Category: Shadow Work

Fear vs. Resistance. The Vortex.

levernicaLeave a comment

I have often seen the words fear and resistance being used interchangeably. I don’t believe they are one and the same thing. Often we use words that are slight variations of each other for nuance, but I don’t think this is the case either with these two. I think the distinction is as follows:

Fear is the pure experience of danger, of a perceived threat. It is an emotional response as well as the sensations that accompany it.

Resistance on the other hand has an element of reluctance within it, reluctance towards what is being experienced. In resistance, the will is at least partially opposed to the experience. It isn’t fully convinced about the necessity of a course of action, but goes along with it.

Perhaps the connection between the two is that resistance can create fear and fear can create resistance, but I don’t believe they are one and the same thing. Because one can experience fear and not experience resistance, which is what perhaps courage is, the key element here being the willingness to experience.

A good visual for this is climbing stairs in order to reach the top. Resistance either isn’t convinced that it wants what is at the top, that it is worth it, that it is right or it wants it but isn’t willing to climb the stairs to claim it.

Resistance and fear can create a very nightmarish vicious circle, which I sometimes refer to as the vortex. It pulls you in and you feel like you can’t escape it, feeling like you have no control and being sucked deeper and deeper into it.

For the purposes of illustration, imagine that one finds themselves in a circumstance where their sense of safety is destabilized. This is something that has happened to me. I had a few experiences after which the trust that I was safe and supported in the world vanished. This was not something that was objectively true, but an inner perception.

Now imagine that at the same time, this situation cannot be left due to resistance. You can see how this situation may appear like captivity, like a deadlock… The person tries to leave, finds themselves unable to, panics, tries again, then repeats. This response inevitably leads to a sense of helplessness and despair.

The fear presses upon the will to take action, perceiving itself to be unsafe, but the will is blocked, so the person is caught in an endless cycle of fear and resistance which can destabilize the person significantly.

Now, once again imagine that a miracle opportunity presents itself, almost like the rescue one was longing for. The person may get well excited in the beginning and engage with it, but watch what happens when the moment of choice comes along. Should be easy to say yes to this opportunity, right?

Ha, not quite. If the opportunity isn’t a clear soul calling that neutralizes all resistance, the person will feel resistance to it. One may wait for the occasion to follow their bliss and that may never come along. As for the alternative, going forward in resistance is painful. That would be much like putting your car in reverse while going forward, or another visual, like an upset child who has to do something he doesn’t want to do, messing everything up or doing everything halfheartedly or partially, with no sense of commitment or responsibility towards the goal he is meant to fulfill.

At the other pole, you have the fear of landing back into the same scary situation one was trying to escape from. So on one end you have the fear of being trapped pressing upon the will to take action, while on the other you have the resistance to the much wanted change pulling it in the opposite direction. Which causes the will to short-circuit, to paralyze. The will is torn apart and cannot take action.

Outwardly it may look like the person has difficulty deciding, like they can’t make up their mind about what to do, as though every perspective was equal and no motivation carries more weight than another. The mind tries to make sense of it objectively, but the true discussion, the true pros and cons are happening at an irrational and unconscious level. The mind cannot solve this problem because the external is not a strong enough motivator for change, but the unconscious makes it seem so.

Blue Water Swirling in a Whirlpool

Since to the person in question it seems that this is a matter of life and death, it is more convenient, or so it seems, to hype one’s self up about the change, to push themselves into the change that appears to them like salvation. That’s applying pressure from above, forcing one’s self into action despite partial reluctance, only to find one’s self unable to carry the choice to its natural conclusion.

You see, you can’t win this game, not within this framework. Perhaps the only way out is through, gotta feel that baseline in order to neutralize it… I don’t know another way… well, a way that doesn’t take great risk. But for a more balanced or incremental approach, I suppose that the only way is to relax where you are, like that spiritual advice I heard, thus making the struggle irrelevant. Finding that safety and stability right there. Because the part that wants to run away thinks that the only way it can have it is for it to be given from an external factor. So in the pursuit of freedom, the person ends up feeling less and less free.

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.

