Dealing With Resistance – Part 2

In addition to letting go of emotions and wants, we can let go of resistance itself. Resistance is anything that prevents you from living your life as you ought to live it, doing the things that you ought to do. It is quite possible to do what you need to do, and yet, still experience resistance. Resistance may or may not stop you from doing something – but it will always contribute to the sense of struggle that you experience. Resistance is what causes a person to start a project and give-up on it without completing it.

In my Christian blog The Divine Nature I have a blog post entitled The Traffic Light Analogy. In this blog post I compare a person’s spiritual state and freedom to act in a given situation to a traffic light: red means that they cannot act; amber means they more or less have the same ability to act or not act; whilst green means that they act, seemingly without giving it a second thought.

When I first attempted to release resistance, I got nowhere with it. In the Sedona Method basic course, Hale Dwoskin recommends looking at, or thinking about, something that you feel reluctant about. Then, feel the resistance to that thing and let it go. So, I tried this on a pile of dirty dishes: I looked at the dishes, felt the resistance and asked myself, “Could I let go of resisting washes these dishes?” I got no response at all from my subconscious mind. My efforts with other sources of resistance continued with no success - until finally, I made a breakthrough.

What I learned from my experiences with releasing resistance is that you can’t use it as a tool to make yourself do something that you feel you ought to do with your mind. So what it does do is to take the brakes off in that moment – but it does not apply pressure on the accelerator or gas pedal.

I tend to use releasing resistance on getting up in the morning, when I can remember to do it and when I feel inclined to do it. But I find that it does not always work for me. What has increased my success with this is that I also release on the next thing. In order words, I will ask myself, “Could I let go of resisting getting out of bed?” Then, I will ask myself, “Could I let go of resisting going to work?” Through this, I find a lot of the time that what is causing the resistance to getting out of bed is actually the thought of going to work. Again, this does not work for me every time. But sometimes, it makes the difference between getting out of bed in good time and being late!

Another useful application for releasing resistance is to release resisting releasing! I also combine releasing with inquiry by releasing resisting doing The Work. Again, it does not always work and I can’t use releasing resistance to make myself do something. But there are times when releasing in this way is the difference between being able to release or inquire and not being able to do these things at all!

There are also other applications of resistance that you can read about in the Sedona Method basic course. There are also some more advanced techniques available, such as using holistic releasing with resistance in the Sedona Method CD course The Resistance Dissolver.