened by change.

When we identify with our essence, transformation is less threatening because ‘who we really are’ does not change. The seasoned spiritual traveler realizes that the more we transform the more we feel like our own true and natural selves.

Getting to an experience of essence sometimes requires trauma or disruption. Unless the things we identify with become disrupted through change, we may not challenge ourselves to step beyond preconceptions and assumptions about life.

Until we assimilate trauma that informs our experience, it may be difficult to feel trust. At such a juncture it is good to ask oneself, “Trust in what?”

Distrust of God or Life is important to explore. It can bring up a whole welter of uncomfortable feelings. Sharing these feelings can be frightening, particularly if doing so has resulted in painful conversations—or silences—with people we care about. Matters that involve belief can be fraught with judgement, fear, and unspoken reservations.

The best way to approach distrust of God depends on the individual, not only their beliefs, but their relationship with their own heart, and their level of spiritual development.

It does not work to demand peace and ease as preconditions to feeling trust, or love.

Regardless of our spiritual beliefs, issues involving trust almost always hinge on our ability to trust ourselves. We may need to develop discernment, boundaries, energy related to safety, the strength to speak out, and so forth, in order to really be there for ourselves when challenges occur.

I have been learning to produce in my body and energy systems the resonance of safety and of love, and to bring these forth for myself when I am confronted with conditions and circumstances with which I am uncomfortable. When I am able to create comfort inside myself, through my own compassion, I get new insights as to how to manage circumstances and events. My self trust becomes more comprehensive.

Upon what is self trust founded? These Essential Questions to Self  form the foundations:

• Am I asking life to be other than it is or to prove something to me so I can feel a certain way?
• Am I trying to impose conditions upon which my full participation depends? If so, what are these conditions, and can I release them, even a bit?
• Am I willing and able to keep learning, or to nurture myself until I can be open to learning again?
• Am I willing to use life’s conditions and circumstances as a training ground?
• Am I willing to practice bringing forth the qualities I need in order to remain intact, become stronger, earn my own trust, or bring forth more love?
• If I cannot be willing right now, am I willing to be willing?
• Am I willing to practice discernment?
• Am I willing to make The Highest Option more important than my momentary desires?
• What specific energies do I need right now? What can I do cultivate them?
• If I cannot or will not do what I need right now, what can I do that is constructive?

Note that this work has to do with developing a positive relationship with will.

To benefit most, we need to engage these questions whether or not we FEEL positive, and whether or not our beliefs are working.

Which questions are the most relevant for YOU right now?

Identity is a tar baby. When we punch it we get our mitts stuck.

From the point of view of identity, Being differently is subtilely tantamount to a kind of death. Change is considered not being “yourself” any more. Change occurs more smoothly when we do not make it about who we ARE. Simply leaning into the moment and making an aware choice, just for now, works magic over time.

Let’s use rigidity in shifting from Doing to Being as an example. Someone defines herself as a person who never lets down and relaxes is likely to find spending a week relaxing on a beach daunting or disagreeable. Changing this orientation could feel like having to be a different person. Pressure to change would evoke resistance. Going to the beach and finding something to do there, or practicing relaxing for a little while might be fine. Then it’s not about having to BE someone different, it’s just a choice in the moment.

Discerning our most beneficial response in the moment produces evolution. Keeping with the moment reduces self-conscious, ego-based meddling, and assumptions that spring from grand ideas about potential results. We may have a sense of Becoming, or visions of a potentialities, but each step occurs in the moment—where the action always is.

Non-attachment to the results of our labors is a traditional spiritual value. Applying it with respect to whom and what we become over time helps free us from the confines of identity, which is a limitation on the spiritual path.

From within our moment-to-moment experience, we cannot realize possibilities with which we do not yet resonate. Such potentialities are hopes, wishes, abstractions, or ideals; images of what we “should/could be,” out in the future.

Real choice in the moment requires the ability to call up the energies and create the internal conditions necessary to actualize that choice. For example, we may wish to be loving during conflict. To actually BE loving, we need to call forth the energy of love, creating first inside ourselves a true willingness to open to that love. Then we are able to alter our responses and circumstances.

