[Blog (Non-channeled)  May 2010]

Resistance is an invitation to look further. Deeper.

I know this. I have told many people this. I have channeled it. But still I resist.

What’s in it for me? The other day I wrote about happy pain and about how I plan to use pain as an invitation to connect more deeply with my body. Since then, I’ve used this idea as a point of reference in meditation and in shamanic journey. But honestly? There have been no deep revelations yet. I still feel pain. I still expect not to. I still feel like I’m doing something wrong.

I’m not exactly spending my days wringing my hands over this, and I know that things will continue to move and flow because that’s how life is, but at the same time I feel I’m just at the edge of a new level of understanding and awareness.

I have the tendency, every time I navigate a particularly difficult challenge and make what feels to me like an astounding breakthrough, to pat myself on the back and then sit back waiting for more inner accolades. And while it’s a good thing to acknowledge hard work, change and movement, the movement stops the moment you sit back and wait for further change.

That’s what I’ve been doing.

• Cancer diagnosis. Check.
• Letting people help me. Check.
• Surgery. Check.
• Working with pain. Check.

I could go on and on. Each one of those things was wonderful. I have learned a lot. But the past few days I’ve been waiting for the Next Big Thing to appear. I sat here for a while, debating about what to write about. There was nothing truly pressing. I couldn’t use my tried and true techniques for creating movement (walking, tai chi) because they themselves require physical movement that I can’t manage at present. So I went inward and found the feeling of waiting.

Waiting for what?

We can become addicted to constant movement, constant change. Change is exciting and we feel like we’re accomplishing something.

It’s also a way to resist looking more deeply.

Resistance.

What am I resisting?

The first thing that comes to mind is the feeling of imperfection. I’d love to feel like I am done, completely finished, healed. Perfect. I see this often and I know I have it within myself. I’m caught blindsided sometimes when an issue I’ve worked with over and over resurfaces. “I thought I was done with this! Why now?”

Polaris tells us that revisiting an old issue allows us to look at the issue from a different perspective, thereby gaining wisdom about where we have been and where we are now. We are always changing our perspective, ever so slightly (or sometimes dramatically), and each twist of the spiral dance that is our life experience affords us a different glimpse of what is inside or beyond, when we choose to look.

I can touch it now, just the edges, of what it is I’m resisting. It feels slightly malleable. It gives. Underneath is something else, something bigger. I can feel it. I’m excited and at the same time frightened by what it is.

The only other thing I know about it is that it’s Me. More of me.