Resistance

One of the hardest things for me to get over was my reluctance to waking up. I really, really wanted to wake up. I was looking at lots of books on mindfulness and about being in the moment. But I never seemed to move forward. For a long time, I would read a bit, start a new practice and the it would drift away and I would be back to spending my whole day sleepwalking again, worrying about the future or stirring over the past.


In Awareness, Anthony de Mello is adamant that we just don't want to wake up. We're too attached to what we've had before, to the things we believe make us happy. We may think we want to wake up, but deep down we don't.


Then the crucial first step is to admit that we don't want to wake up - to be honest with ourselves that we're afraid. And it's remarkable how easy it is to reject the idea of being fully awake, of having an awakened spirit. Herberet Spencer wrote about "contempt prior to investigation" keeping us in permanent ignorance; and it works here, especially when I can look at the lives of some people who live totally in the world of the spirit and find an argument as to why it wouldn't work for me. After all who wants to spend chunks of one's day in prayer and meditation. "That's not living," is the call. From ignorance, sure, it's not living. But from awareness, it seems like the only way.


Mankind is the only animal I'm aware of that doesn't live in the moment. Perhaps because we have thoughts and feelings and they distract us from what's happening here and now. Since most of what we think or feel is made up in our head, we're the architects of our own distraction.


So we need, first of all, to admit that we have resistance to being woken up. And accept that and work with it.


Have you noticed that there aren't many people around trying to wake you up? Please don't think that's what I'm doing because I've noticed that people who go around trying to wake others up aren't popular at all - the worst case scenario I'm aware of is getting nailed to a cross by the people he was trying to wake up.


Some advice I read argued that we shouldn't try to make people happy, it only gets us into trouble. This mirrors what Robert Heinlein wrote: "Don't try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and it annoys the pig."