Is Resistance Keeping You Stuck

There is a belief that if we don’t resist we will be consumed by whatever we are resisting. In other words, it will gain power over us. One of the ways the patriarchal story expresses the pattern of resisting is either fighting against or fighting for. It is in our language. I hear it daily: “I had to fight to keep my job”, “I had to fight to get my child into the school that best suited him”, “We had to fight for the funding for our charity.” I understand this way of thinking. We have been socialized into it and I lived it until I realized it was not serving the greater good of anyone involved in my fight, including me.

I came to understand that under that need to fight for or against was fear. And it was fear of more than one thing! There was the fear of experiencing more pain and suffering, of my needs not being met, of someone or a system having power over me and determining my fate, of not being able to be in control of my own life and of being powerless to help myself.

The patriarchal story is a story we all have participated in and we have all been impacted by its egocentric consciousness —  an ‘all-about-me’ mindset — and an ethnocentric consciousness, formed from the belief that as long as you are like me, with the same skin colour, the same religion, and the same race, then you can belong. It is believed that approximately 70% of the world population are living out of either one or both of these levels of consciousness. We experience both these levels of consciousness as part of our human evolution. The intention of the evolution process is to continue expand in our consciousness — but we are stuck. 

The truth is, we can’t change the patriarchal story but we can liberate ourselves from it and in doing so expand our consciousness to the next level of consciousness which is worldcentric consciousness. Simply put, it is living a heart-centered life. You see, the problem is not the patriarchal story. The story itself does not cause the pain and suffering, rather it is caused by humans living out the story. It is the human heart that is out of alignment. We have a choice to be part of the problem or the solution. Being part of the solution requires us to open our hearts and align with wholeness versus the separation we presently serve by being stuck in egocentric and ethnocentric consciousnesses.

Everything the patriarch represents is the opposite of wholeness, oneness. When you resist, or fight against the patriarchal story, you are giving your power to it and keep widening the gap of separation. Understanding how the patriarchal story expresses through you and choosing to liberate yourself from it is one way to open your heart and expand your consciousness. This patriarchal story that has been passed down through the generations for thousands of years, is so deeply engrained that it expresses unconsciously through you. Only when it is in your awareness can you unstick from it.  The story contains many patterns and those patterns have emotions that are attached to them and those emotions — resistance being one of them — are keeping you stuck. Freeing yourself from the patriarch does not come through resistance, it comes through acceptance. The first step on the path of accepting is awareness. Awareness comes through having a specific type of knowledge.

There are two ways of gaining knowledge. They both serve a purpose: 

1)    Knowledge by description — this is intellectually knowing about something and thinking about it. It’s having information for your mind to work with. This is the most common way of gaining knowledge in the patriarch. This knowledge is predominantly gained from the outer world.

2)    Knowledge by acquaintance — this is having knowledge by direct experience. This knowledge is obtained by experiencing the experience through the inner world. 

You can only experience awareness by having a direct experience. The Unsticking from Story process is a direct experience. It brings your unconscious story, beliefs and emotions into your consciousness and you become aware. Awareness is the first step and acceptance is the fifth in the Unsticking from Story process.

The biggest pitfall in liberating yourself from the patriarchal story is getting knowledge of description confused with knowledge of acquaintance: thinking “I know that”. Knowing something intellectually does not support becoming aware. It keeps you stuck in in the story and it patterns and emotions.

A direct experience is to become aware of how resistance shows up in your body. For example, it may present through clenching your teeth, clenching your fists, a tightness in your throat or perhaps in your chest. Become aware of your emotions, your thoughts and your language when you are feeling resistance. When you become aware of how resistance is expressing through you then you can go deeper and become aware of what you are resisting and then the underlying fear. Now you are on the journey of liberating yourself.