The things that do and do not occur to us to do, the ways we are able to respond, and the choices that appear before us are contingent upon our “state” and our development. “State” includes: all that we are exposed to, whatever new layer of Self is ready to emerge, any wounds are currently activated or echoing in the background, and the energies we intentionally cultivate.

Our capacity for choice is predicated by the energies associated with our habitual states. In general, we are most able to influence that to which we expose ourselves and the energies we intentionally cultivate. These choices influence our state and our conditions. Cultivating positive influence and energy inspires a wider or more favorable palette of choices.

One advantage of having role models is that they tacitly suggest possibilities and ways of running our energy that do not occur to us on our own.

When we experience futility, feeling stuck, resistance, and a sense of impossibility, we are usually referencing concepts, ideas, and wounds that have become crystalized as parts of self-concept or identity. If, instead of pulling away from it, we gently embrace our sense of limitation—without identifying with the limited state—we become much more able to change our energy.

Changing our energy opens previously unavailable possibilities.

Real choice about how we run our energy in the moment is powerful magic. It requires Doing and Being at same time.

Here are some questions to ask yourself if you tend to become stuck in Doing:

• Is Doing, at the particular moment, a choice or an automatic behavior?
• Is Doing a defense against feeling?
• If so, what are you trying to avoid?
• What might happen if you suspend automatic Doing?
• Is your current Doing based on any particular values or discernment?
• What is your Highest Option and most important value in this particular moment?

Which one of these questions is the most on point for YOU at this point in time?

“Brother, stand the pain.
Escape the poison of your impulses.
The sky will bow to your beauty, if you do.
Learn to light the candle. Rise with the sun.
Turn away from the cave of your sleeping.
That way a thorn expands to a rose.” ~Rumi

Some of my worst moments occur when I feel forced to squander countless hours trying, for example, to download a year of financial information that some mandatory update has eaten, and telephone “help” no longer supports the platform I just repurchased. With the thousands of people in mind who are in the same position, being treated to casual cruelty, irresponsibility, and the company’s rhetoric about their lack of support for the products they inflict on the public has reduced me to shouting. It’s the helplessness.

I know this is trivial. The triviality makes it worse. Stress from major life events at least seems meaningful. Real trauma is vitally alive. It demands transformation. In contrast, dry and useless waste of precious days is like death by a thousand paper cuts. Meaningless stress deadens us and erodes societal well being.

Inability to accept the mundane increases my pain. Aiming for self mastery or contribution offer a sense of choice about some part of the experience, adding some meaning. When I am willing and able to practice this it reduces my distress.

One of my spiritual goals is to be able to remain in my heart—or at least avoid spiking my cortisol—in frustrating, trivial circumstances. It helps me to take a strong stand for everyone who may have to deal with the same thing. I seek to enroll anyone who may be able to make a difference in the way that company does business, asking them to help reduce meaningless planetary stress by advocating positive change during meetings, and by notifying policy makers. Breath practices help me too. 

We may be unable to control circumstances, but we can at least gain some influence over our responses to them.

When we do not participate in the ways that ARE possible, we suffer more.

Looping back into our several-post topic of spirituality and suffering:

When we feel that God will cause us suffering, I think we must ask ourselves What we take God to be. (Please substitute your own word or concept if you don’t like the G-word.)

When we experience ourselves as separate from God, we can be messed with by God. When we feel we are an integral part of God, like a cell within the whole of the body, we play our part. We are impacted by the whole but it is not doing anything TO us; we are part of it.

Someone once said to the spiritual leader, Hazrat Inayat Khan, “I don’t believe in God.”

Inayat Khan replied, “You haven’t experienced God. How can you believe in something if you have not experienced it? Wait until you have some experience and then believe.”

Inayat Khan also said that god is a vibration, and that we create that vibration. We bring it forth from within us as an ideal, and train our energy to resonate with that ideal, making it real by bringing it through us into the world.

No matter what we believe or what we call it, we can practice bringing love into the world. It’s not easy, but it is inherently worthwhile.

