Understanding Resistance and Suffering
Note: This is another in a series of blogs related to a book project I’ve been writing. The book is called, The Slightly Older Person’s Guide to Graceful Aging.
If there was something you’re doing that made suffering feel like a constant part of your life, would you want to know about it? This particular thing is most likely to be done without you even being aware of doing it. It seems to be “just the way life is,” rather than something you’re doing.
Whenever we’re suffering, in whatever form, physically or mentally, it comes down to a single reason: we suffer whenever we resist the particular experience we’re having.
Resistance is nothing more than holding back your full commitment to whatever it is you’re experiencing. It’s like saying “yes” and “no” at the same time. Your resistance essentially cancels out the energy you’re giving that task, relationship, or experience.
If I feel difficulty in a particular relationship, if I face a task I don’t want to be doing, if I’m in physical pain, and I don’t get too caught up in my thinking about those issues, I’ll do just fine.
The moment I start resisting that relationship, task, or pain, I’ve essentially put a magnifying glass on it, and all I can see is how horrible it it is. In other words, I suffer.
The strange thing is, without resistance, there’s no suffering to be felt because the suffering doesn’t live in the task, relationship, or pain. It only lives in my resistance to those things.
For me, this has been one of those realizations that keeps expanding over time. The beauty of that is that it becomes both less likely that I’ll resist whatever experience I happen to be having, and more likely that if I do resist, I’ll catch myself before I spend much time suffering.
But can it be that simple? That’s the best part; it is.
And the simplicity of it has another advantage. Once you realize how simple it is, it also becomes easy, and once it becomes easy, it starts to be automatic. For those of us who feel like we’ve spent most of our lives in a state of suffering (and I include myself) this can be a revelation.
For years, I heard the phrase, “Suffering is optional,” and something in that phrase caught my attention every time I heard it. What remained a puzzle to me was how to leap from a life that seemed to be full of suffering to a life where suffering was an option. What I wasn’t able to see was how resistance was ensuring that the suffering continued.
To make a long story short, when I stopped resisting the experiences I was having, my suffering stopped. A lifetime of being accustomed to suffering in one way or another just stopped. Do I still have difficulty with certain things? How could I not? I’m human! But I’m completely serious when I say that I don’t suffer anymore.
Just try this: notice when you’re resisting an experience.
You don’t have to do anything different, just notice the resistance. The more you notice it, the less sense it will make to you to attempt to say “yes” and “no” at the same time.
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