Moving Past Your Own Resistance To Change

What keeps you from the things that make your life worth living?

Sally Kempton, author and spiritual teacher, offers an insightful article on how to get acquainted with and breakdown your own, seemingly impenetrable, wall of resistance. She says:

One of the most puzzling paradoxes of the human organism is the way we resist not only life’s difficulties but also life’s potential sweetness. I notice it in students and certainly in myself: the subtle tendency to hold back from anything that changes the balance in our lives. We don’t just resist something unpleasant, like working with a difficult health issue or recognizing the need to leave a job. We often have a strange resistance to, say, getting a massage or opening fully to a friend or lover, or, especially, allowing an emerging state of inner expansion—even when we sense that we’re cutting ourselves off from something great.

Kempton goes on to explain several scenarios of resistance that we all might face, and outlines ways to move past it through inner awareness and meditation. Her insights remind us of a core tenet in our philosophy, which says, “Be open. Change happens when it’s invited.” You never know. Leaning into your own resistance may unlock your mind in ways you have never anticipated.

[Image: BGC]