Making the Most of Learning Opportunities, Understanding Resistance

For your own well-being and education, I encourage you to stay open to the opportunities for learning new ideas coming our way this week. Just want to plant the seed of the thought that each of you playing and observing has the freedom to retain helpful comments and let unhelpful comments gracefully be forgotten.

New ideas, anything suggesting change can cause us to resist and contract emotionally. If one is aware enough within ourselves to notice internal resistance developing, great! Take note of what ideas you resist and why you resist them, what fears they bring up for you. (i.e. “But if I try to play it that way, I might squeak!”) If you are able to pause as you feel resistance begin, that moment of pause will help you sort out what is really happening.

That moment when resistance takes us over is a missed opportunity: in that moment fear prevents us from absorbing what we could learning. Fear triggers our reptilian, inner brain, and our energy becomes focused on self-protection, and in this state of contraction we are unable to distinguish the good ideas from the bad ideas. In that state, anything new, anything asking for change becomes a threat.

What can we do as an alternative to contracting and resisting? Maybe nothing in that moment except notice that it is there. The process of getting ourselves to a place where we can notice resistance arise, identify it, and let it go, takes time and practice, practice, practice.

Saying it concisely

A famous Suzuki Roshi quote:

“All of you are perfect just as you are and you could use a little improvement.”

One of my colleagues (Steve Haines) has this posted outside his door, and this quote summarizes the focus of my inquiry with my students this semester.

Pema Chödrön commented about this in an email this morning: “That’s how it is. You don’t start from the view of ‘I’m fundamentally messed up and I’m bad, therefore I have to get myself into shape.’ Rather, the basic situation is good, it’s sound and healthy and noble, and there’s work that we need to do, because we have ancient habits which we’ve been strengthening for a long time, and it’s going to take a while to unwind them.”

Upon reading Chödrön’s comments, I realize that this quote is a great starting point as I begin work with any student. “When you read each part to yourself, do you resist believing either statement? Do you struggle to think of yourself as perfect? Do you feel your ego start defending yourself when someone tells you that you need improvement? If you know the answers for yourself, great. Let’s start there as we figure out how you use your time and practice. If not, then perhaps you need the quiet time to investigate yourself just a little bit, probably best to have some answers to those questions before we even start to work.”