Working with love and forgiveness AS ENERGIES invites expanded and redemptive experience. Working through the mind is less efficient. We need to FEEL it. When we are willing to love ourselves during our moments of distress, and to forgive ourselves for our wounds, we move toward happiness that transcends circumstances and conditions.

What do YOU resist, and how does this resistance ultimately increase your distress?

Can you identify some way to create a sense of choice or freedom within your experience?

“Because true belonging only happens when we present
our authentic, imperfect selves to the world,our sense of belonging
can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.” ~ Brené Brown

Exposure to energies that promote rapid spiritual growth almost inevitably brings us up against the that prevent us from sustaining those energies within ourselves. When we are passionate about transformation, we view this as an opportunity to stretch ourselves with respect to these limitations. We are, however, rarely of one mind about it. When the going becomes painful, we are apt to view these challenges as an affront. Here we are, doing our best to be all that we can be, and it feels like we’re being tested or tormented, let alone receiving support.

One of my readers brought up what she aptly calls “the universal 2-by-4.” I would like to speak in part to those who have experienced sudden awakenings and transformational life experiences which they were not actively courting. My reader was brave and authentic enough to admit that she felt resentment toward God after having such extreme experiences.

I understand. In the face of this kind of experience it is easy to feel resistant to growth, fear of more pain, angry, and stuck.

About twenty years ago I went through an episode of acute spiritual agony. I was mad at God. Even if one kills one’s self, I reasoned, one could not escape suffering because it is nearly impossible to step off the Wheel of death and rebirth. I did not recall choosing to participate, maybe back at the beginning of being a distinct, individual soul, or agreeing to the intensity of the challenges. I resented that so much learning comes through distress. Why not through love?

Whatever we believe and however we couch it, intense suffering can bring up rage. On the bright side, rage can assist with transformation. It focuses a huge amount of energy. Rage itself is life-affirming. We do need to use this force toward positive ends.

While I do not hold with rigid belief, I do believe that the urge to grow is part of our nature. We experience fulfillment through growth. We experience fulfillment by cultivating our hearts, and meaning through involvement with The Greater Whole.

The more we feel separate from God, others, the Universe, etc, the more we suffer. When we feel at One with It, we feel better and are more likely to experience meaning. If we cannot feel it now, we can aim to remain open.

Life is what it is and does what it does. We want to think it could be “fair.” We attempt to apply logic, to hold life to human standards of what should and should not happen. These standards were usually taught to us as children. Sometimes we regress when we cannot understand Life with our minds.

Apparently The One Being That embraces Everything does not maintain our biases against suffering and death. Much that we can experience directly, through our hearts, cannot be rationalized or explained. This includes the paradox of Divine Compassion.

Life is a big fat mystery. It full of paradox and both-ands. It does not and will not conform to our expectations. When we resist, we hurt more. I can understand resenting that.

The more I do practices that increase my ability to remain in my heart the more I experience myself as participating instead of feeling done-to.

How do YOU feel about using difficult circumstances to grow?

What brings you a sense of having a choice?

To progress in our Inner Work, we need to be willing to observe
our resistance to reality, our attachment to our self-image,
and our fear. (Understanding the Enneagram)

This narrative follows and completes my story about grappling with the enigma of suffering:

Working in tandem with and being close friends with a powerful a clairvoyant, clairaudient healer I learned a great deal about energy. Unfortunately, when I began to confront him about various breaches of ethics, he did not address them and we parted ways. We had come to count on one another’s assistance in clearing our energy if we became too compromised to scan ourselves. Doing advanced energy healing without this safety net made me hypersensitive to energy.

Through Qi Gong, I was learning how to protect myself from energy that did not belong with me. At the same time, I was becoming even more sensitive, outstripping my ability to keep myself safe. Fortunately, ongoing work with several advanced healers and the accumulated results of my Inner Work were reaching critical mass. I learned how to cultivate positive energies to assist me both in staying clear and in clearing myself if I became compromised. Now I was able to strengthen my energy fields, effectively ground myself, and manage external energies. I quit having creepy energy experiences.