– Frank Herbert

There are a few aspects to this that I want to mention. I think this is tightly linked to depression and anxiety. I have a theory that depression comes when one feels powerless to achieve what one believes is important to them, while anxiety happens when one feels resistance towards their experience but still feels a sense of possibility. The reason I am mentioning depression is that it seems to me that depression takes away the concern about one’s survival needs and that means it becomes difficult to find inner motivations to act towards purposes pertaining to survival. That’s why external motivations become important, for one cannot find within themselves the will to pay the price for the purpose of survival only, not seeing beyond this any possibility of fulfillment. It is a painful situation to say the least.

The trick is that because one is so distracted by trying to escape, one misses the opportunity to find fulfillment through other channels. Because one does not accept their situation, they are living in fear and resistance. Whereas, if one accepted their limitations, temporary limitations, one could engage with other people, find joyful experiences that can enrich and support their life and arrive at an entirely new baseline of safety. Basically what one was trying to achieve trying to escape – safety and freedom, the safety to explore, a safe haven – paradoxically comes by accepting the situation itself and taking steps towards self-responsibility.

At least that’s my theory, since I haven’t seen the end of this. I have to admit, I resisted till the end. But hey, negative experience is experience too.

So there you have it, a proposition of a way out that is really no way out at all, it’s more like a reorientation of attention. And then perhaps it would become apparent that it was you who were spinning the vortex all along.

Crisis and Willpower

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Say you find yourself in a crisis. No matter what you do, there just doesn’t seem to be a way out. What then?

Should you keep on fighting, rebel against it, struggle? Or should you give up, resign and accept that there is nothing you can do about it? Neither of these alternatives sounds appealing, and both are painful in their own way.

So what can you do when you can’t do anything?

Well, the covid situation brought its own wisdom, “when you can’t go outside, go inside”. I know, this sounds like one of those ambiguous spiritual advices but hear me out. I have a theory.

I believe that the reason one feels powerless has to do with projecting one’s power on external circumstances. That means, other people, God, situations, institutions.

When we were children, if something were to happen to us that left us feeling powerless, defeated and defenseless, our attention may have been displaced from our center and placed upon the external world for our need of empowerment. As a consequence, when something is challenging us, we may not look to ourselves and our willpower to find a solution, but instead wait on an external force to enable us to have the things we want and need.

So how does this tie into not finding a way out?

It has been my experience that crisis arrives when we are not willing to take responsibility because it feels like obligation and losing your freedom, basically because of the perception that if one were to do that thing that theoretically would get you out of the situation, it would mean losing something very important, that it would mean settling for a life devoid of joy.

Moreover, you feel like you have no choice in the matter, that you’ve been dealt a bad hand, that life is unfair and that there is no reasonable solution. But what makes it feel like obligation as opposed to something you need to do to get to where you want to be?

What makes it seem like a dead end as opposed to a stepping stone?

I believe it is the lack of self-identification when it comes to our willpower. When you are self-identified and you don’t feel at the mercy of a stronger force, your attitude is more open, you are centered around what you want, need, think, feel and your actions serve your purposes. In contrast, when you are not centered, you believe you are subjected to a stronger will, a stronger force, whether it be fate or another person, and you have to do what you don’t want to do. In this case, there is no link between what you want/need and the responsibility it entails. It’s much like in school when we read books because we had to, not because we found them necessary.

Image result for crisis art

As in the example above, the link between need and action was broken, or rather reversed. You start with the obligation to substitute for the need, as opposed to the need itself leading the way. That way the sense of self is interfered with and resistance is produced as a balancing act. Identity through opposition and rebellion.

Whether the choice is to submit to obligation or oppose it, the common denominator is still the fact that the center of our decision-making is the external force that we perceive to be invested with power. If we are in a position of relative safety, we can afford to submit or oppose this external force without feeling at a substantial loss, but crisis means we believe to have lost that sense of safety and balance and now our sense of control may has dissipated. So what else can we do, but hide, isolate, withdraw, or try to run away or escape?

I think the solution resides in understanding the problem itself, becoming aware of the misperceptions and then reorienting the soul forces towards one’s self, finding one’s center.

“When you can’t go outside, go inside.” Find out who you are.

The way I think of it is through this visual:

Say that’s your willpower and sense of self sprouting, emerging slowly. Then, you have some interfering forces, that may want you to go in the same direction even…

Objectively they may be right.

But you can’t help but feel smothered and out of control when that happens, even though you earlier tentatively acknowledged the necessity of it yourself.

Why is that?

