THIS IS GOING TO HURT…
I’ve warned you.
We party like there is no tomorrow. Waving with slogans such as “YOLO” as we drink our livers to mash. We then diet eating nothing but honey, water, and some type of pepper after some “celebrity” we read about in a Cosmo magazine, dedicated to giving us all the gossip our soul desires. We started reading it because we were so interested in how the hell Jennifer Lopez has a baby and is still “fit” and “sexy”.* Only to get up from our far too sunken in couches, to plug our headphones in so that something other than our mind is screaming at us, it’s obvious that we’ve given up in there; in that head of ours. That place is hell now, the cobwebs are sewn in everywhere, along with mines, snares, and other perceived contraptions, along with those spiders in every corner leaving no place to hide. So we let it run wild at that point, and now it’s jumangi. Take your time today to notice how we are all just constantly filling our minds and finding solace out there in the world. Wearing running clothes as bright as the sun to motivate us, walking around looking down at our mobile phones anxiously awaiting our next like on Instagram or a text message, anything would do us better than silence. Ohhh silence, that we cannot deal with.
We are mostly dead, seeking fleeting moments that act as a defibrillator just to keep us going. We are but staring at fireflies; always looking outside of ourselves for a moment of joy, yet another moment to depart us from finding our true selves. It is nothing less than an epidemic. Resisting our true selves and in return our lives have been castrated with no ability to truly become intimate with ourselves within the universe. This is the tragedy of the good time. This is the tragedy of the thrill seeker for thrills only. This is the late-night-well-really-early-early-morning-after-a-long-night-out-of-being-plastered-and-you-ask-yourself-why-the-bloody-hell-am-I-all-of-a-sudden-deeply-sad moment in time.
So now we are pissed up, right at the level where our ego has been suppressed and now our inner selves is allowed out. But just one drink more will smother your inner self just as well, like the creatives from the Mad Men, enough to allow you to come up with that fantastic idea that everyone connects with like some type of collective effervescence. We look back on drunk times not because we were drunk but because we seemed so true and free. The latent need here is freedom but the surface displays that the solutions are manifested through bottles of open-me-up. But in this there is a lie, that if we get drunk enough or high enough, or most of the time then we can keep visiting our true selves like some twisted partner going to jail for a night just to say hello to one of the inmates, risking becoming addicted and getting stuck in this place. The route to the true self is lasting, it doesn’t run away the moment you get sober. Instead of taking that route we instead comply to a life full of walking around in a dazed and confused state about how we became 30… then 40… then 50 years old in such a rapid succession. And to think we thought it would be easier than truly taking the time to search deeply for ourselves, so sure that we’d rather seek short time highs than being decisive in seeking to defeat this monster that keeps us from our true selves. This monster is called resistance….
Resistance
Resistance has the power to push us towards drinking, smoking, eat fattening foods, in search for substances and behaviours that can give us access to this transcendence even if it is artificial. I am driven to tell you that every time you have been pummelled by your thoughts and capitulated, whether it was purchasing that tasty piece of sugar and fat called a doughnut on the way to work for a moment that feels like pure elation and joy, that it will only leave a gritty and dry taste in your mouth, your body dazed from this empty artificial nutrition-less item, and your deep self once again disappointed.
When we are the closest we can be to our true self, beneath the ego, through substance or events of substance (events with a sole purpose to get you high); the drug acts so kind to us only to seep out of our systems leaving us lower than we were before. It will not replenish the soul and it does not add to it, instead it reinforces our addiction to this substance making us weaker physiologically and consequently psychologically. It makes facing ourselves an unbearable future that we cyclically stay away from.
What must we do?
We must lower our socialised ego all by ourselves, drugs are not a substitute but instead hold us back. Here is the key difference,
When we find our true selves naturally, through defeating our battle of resistance, it teaches us how to better call upon our inner genius, our inner self, for the angels to propel themselves through us. It is what we call flow and it is when we are at our best. When we find unity with the universe. This nourishes our soul and empowers us to construct something that has life in it, rather our work is in the form of an artwork, technological creation, or a film, it will continue on and others will experience it as the chills down their spine and the watering of their eyes. What is even better is that you will grow closer to beating resistance; each moment that you choose to fight resistance and make a start, we slowly begin to peel back our ego slowly demonstrating our inner fruitfulness.
