How Much Are You Resisting Life?

The more we resist what’s happening in our lives the more we suffer. The more we accept what’s already happened and is already happening, the less we suffer. It’s a profound truth that much of our suffering is directly related to the amount of resistance we have toward life.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t set grand goals and work toward reaching them. This doesn’t mean that we can’t communicate about things that need to be improved and work toward improving them. This does mean that the best position we can take on our path toward reaching those goals and toward improving our lives is the position of Acceptance.

It’s when we stay stuck in a “shouldn’t” or an “isn’t” that we create more problems for ourselves and more suffering:

*This shouldn’t be happening

*This isn’t right

*They shouldn’t have done that

*This isn’t fair

When we stay locked in resistance, to what is, we paralyze ourselves unable to move on, unable to grow,
and unable to heal.

Letting go of resistance to what happens is a very difficult thing
 to do. As human beings, we form strong attachments to the way things are, to the way we expect people to behave and to the way we expect life to unfold. Learning how to let go of those attachments and end the resistance can be our most important experience in growth.

In situations of traumatic loss or dramatic change letting go of these attachments will take time and will involve a process of grieving. When we get to the point of being “okay” with what happened and of accepting what we can’t change, our
resistance to life will end.

This is not giving up. This is not begrudging resignation.
This is total acceptance. This is an end to our resistance.
And when our resistance ends so does our suffering.