Before I began this blog, I wrote what would have been a long book. I intended to reach out to people who felt isolated owing to unusual energy experiences. I wrote autobiographically, to model the skills and attitudes I was developing in order to stay balanced and clear while encountering all manner of bizarre and unnerving energy phenomena.

I imagined people passing my book along to friends who had become isolated or felt crazy dealing with paranormal phenomena without support. After all my work I realized that publishing it might make me the go-to person not only for intuitives, but for those who were mentally unstable or ill. It is not my life work to serve in that particular front-line trench.

At this point I pursued and later co-taught some Gurdjieff-based spiritual work. It was very practical, emphasizing Inner Work rather than God. It felt good to engage in transformative work without worrying about belief. I withdrew when one of the main proponents of that work, a powerful narcissist, began to mess with my energy. He had asked me to co-author a book and I had declined.

Several years ago I was drawn to meet a spiritual teacher I had seen briefly when I was twenty. To my shock, I realized quickly and unequivocally that he was my Teacher. I had long before given up even the remotest desire for a spiritual Teacher. The several teachers I initially worked with were like stepping stones, without a deep inner link, full conviction, or any sense of permanence. My Teacher was not looking for students. I had to assert myself in a spiritually classic manner to forge a real connection. (How I managed that is a different story.)

Now I am extremely fortunate to have an absolutely genuine, astonishingly congruent Teacher. Treating each person as unique, he suggests specific spiritual practices to address distress and imbalance that stand in the way of experiencing spiritual Unity.

I used to fear that God or life would torment me in this way or that to make me grow. At first I formulated and reformulated several questions to my Teacher, seeking answers to make sense of suffering. His responses were the only things he has ever said that to me that didn’t quite strike home. They never in the slightest rubbed me the wrong way—which is a minor miracle. Neither did they satisfy.

Since then my experience has changed. It’s as if I absorbed the question into my growth, and don’t find myself circling in that particular eddy. Understanding encompasses more than the mind. Some questions are uprooted only through direct experience. My questions about suffering were formulated from a perspective that has begun to dissolve. It is not that I don’t have moments of fear, distress or overwhelm with the intensity of life. But such moments have less purchase on me. They have begun to dissolve into the Whole as I experience greater unity with Life.

Who do you know who accepts life as it is—including the trauma and atrocities—yet is able to remain genuinely positive?

What do YOU do to cultivate positive energy?

When it comes to learning to manage energy, let alone coming to grips with suffering, there isn’t a quick fix. I find myself drawn to share some personal background before proceeding with other commentary. This will take two posts:

In my twenties and for eleven years, I was intensively involved with a different branch of the mystical school with which I am now linked. A leader’s serious abuse of power caused me to leave that school. Oddly, an independent teacher from a path I had never heard of sent a student to find me. This was before internet and occurred totally through Guidance. This teacher did fairly extreme (and fascinating) work with me for about seven months. When our stint came to completion, I became involved with a different spiritual group for seven years.

That group does a powerful fire ritual during which participants throw something they want to renounce into the fire. They caution that this act can put in motion difficult processes necessary to bringing about renunciation. Determined to learn through joy rather than suffering, I threw “learning through suffering” into that fire. Whether or not I was fully in belief, I thought I’d give it a sincere try. My next seven years were even more difficult than the previous. I asked experienced members of the group how to come to grips with suffering. Few engaged my questions. No one shared anything useful, just platitudes or party lines.

During a spiritual camp I had an episode of agony, through which I encountered rage with God. I have heard it said, and agree, that engaging with God in rage maintains a relationship and is cathartic—which creates more possibility than does withdrawing. I did not find it loving to set up Creation so we learn through suffering. I wanted OUT. For those difficult hours I felt acutely that even suicide was futile because one would simply find oneself back on the Wheel of Life, probably in less salutary conditions. I let these feelings arise but did not dwell on them later.

For three years I led a committed small group. We met in secret to evade attendance by superficial persons who permeated the local chapter of the larger group. A significant trauma dismantled this group.