Remember those moments when you began to slip away from reality in your work, a state of flow was emerging. You started to become so immersed that the surrounding sounds muffled and nearly muted themselves for you. So immersed that you forgot about the concept and application of time, no angst or worries, so enthralled in your work that those who passed were not noticed by you but you on the other hand become the subject of their attention.
This is when the audience gazes quickly, then caught in a stare. As intently as the ballet dancer in this deep state of bounded awareness. Using their body and mind as a vessel that greatness deliberately flows through, it’s what delivers chills down your spine and instant refills of tears that travel down your face. Go and watch a ballet of great skill and you will observe and feel what I am speaking of, or watch anyone in their element and see that it doesn’t transfer an energy inside of you that makes you consider your own life. That is the power of the true self, what we are meant to do. The universe conspires to do this for us only if we can even mostly resist those artificial moments, transcending our thoughts of angst and all that is negative instead generate nutrition to our inner selves. This gives us the confidence to be that much closer to our true selves tomorrow and beyond.
We often find ourselves dreading the day except for our search for moments of fun. But we should not go always in search for fun, for fun is a consequence of a mixture of moments in happiness and usually an increase in adrenaline. At one point we came to look at those that seemed to be happy and thought only to copy them. That if we just do what they do without regard to why they are doing it, then we might find that same end, but usually this is at best fleeting and at worse will further your frustration. When we do it in this way after the feeling betrays us and we are finished, we announce our coming back to reality. Is that the way we should live?..
But that shouldn’t be. It is the questing on a journey that has the consequences of fun, smiles, laughs, crying, dying and being born again all while reflecting it back on to our mission.
Instead of posing for photos that make us look like those of “fun times” and “free” moments only to put away our iPhones and keep back to reality, we could seek to truly live that life by taking on resistance. Resistance is what makes you seek out this want for fun but only to escape what we should be doing, it isn’t our nature to simply play or at least not our cultural definition of play.
We seem to think children seem to be just having fun, but if you look closely, notice they are typically in a state of flow when they are “playing games”. When they hardly notice you while playing cops and robbers because they are so zoomed in with purpose, they want to win, they want to have ethics in playing the right way (principles). They will exhibit creativity to overcome something unorthodox or something that has become too easy for them. Facing resistance as they grow out of copying others. Notice when they do notice you, while running around in their world, without thinking twice they will make you apart of it. The act of asking you to join with a point of their hands shaped as a gun or tagging you and running away is a commitment to their self imposed challenges. Challenging themselves with someone twice the size of them, and they did not even consider if they should or shouldn’t, their inner self wants to be challenged. To be pushed. They will give 120% of themselves so do not just snap them out of flow, give them what they want, challenge them and let them find their way through their own challenges. Make no mistake that child’s play is purpose, this is not seeking something to do, this is seeking a challenge and our natural inclination to find mastery.
Facing resistance is the ability a baby has while attempting to walk across the living room carpet for the 50th time to get up and start again. What excuse do you have?
Underneath it all, we are seeking our true selves. Getting to our mission. The baby get’s up to walk because it knows it has much to do in this life and it can’t all be done sitting in a play pin. Somewhere along this point resistance matches us, and most of us never come back to face it truly again.
It is fear that falsely tells us it’s ok to go the easy way in life, the fear of being alone, of not dealing with our minds as they to become a place of negative thoughts of failure and angst, so instead we look for relief out there in the world, and like fireflies happiness seems to flicker and we sit their awaiting the next flicker to keep us going. This is not ok.
Our fear of living with ourselves forever.
These are all fears that stem from one overriding fear; if we stand and fight our fears and resistance that we will win and be who we ought to be. That if we reach and resist the many distractions of our life, and set out on our own that we will lose everyone around us, that we will lose our identity and our social status, that our friends will think us strange and we won’t fit in, we often only want to be a small bit different from others because in our small difference we would still feel familiar with our surroundings and people would also feel that we seem familiar, a little different giving us a false hope that we are changing the world but we aren’t. If we become our true selves we think that we will become lost and be left there alone.