I believe it is because your self-identification hasn’t established itself firmly, your vision, your want/need hasn’t taken sufficient root within your being for it to feel like your own voice. That’s why it makes you angry when others even mention it. The side effect seems to be that what was originally your idea, serving your interest, now feels like an imposition or like loss of freedom.

The perception changes from “I want” to “I have to” because the center of willpower is displaced once again. In other words, your attention is directed once again upon the external. You lose sight of your original intention and feel compelled to go into resistance.

It’s much like a vortex… you were taking purposeful action, and then you find yourself distracted into reaction. What a difficult place to be! If you want to get a sense of it, just watch Groundhog Day, Before I Fall and Russian Doll. That’ll give you a good idea of how it’s like, plus they’re all good cinema. You’re welcome!

Therefore, I think that what one can do when nothing can be done, is to connect to that center, find that sense of self. That’s something that meditation can help with. That’s something that body practices can help with, including Yoga, TRE, 5Rhythms. And that’s something that a sense of joy can show the way to. I believe that the true self is the happy self, the self that loves. So connect to that vision of how love and joy feel to you to get a sense of what you are about : )

I think that purpose and especially joyful purpose can energize a vision sufficiently to create a channel to that which you want. And then willpower is the loading bar that gets you there.

Lastly, this is a more recent discovery, Stoicism is amazing! I’ve been reading the Discourses of Epictetus and I’ve been struck by Epictetus’s indifference to someone potentially killing him if he didn’t obey their will. Back in the day powerful people could kill you at a whim for whatever transgression. Epictetus’s position was that others could kill him if it served them, but his duty was only to himself, to live by his principles and that others could choose to do what they saw fit. The purpose was the virtue he was living, not holding on to his life at all costs.

It may take some time to get it right, so patience is needed too, but I think that’s how it goes.

I think this shows the purpose of crisis, an opportunity to find the real self again.

The Link Between Blame and Entitlement

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The other day I had a good insight on something I have been contemplating for a pretty long time and that is the connection between blame and entitlement. The key I found turned out to be a third point which determined a full circle: responsibility. It looks like this:

If as children our needs are not properly met, that tends to fixate the attention outside of ourselves for getting those needs met later in life. If it felt like our needs didn’t matter then, later when we are in times of distress we will look outside of ourselves for comfort or help. That means that we unconsciously grow with the belief and the expectation that it’s the duty of others to meet our needs, that we are owed something that we didn’t get. That is the source of entitlement.

These expectations can look legitimate and they sound like: they should listen, they should care, they should respect me, they should be nice to me, they should respect my boundaries, they should see I am busy, etc.

This entitlement really hides behind it the blame of not having had our needs met properly in childhood, now projected onto those we expect fulfillment from. Take away the thing one feels entitled to and you’ll get anger, blame and resentment or at the other pole, powerlessness and self-pity.

One word that is the basis of entitlement is “should”. Whenever one thinks that someone should provide something for them that they don’t give or do freely, that is a sign of an old unmet need. That often leads to conflicts where one person tries through various means to get their needs met through the other person while the other person feels unfree to give on their own terms and resists.

Entitlement also manifests as trying to control the external because where you perceive responsibility lies is also where you believe power resides. Which ties into other things, but for now we will look into how to remedy this misperception.

The remedy is in the understanding that nobody owes you anything and any kindness you receive is a blessing. The solution lies in finding out what you expect from others, give it up, feel the feelings that come up in relation to that like maybe grief for ancient unmet needs, anger for mistreatment or fear of what it means to stand alone and then claim that responsibility for yourself. Taking that responsibility upon yourself instead of waiting on others to fulfill it.

That also means finding your center, finding your inner strength and also getting in touch with your willpower, your active principle in the world. It means taking back control and coming out of the feeling of powerlessness.

The moment you accomplish that you won’t need to blame others because you are looking to yourself for getting your needs met, you are becoming your own parent. And shoulds begin to fall away as they become replaced by is or isn’t. Is there love here? I’ll stay. Is there kindness? This is my place.

The letting go of shoulds shifts your attention to navigating into that part of reality where what you are seeking for is freely given and into giving to yourself that which before you waited on the external to provide for you, whether that’s another person, a miracle opportunity or God.

Perhaps that’s what they mean by letting go.

The Purpose of Negative Emotions

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This seems to be a recurring theme for me, so I thought I’d put together a few things I have noticed in regards to integrating negative emotions.