During this period I became involved with a man who began to use spiritual rhetoric in an attempt to force me to caretake him. When the title of a book called, “God Talk and Domination” jumped out at me in a book store, what he was doing suddenly became clear. I practically developed an allergy to spiritual talk.

At this point I was feeling rather defensive toward God. I avoided spiritual groups for more than a decade. I had withdrawn from belief. Sometimes I felt that I had lost faith, and yet I could sense it hiding, way down deep and private. This faith was not “IN anything.” It stands like a spinning top that rights itself if pushed over. Paradoxically, this faith—for lack of a better word—was completely hidden beneath a wry unwillingness to fake anything or take anything ‘on faith.’ I came to sense that real faith could not be shattered (it was like water), or lost (it was part of me), or influenced by conditions and circumstances (it did not stand upon them). This was not faith that something or someone would somehow save me, but a kind of internal compass that drew me in a wholesome direction.

I became flexible enough to support people in their spiritual processes, no matter what belief systems they engaged.

When I carefully took stock, I realized that in dismissing belief systems and spiritual practices because I did not fully buy in to groups’ dynamics, politics and rhetoric, I had a deficit of positive energy. Without intentionally bringing in positive energy, I was being exposed to the “stuff” body therapy clients were releasing. These energies were creating unpleasant experiences—whether or not I “believed in” them.

“The distress I am feeling is the engine that drives me forward.” RR

Have you ever been angry with God, or do you reject whatever “God” might be because the enigma of suffering is confounding?

What does “faith” mean to you? Can you locate faith as a resonance or vibration instead of a concept or belief?

It is challenging to approach the topic of feeling that God or the Universe is causing us suffering. I don’t want to be glib about this, or to dodge it because it is so difficult to write about without rhetoric, platitudes, or too much to believe. I find myself with a number of different things to say about this topic, in different contexts. I truly hope you find my reflections useful.

Much of the suffering we go through through is due to attachment, reactivity, old wounds, rigid biases about what “should be,” and so forth. It is useful to differentiate between:

• Distress that has been there all along, now surfacing into awareness (an opportunity for greater personal freedom)
• Distress sourced to mistaken opinions and beliefs about live (an opportunity for positive disillusionment)
• Distress that might be referred to as karmic, related to unavoidable life events (long term lessons that require integration over years)
• Reactivity and resistance because we don’t like the way things are (calls for developing greater acceptance of Life)
• Pain caused by lower-self resistance to the higher-self bringing in more light/awareness (ugh. Good luck, fellow Travelers! We’re in an unprecedented planetary growth spurt and the going is intense!)

The latter can be viewed as suffering that is brought about by spiritual pursuit. It hurts, yet at least when we incur suffering in pursuit of something of real value, it has inherent meaning.

This type of distress, when it is real, is an indication of achievement. We have managed to make a significant enough change in our energies that it is invoking internal resistance. It IS possible to regress in our trajectory of growth. An established habit of intentionally selecting the Highest Possible Option in the moment serves well during this kind of juncture, as does access to genuine Guidance.

If we are not on board with the changes we are going through, and experience no sense of choice, our distress is exacerbated.

We may also suffer when we are calling out for help and do not receive it. Sometimes we need to formulate ourselves through grappling with a particular challenge over time, alone. This is especially painful when we do not understand the purpose and direction of our growth, and feel we have not chosen this course.

It is possible to have chosen a course unwittingly. When we pray for greater understanding and compassion, for example, we may have experiences by which we learn them. How else are we to fully comprehend if not through direct experience?

When we are suffering, it is easy to feel uncomfortable or even annoyed by people who lack sufficient understanding to be in rapport with us. Trying to manage relating to people who don’t ‘get it’ when we hurt is emotionally frustrating. We may protect ourselves from disappointment, frustration, or shame by withdrawing from superficial or hyper-positive people, by whom we may be judged. It’s okay to crawl under a rock for repairs.