But this is the mythical story that has spread through society, cementing us into our graves making it highly probably that are tombstones will read “a mere mortal here, died full of unbelievable potential…”
But instead the truth is that when we find ourselves, we also find more than just a compass; we get a sharper understanding as our life path goes from blurry to sharp if only we keep moving forward, and keep getting back up. When you are in flow and on the right track, to others it will seem alien; take Mozart, Chopin, Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, or Bill Gates we see a strong disparity between “them” and “others”, as they’ve chosen to spend a great amount of their time chasing down and facing resistance. Labouring in their work, building relentlessly on their craft, and especially when they did not want to. Of course it would have been easier to take the night out and go out with friends, or to simply throw in the towel and give up. And that’s the difference, what seems alien is simply another human who upended resistance, by battling it daily and in the end winning the war, leaving their mark.
So if you really want to live a life of greatness and transform the world in the process, you have to become unsettled, antsy, and obsessed with pushing against resistance. Transcending the films you think you “need” to watch, the drugs you’d love to be taking right about now, the transactional sex you want to engage in, the fast artificial foods, the loved one you are yelling at mistaken it for a crime of passion, all of those moments that seek to trick you, with a false understanding that you if even for a moment, are “living life”. Ask yourself about today, how did you face resistance today? Don’t let it fool you into thinking that it took a day off.. I assure you, it never takes a day off, the moment you begin doing what you need to do it will be right there to get you back to what you weren’t supposed to be doing. The fact that you thought it took a day off tells me that it is there shackling you, but it’s probably hiding behind phrases like, “I have to be realistic” or “I’m just doing the best I can”. The best you can? Really? You…. almost…. believe… this……. don’t you? But you know as I know, beyond the masks and overused rationalisations, that there is a voice that you cannot truly mute. The one that says, “you could have given more”, the one that also said “keep going”. Even when it is just whispering.. when you do not listen to that voice it feels like there is a massive void in your being. Waking up every day feeling like you are always sinking, grasping for something to keep you afloat. If you listened to that voice, even for a day, he would speak softly still but increase in volume each day. And the next, and when you falter, he will shout to help you get up again, when you truly begin to start winning the battles that turn the tides of war, he will all of a sudden stop talking so much, resistance will still be there, but that voice that motivated you is now heard when you speak, because slowly it has become you. Slowly you have given your true self the reigns back.
If you do embrace it and face resistance with it, your life will be reimagined, and one day you will be running in the rain like I was, with the wind howling past your ears, and water drenching down your face, with everyone looking on to you, it will seem that you are the only person jogging through this weather, you will be telling yourself to push through and the winds will howl some more. After you beat resistance this day, once you slow your run down to a walk, you’ll put your hands behind your head, and breath in, and the wind with bizarre timing as the rain begins to clear up, and the sun starts to emerge. The wind will wisp around you, and howl, and in that moment, you will smile. In the form of a smirk, you might even begin to laugh, as you..
“Oh how clever.. oh how tricky, oh how witty it is.”
When you notice that the wind, the rain, through all of it’s dreariness. And all that is resistance, has created the you you were meant to be. One step closer with ever interaction. Resistance is really just a friend. Pushing you, and asking you every step of the way, “Can you go on?” Resistance who merely inquired one question daily to you, “Can you go on?”, some days fiercely so, because resistance knew what was needed, how much it would need out of you to become who you needed to be that day. Ironically, at the end of this day, you will find yourself thanking resistance for all that you have become. Resistance then, is the difference between what our inner self needs instead of wants. When you wake up tomorrow, resistance will be waiting, so I’ll ask you Can you go on?”
This moment of flow and inspiration is a credit to Steven Pressfield and his pushing against resistance in The War of Art, which I read 4times before writing this.
I am called Christian Ramsey, by trade I am a social science researcher (ethnography) working in business apply anthropology and design thinking. I am focused on transforming my life by following resistance and embracing the journey. I want to inspire others to do the same, to gear themselves into their journey of inner purpose and greatness. I want to be an idea, everyday I attempt to build on that, everyday is a journey.
Never Stop Believing.
Never Give In.
Never Stop Reading.
visit us at www.helloesp.com