If expressing negative emotions as a child seemed to generate negative consequences or negative reactions in the child’s caretakers, the child may choose to suppress his full expression and instead adopt the conclusion that only positive regard for things is acceptable. The child believes that feeling negative emotions themselves is bad, so he learns to defend himself from them by suppression or denial. What the child doesn’t know is that his ability to say no to things is part of his self-expression, his boundaries, his active principle in the world.

Since being loved is a survival need, the child feels that he cannot enforce his boundaries, because he has to be permitted to, so the child learns other means of getting his needs met: evasion, manipulation, isolation. His mechanism of exploration becomes one of adaptation instead of active engagement with his environment, so instead of developing his selfhood and taking action towards getting his needs met upon growing up, he learns to develop reactively to his environment.

The inability to say no transfers into attitudes towards giving and receiving too. If the child felt that he was not allowed to say no in order to claim his selfhood, the word yes begins to feel like self-sacrifice, while the word no feels like guilt and rebellion.

Later in life, the adult may find himself paralyzed or confused about his life. His actions may seem to lead nowhere and life may take an air of senselessness or meaninglessness. Apathy, laziness, depression, helplessness or hopelessness can arise as a sign of unfelt/unexpressed negative feelings, the thought behind these experiences being “I can’t” which is an indication of a paralyzed willpower.

Unfelt/unexpressed anger/fear/pain in particular causes the flow of energy within one’s self to stagnate. If you look into anger, you will see that it is a sign that one’s willpower, voice, self-expression or rights have been obstructed. Therefore, anger in itself is not bad, it is a side effect of something else, a side effect of denied self-expression. Its message is “I have the right to be here. Exactly as I am.”

Anger has its purpose, it is a call for taking back your power. If it is felt and expressed in a healthy way, it is a very positive force. It becomes destructive only when it is displaced or projected upon the external world by blaming, complaining, victimizing, punishing. In its healthy manifestation (felt, understood and expressed) it reveals itself as the force behind healthy boundaries, willpower, integrity, determination, purpose, healthy self-assertion, self-expression. It reveals itself as the same force behind your agency, your active principle in the world. In its negative manifestation (unfelt, projected upon the external world and acted upon) it turns into resentment, apathy, laziness, victimization, rebellion, resistance, misuse of power and control.

“There is an intimate connection between the problem of laziness and feelings that have not been fully experienced. Do not look at laziness as an attitude to be given up at will, if only the person would finally come around to being reasonable and constructive. This is not a moralistic issue at all. Laziness is a manifestation of apathy, stagnation and paralysis, a result of stagnant energy in the soul substance. Stagnant soul substance is the result of feelings that have not been fully experienced or expressed, and therefore their significance and true origin have not been totally understood. When feelings are not thus experienced, understood and expressed, they accumulate and stop the flow of the life force.”

– Eva Pierrakos

Anger seems to be widely regarded as a negative thing, but that is solely if you judge by appearences, if you think of it as a cause, instead of as the effect of something else. But just like in medicine, the symptoms are not the problem. The cause lies in misperception coupled with suppressed emotions. We often suppress negative emotions precisely because we believe them to be bad or believe ourselves to be bad if we experience them. And this is where shoulds come into play.

It is true, some people seem to have the good qualities of patience, levity, joy, but that is not because they suppress their negative emotions, it is because they have understood its message, understood their early experiences and come to a higher understanding.

An example that comes to mind to exemplify this is that when we think of inner peace, we may imagine a Buddhist monk, unshakable and unflinching in the face of the ups and downs of life. Being used to judge solely by results, we do not pause to wonder what sort of life experiences bring forth the lessons necessary to cause such a shift in perspective so that no matter what comes your way you can maintain your peace. Instead, we observe the attitude, the posture, the philosophy, the words , the mannerisms and we try to adopt them ourselves.

We may even understand it at an intellectual level, but what is not immediately apparent are the roots these ideas have grown in the minds of those who experienced what those ideals were or were not, the associations with painful and memorable moments, the trials and errors and the deep understanding they provide. We only see the surface and often it is the surface we try to imitate.

