The Sacred Moment of Resistance

The Sacred Moment of Resistance

By Leo Babauta | Source

Posted on January 18, 2025

Everyone has resistance to difficult tasks, conversations, and habits. It’s a moment when you feel like turning away from something … and then more often than not, you turn away from it.

This is a sacred moment. I’d love to share more.

In this moment of resistance, you’re simply feeling fear. You rarely recognize it as fear — it can feel like anxiety, dread, overwhelm, boredom, frustration. But at a deeper level, it’s simply fear.

If we go below the label of “fear” … it’s simply sensation in our bodies. It’s an experience. It’s the experience of being in the unknown.

This is a very human moment. It’s also a sacred moment, tender and vulnerable, when we are faced with possibility but also uncertainty.

What if we could slow down, in this moment, and just let ourselves experience the uncertainty, the unknown, the vulnerability, tenderness, possibility and fear?

What if we could breathe deeply, and just sit in that experience?

Then instead of turning away … we could turn towards. Find some gratitude for such a sweet, tender moment full of our humanity.

From there, we could continue to step into the unknown, and take action. Write a sentence, read a paragraph, make some kind of movement towards possibility. One movement at a time.

And we could even do so with love.

with love,

Leo Babauta

Zen Habits

• https://zenhabits.net/

Cycle of Conflict a Two-Handed Path

Cycle of Conflict a Two-Handed Path

By Steve Beckow

Posted on September 9, 2023

Credit: vectorstock.com

The cycle of conflict is a two-handed script. It usually reflects a power differential.

One party rages; the other party is silent.

Both hands are needed for the cycle to continue.

Usually ours are inherited patterns, what Michael once called “legacy behavior.” Intergenerational transfer, sociologists call it. Whatever the case, we’re stuck with the patterns.

They become habitual. When the original situation that triggered them passes, the habit pattern remains.

Now the raging partner rages just as a normal reflex and the silent partner, the same. In their new relationships, their patterns only feed the cycle.

The silent one needs to speak and listen. The raging one needs to stop and speak and listen. They need to set groundrules and keep to them.

They both need to start communicating with how they feel, then on to what their situation is, and end with what they want to see happen. Start with that as a means of escaping the conflict.

Doing this without resorting to blaming and shaming will be the challenge. Both partners cooperation is essential for this process to work.

We need to remember that a lot of what is second nature to us may be offensive to others. Just because we’re used to some ways of being and doing doesn’t make them necessarily acceptable. Now these unacceptable ways need to be raised to awareness, either by us ourwelves or by listening to feedback.

It’s hard to raise to awareness our taken-for-granted patterns. That’s where the practice of self-awareness pays off: The basic agreement on the awareness path is to remain aware of ourselves and share what we see with others (if asked). (1) So we’re already primed to notice the barely-visible.

Over the long term, recognition or awareness is enough. But if we want quicker release from the matter, then asking the mind to mirror back the original incident and experiencing that through to completion assumes importance. (2)

My hope, my dream is that the rising love energies will make emergence from our issues and scripts a much easier process than it is now. The more love we feel – real love, transformative love – (3) the more we’ll flow through life.

Footnotes

(1) See On Transformative Awareness at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Transformative-Awareness-9.pdf

(2) “How to Handle Unwanted Feelings: The Upset Clearing Process,” April 25, 2011, in Vasanas: Preparing for Ascension by Clearing Old Issues at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Vasanas-Preparing-for-Ascension-R8.pages.pdf

(3) See Love Like We Never Imagined It to Be at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Love-Like-We-Never-Imagined-It-to-Be-R13.pdf

Steve Beckow

• goldenageofgaia.com/