Have you ever faced resistance straight on and put it in its place? Feels good doesn’t it?
The War Of Art by Steven Pressfield (you can order that through my Books That Expand The Mind store) arrived instantly on my Kindle reader. It had come highly recommended so I jumped right in. This book spoke to me. My inner Yah! button kept getting pushed. I love when books do that, don’t you?
If you have a passion for creating music, painting, writing, designing or other forms of creativity, you have run directly into a force called Resistance. Think of a blank canvas, empty screen, or waiting pad of paper and that thought, “I want to create.” Feel in your body the charge of emotions that arrive. Listen to the beating of the heart as it readies in excitement to be expressed.
Now imagine fear rising up, rationalizations start flowing, and the courage of your heart being tested. Resistance has entered the room. It boldly interjects itself with the implied statement of wait a minute buster do you have any idea what you are doing? Then it brings out the full weapons of mass creative destruction.
Resistance reminds you with sternness: you have to make money, you aren’t good enough, you are wasting your time, you need to find a job, you have yard work to do, you won’t make any difference, or whatever else it can use to immobilize you.
Yikes resistance can be a powerful force! Does any of this seem familiar?
The good news is there are equally powerful forces in you and in the universe to counteract this Big Dud known as resistance. These inner forces are called courage, determination, focus, passion, and most important - the self-discipline of doing the work. According to Mr. Pressfield it is all in sitting there and doing the work no matter the horror of distractions that come running at you.
If you know the story of the Buddha’s enlightenment, you know that before he made the final leap into the full light of knowing, great forces of resistance, temptation and distraction reared their ugly faces. He watched and remained in the place of equanimity.
You too can be equanimous in the face of resistance and you don’t have to be a Buddha to pull it off. All true creative expression (and enlightenment) happens in the highest moment of possibility, the here and now. In the now of your expression there comes genius and the universal forces to help support that flow of light from you out into the world. You can become Buddha-like through the act of creation.
What kind of universal aids can you expect you might wonder? Only the act of “doing the work” can reveal that to you.
This much I know, what you need, will be provided in the most unexpected ways.