When I share positive experiences, values, directions to focus on, and highly positive experiences, I feel concerned about inadvertently pushing buttons for those of you who are in pain. (I’m trying to get over that.) Being positive can be scary because it can alienate people for various reasons. Those of you who know me know that I am all about wholeness. I have limited patience for people who adopt an external attitude that appears positive without doing their Inner Work—particularly if they regurgitate memorized platitudes when I am in distress.

The most positive and integrated people I know can and do stand fully in rapport with those who have been shattered by atrocities. They do not act “nice,” sugar-coat anything, or withdraw from distress, their own, or that of others.

Do you differentiate between different types of distress?

If so, how does that serve you?

We learn from experience. Some experiences take years to integrate. Quality guidance quickens our ability to integrate them. Coming to grips with and discovering—or creating—value from any kind of trauma often requires additional life experience. We re-chew and digest what has happened, while learning thorough other life events that gradually put them into perspective.

The parts of myself that I feel the best about, which ultimately bring me the most joy, developed by working to integrate difficult or painful experiences.

If we cannot yet understand the meaning, value, or purpose of our experience, this does not therefore mean that our experience has no purpose or value.

It is an error to impose a belief system on others, telling them that this or that is the reason or purpose of their experience. We need to come to it on our own. Sometimes we can offer our own understanding and experience to others, and if it fits for them, it helps to develop valuable perspective.

I don’t believe in making up some kind of meaning like a platitude. Meaning surfaces from the heart, through assimilating direct experience.

Whether the oyster is happy to have built a pearl, or whether the oyster feels resentful about having been invaded by sand in the first place, we do not know. In any case, it is often beneficial to examine our relationship to resistance.

It is wise to distinguish between unhealthy resistance and the kind of hesitancy that arises when something is not right for us. The later may come from instinct or internal guidance. This process is similar to telling the difference between an unhealthy food craving and the feeling we get when our body is pulling for something like salad or protein. The sensations are different. It is an advantage to learn to discern when something really doesn’t feel right for us, and notice how this differs from resistance to wholesome things that do serve us. We do this through the function of Sensing. Thinking will become circular and confusing.

For the most part, resistance makes life more difficult. Initially, as we are forming a distinct sense of self—ideally as a teenager with our parents—resistance helps us to identify who we are in contradistinction to others. It can assist in learning not go along with things that do not serve us, like saying “no” to an offer to take drugs.

When we resist what life itself throws our way, resistance has little to offer. It almost always prolongs pain and difficulty. Yes, resistance can be a crude source of power like tenacity, but as we heal we find we can hang in there or say “no” without perceiving something as “other” and reacting against it.

Even if we were drowning, certain there was no way to save ourselves, it would be of benefit to focus on love or spirit during these last moments, or to become curious about the process of Transition. Kicking and tensing up increase distress. Acceptance cannot be forced. We arrive at acceptance through due process. Almost all of us can improve our experience by learning to relax non-useful resistance.

The above is hard to do when we’re afraid of being hurt. I’ll address other aspects of this in the next five posts.

When I can create peace within my own body by working with my energetics, I become less reactive and resistant to circumstances. I have more choices. A mundane example: When someone in a car drives behind and pesters me, if I can practice staying in my body and breathing into my abdomen or heart, and focus on my experience, I can keep from letting the other driver disturb me. This is very hard for me since I’m so sensitive to energy. If I can achieve peace even for a few moments, I gain a feeling of freedom rather than frustration and anger. More choices show up when I aim for inner peace.

Peace gives us more power. And peace gives us the space to use that power with discernment.

When consumed by resentment and frustration, I am unable to access the power to notice my available choices. Then I might feel victimized by circumstances. If I dissipate my energy in anger or resentment I am too busy to discern exactly how I might optimize my experience, to whatever extent it is possible.

It takes a lot more time to cultivate our thoughts, feelings and insights around major life experiences, to become able to accept What Is enough to create peace. But, we really have nothing better to do. Thrashing around makes things worse. There is nothing wrong with thrashing, but it makes life still harder.

We do have free will. We do not HAVE to develop. Growing to develop greater mastery helps us to optimize experience and improves our lives.

What do YOU resist?

How does your resistance bias the way you experience related events?

What is going on inside when you resist positive integration?