In life, we all find ourselves in situations that we’d probably choose to avoid if we could. We think things that are unthinkable. We resist our reality, deny that we have any choice over the life we find ourselves living and we totally deny the parts of ourselves that we reject, instead, projecting them onto others in the form of judgment and blame. When ever we can look at someone and say, for example, “My mother is selfish, insensitive, arrogant and ignorant,” we are passing a judgment and projecting.
Following Jung’s theory of the Shadow, this indicates aspects of our own persality that we just can’t accept. We possess these qualities, but we make them wrong and deny them, using incredible amounts of energy to resist them and keep them hidden away from ourselves and others. The problem with resistance is that it virtually guarantees that we will create more of whatever it is that we resist. It’s like a universal law of some kind. It’s something we should all be taught in third grade, like multiplication. I didn’t coin the phrase, “What you resist, persists,” or “What you can’t be with won’t let you be,” but they sum it up in an annoyingly trite but true way.
I was crocheting some baby socks for my newest granddaughter a few days ago and working with very fine, delicate and twisted yarn. I’d pull and untangle a little at a time, enough to make the next few rows. Then, I’d get to the knots again, and push and pull here and there, trying to loosen the knot just enough to keep crocheting a few more rows. It was difficult to discern which fragile string I should pull to loosen the knot. Push, pull and wiggle this one, wiggle that one…maddening! The more I pulled on the knot, the tighter it became. The tighter it became, the more stuck I was in the process. I repeated this process over several days, even thinking about starting at the loose end of the yarn and winding into a ball, in other words dealing with it, but, of course I didn’t do that! That would be actually dealing with the dang thing.
Eventually, I had to admit that the more I pulled on or resisted the fact that there was a knot in my yarn the more it drove me crazy and kept me from moving forward with something I actually enjoy doing, creating something for someone I love. I finally accepted the fact that I was going to have to stop trying to push past this knot and deal with it. As long as I resisted it, it existed and really annoyed me. As long as I couldn’t be with it and deal with it, it wouldn’t let me be. And with all the power of my humanity, I managed to project onto the yarn! It was stupid, flimsy, stubborn, stuck, hard to work with….hmmmmm.
It was a process to loosen the knots and look at the problem through the eyes of acceptance, but there would be no forward motion until I did. As I worked through the tedium of the process, I realized that this knot was actually a gift. It gave me the inspiration for this blog and what I think is a great analogy.
We always have the choice to let go of our resistance and embrace the unembracable. Now, that’s a thought worth thinking.
