What We Resist Persists
Listen: “Breathe Me” by Sia
For most of my adult life I believed it was my job as a good Christian to battle and resist negative, unpleasant, and disruptive emotions and thoughts. I drew upon passages in the Bible to reinforce this idea. For example, the Apostle Paul wrote about the battle between the “flesh” and the “spirit” (Galatians 5:16-26). So my interpretation of these passages led me to commit myself to battling, subduing, resisting, and defeating my negative thoughts and feelings.
Certainly, there are things in life which we should resist such as social injustice, but what about our own thoughts and feelings? Resisting our own negative thoughts and feelings often has the opposite affect. We end up empowering what we are resisting through the negative energy we use to resist it.
For example, spend an entire day trying not to think about lust, anger, fear, or some thought or feeling you don’t want to have. Get up in the morning and commit yourself to resisting a specific thought or feeling. Chances are, you will empower the very thing you are trying to resist. You will think about it more often throughout the day as you focus on not thinking about it.
Try another approach. Neuroscience and mindfulness meditation offers us the practice of RAIN. Instead of resisting, try listening to your thoughts and feelings, especially negative and unpleasant ones, with openness, curiosity, and self-compassion. Recognize the unpleasant thought or emotion by naming it. Allow the unpleasant thought or emotion by letting it exist without judgment. Hold it with kindness. Investigate the unpleasant thought or emotion by asking questions, like a good therapist. (What is the worst part? What am I believing? Where do I feel these emotions inside?) Nurture the unpleasant thought or emotion like a good friend or therapist would do. Offer yourself love, acceptance, forgiveness, compassion, or protection.
The practice of RAIN helps in the process of healing negative emotions through kindness, love, and self-compassion. It also encourages positive emotions by nurturing love, acceptance, forgiveness, and compassion.
Practicing RAIN can calm and transform our inner critic. So many times when we focus on resisting unpleasant thoughts or emotions, we end up turning ourselves into harsh critics of ourselves. Our inner critic grows stronger, louder, and harsher. We end up treating ourselves with harsh judgment, even cursing at ourselves.
And perhaps the Apostle Paul was simply acknowledging how we sometimes feel like we are in a battle with our thoughts and emotions. His remedy was life in the “spirit.” Paul identifies the fruit of the spirit as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22); and Paul encourages us “fix our thoughts on what is true, pure, lovely, and honorable” (Philippians 4:8).
As Richard Rohr encourages: “Your first energy has to be “yes” energy, and from there you can move, build, and proceed. You must choose the positive and rest there for a minimum of fifteen conscious seconds—it takes that long for positivity to imprint in the neurons” (Just This, “what you resist persists,” p. 44).
Shalom
©realfredherron, 2023