“When feelings are not experienced in their full intensity, the inner life flow must become stagnant. People will find themselves inexplicably paralyzed. Their actions will become ineffectual; life will seem to obstruct all their goals and desires. They find closed doors to realizing their talents, their needs, their selves. So-called laziness may be one manifestation of this paralysis. A lack of creativity or a feeling of general despair may be another. In this latter instance, people may often use a current event or difficulty to explain away their inner state. The truth is that a sense of futility and confusion about life and your role in it must envelop you when you resist living through the feelings you harbor; you go on harboring them because you delude yourself that avoiding the feelings will hurt you less than exposing them. There are many other manifestations. The inability to feel pleasure or to fully experience life is one of the most widespread general effects. However, there is no other way to become fully alive than to keep experiencing your real feelings.”

– Eva Pierrakos

The paradox is that experiencing negative emotions is a positive experience because it is based in reality. Any attempt to run from negative emotions is an expression of that negative emotion. Take envy for instance. Have you ever tried not to be envious of someone? It is my experience that doing so makes everything I say feel uncomfortable, forced or dishonest. Whereas if I am honest, not only do I feel at ease because I am no longer opposing myself, but my self esteem grows because I am showing myself that I can accept myself as I am.

When negativity is acknowledged, accepted, felt and expressed, three things happen:

1. You lose fear of other people because you know that it is your unwillingness to give or to love that is causing the conflict and not the apparent unfairness of the demands of others.

2. The other person loses guilt about being bad for being the persecutor since you express your own part in the conflict.

3. Your boundaries become stronger because negativity is a defense from pain. When your boundaries are stronger, your sense of safety increases and so does your willingness to love and give. You can’t have one without the other.

Therefore, the first step in losing fear of others is in finding, acknowledging, accepting and expressing the negativity you find in yourself. In seeking in this direction, it is important to make the following distinctions:

1. Acknowledging is different than accepting. Acknowledging is admitting to one’s self that the negativity is present within you. Accepting means having no resistance to it being there, not fighting against it or judging it and especially not trying to suppress it.

2. Expressing negativity isn’t acting upon it. It is being truthful to others about our own part in a conflict, being honest about how one really feels.

Knowledge in Action

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If as a child you were valued for your knowledge and intelligence at the detriment of other virtues, you may have decided that these traits were the most important ones to develop and pursue. Courage, kindness, patience may not have been given much attention in your environment which means they did not get a chance to grow in your field of awareness. Due to their apparent lack of applicability in building the life that you want, they were considered secondary or inessential. But while intelligence is a key virtue that helps unlock other virtues, it is lived virtues that are infused with life.

While the quest for knowledge may transition into the quest for wisdom and self-understanding in adulthood, the personality can still grow lopsided, because even though it pursues the wisdom of other virtues, it does not live or embody those virtues. Therefore, the proof of true understanding is action, changed behavior, not as a superficial superimposition, but as embodied knowledge. Knowledge in action. Movement. Otherwise you may find yourself, in the words of Sri Aurobindo, poeticizing on the peaks.

The pursuit of wisdom and knowledge at the detriment of action can also be a sign of a traumatized willpower. In childhood the personality may have been consistently met with negative feedback whenever displaying autonomous action which may have made it doubt its impulse for action.

The original need for self-expression and action is still there, but if the wrong conclusion is not made conscious, the personality may channel the urges of the soul for experience and growth into something else, into a substitute such as accumulating knowledge. Without the spontaneity of self-trust, the personality withdraws into fantasy or into the pursuit of knowledge in order to compensate for an unlived life.

Accustomed to distrust its natural instinct and inclination for action and choice, the call of the soul becomes more and more urgent, which causes more and more frustration, since the original need cannot be adequately fulfilled by compensatory mechanisms, especially if they are unconscious. If the need is made conscious, the longing is still there, but the urgency disappears.

That’s why I think it is important to orient towards living virtues, practicing them, as one may confuse the real thing for the description, like the anecdotal finger pointing to the moon. Otherwise virtues can become lofty ideals of an ethereal quality instead of lived realities.

This change does not happen instantaneously as habits take a long time to form, but it helps to know what kind of person you want to become, what virtues you wish to live and approach them daily through small actions.

While it is true that the quest for knowledge and wisdom does lead to other virtues, it helps to test yourself, to create a link between the intellectual knowledge you possess and your experience. Intellectual knowledge being what “is claimed to be” or “should be”, experience being “what currently is”.

In that way, you can see where you are in relation to where you want to be, not as a judgement, but as feedback of where you are with your progress.