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Tolle Resist Nothing

Resist Nothing

“Welcome to Resist Nothing”

Eckhart Tolle

[MUSIC PLAYING]

ECKHART TOLLE: Welcome to Kim’s Resist Nothing course. Let me just talk a little bit about the meaning of resistance. The deeper meaning of resistance.

It could easily be misinterpreted. The title of the course is Resist Nothing, and if you look at the word “resistance” and interpret it in conventional terms, then it doesn’t seem to make much sense, because it seems that, very often in life, it is necessary for you to resist certain things. For example, somebody may be wanting to force you into a certain situation, physically or mentally.

Somebody may want you to do something that you are not prepared to do because you regard it as unwise or dangerous that you need to resist somebody else’s effort to make you do something that you don’t want to do that’s obvious. Somebody tries to break into your house or tries to invade your space, and you may be in a position where you need to resist that. So even going out into-- let’s say there’s a high wind there, you are walking and out in the countryside, there’s a storm and headwind.

You have to force your way against the wind. You have to resist the wind so that you can continue walking in a way. So there are many situations when you seem to need to resist and that’s all perfectly fine. This is not when we are talking about the meaning of resistance in a

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deeper psychological sense. The psychological deeper meaning of resistance is quite simply to be in a state of inner non-alignment with the present moment.

It is an inner phenomenon. It’s not so much to do with what you do externally. It is an inner state of consciousness, the state of consciousness of resistance is inseparable from the egoic state of consciousness. Without resistance, the going state of consciousness would dissolve. So the most famous words perhaps to illustrate what I’m here talking about is Jesus’s words: “turning the other cheek.”

So somebody slaps you in your face, and then you say, “Oh, here’s my other cheek.” So very famous statement, often misunderstood, what Jesus said, because obviously it seems to be, if you interpret it conventionally, it seems to mean, “Let me be your doormat. I’ll let you walk all over me.

You can do whatever you like. I’ll be your victim.”

This is where if you don’t realize that almost everything that Jesus says illustrates, not out our conduct, but inner states of consciousness. So the turning the other cheek is an attempt by Jesus to point to the state of the non-reactive state, because when somebody hits you, the most obvious reaction-- you would immediately hit back.

This would be an unconscious reaction. You would immediately resist. That’s a natural thing, so he gives you this example to point to the possibility of being in an inner non-reactive state.

So the whole thing is not to be taken literally. It symbolizes an inner state. So that’s the only way this can make sense, because if it were to do with telling people how to conduct themselves externally, it wouldn’t make sense.

So it symbolizes-- this image of turning the other cheek symbolizes the state of non-resistance, where you have a choice of how you want to respond to that situation. You have a choice. In the

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state of reactivity, there’s not enough awareness for you to have a choice. You have no choice. It happens to you.

It is done for you, because it is part of your mental emotional conditioning. So to turn the other cheek is to be in a non-reactive state. The blind reactivity, which means in blind reactivity, what you do is determined by two factors. One is certain things that happens around you, often involving other people.

Whatever they do determines what you do. An angry person immediately makes you angry, so that determines that. The other factor that determines what you do is the conditioning of your mind. The way in which your mind has been conditioned, programmed to deal with the things of this world.

And so these come together, the conditioning of your mind, the programming of your mind and other people’s actions directly towards you or situations in which you find yourself. These come together, and it’s a form of the complete lack of freedom, unconsciousness. You are forced to act out your conditioning and to reflect or amplify other people’s, very often, unconsciousness.

So an angry person will make you angry and you get your angry back. By being angry back, you amplify the other person’s anger, and the other person’s anger amplifies yours. And that’s how we get to a situation that blows up something very little, sometimes-- physical violence erupts.

And this happens, not only on a personal level, it can also happen to collectively. Groups of people.

Even entire nations. So reactivity, resistance and reactivity are intimately connected. “Resist Nothing” therefore refers to the possibility of living in a state of consciousness in which the present moment is not regarded as an enemy or is not denied or devalued.

It’s a state of-- the possibility of living in a state of inner alignment with the present moment.

That is a fairly rare state of consciousness still on the planet. Most people don’t realize that their

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habitual state of consciousness is the state of resistance, and they’re so used to it that they don’t even know it.

Simple example, a very common form of resistance is to be engaged in doing something, and yet, there’s an inner-- you’re not fully engaged in what you’re doing, because internally, you would rather not be doing it. This is very common, and many people go to work every day 9:00 to 5:00, and during that time, they are in that state. They are doing what they have to do for their work, but they’d rather not, so there’s a continuous-- it’s very often unconscious, because they are so used to it they don’t even know that anything else is possible, and so in the background, there’s continuous resistance, which means they cannot give their fullest attention to what they are doing.

They cannot truly honor what they are doing, and therefore, the quality of what they’re doing may not be the highest. Obviously, their job may be very boring. But no matter what it is that you’re doing, your responsibility is always to the present moment. How are you dealing with the present moment?

If you change that from habitual resistance, which is ultimately a state of negativity and denial, if you change that from state of acceptance, then everything changes. Your state of consciousness changes, and then it is much more likely that your external reality will reflect your change state of consciousness. So what keeps you trapped in undesirable situations is the state of resistance.

So if you could practice, and as you will be practicing during this course in whatever situations arise in your life, if you could practice detecting whether or not you are in a state of inner resistance to the present moment. And so your ability to detect dysfunctional states of any resistance, because that’s what they are, ultimately, you cannot function at your best, function fully. Your maximum potential cannot manifest itself as long as you are in a state of inner resistance.

And the ability to detect these dysfunctional states, the various manifestations of resistance, this is something that you can grow in you, because as the Presence grows in you, you will find it

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easier to detect dysfunctional states as they arise in you in, of course, in the present moment. So first thing then, as I just mentioned, you may detect that very often you may be engaged in doing something and yet there’s something in the background that would rather not be doing it, or there could be a complaining voice in your head in the background that says something about this situation that you are involved in that you’d rather-- because it might involve other people and they are not doing their best, and “What am I doing here?”-- all kinds of self-talk can come into.

Resistance can manifest in many ways. It also manifests-- we’ll come to that in a minute. It also can manifest in the body. So you may find in any given situation, as your ability grows-- your inner observation, witnessing in that state, you may find that you detect subtle forms of resistance. That’s often to do with what you’re doing, but you’re not totally in what you’re doing.

Another way of not being totally in what you’re doing of having continuous resistance running in the background is already wanting to be at the end of this particular activity. Already wanting to be at the end of whatever it is that you’re doing. Let’s say a simple thing. You’re shopping, you’re going to the supermarket, but you have so many other things to do today so that the shopping in the supermarket is just an unpleasant obstacle, because you’re trying to get to the end of it as quickly as possible.

This is only one example, but there are all kinds of activities that can become unconsciously are regarded as unpleasant obstacles-- obstacles towards where you really want to be or what you really want to be doing, which is in some future moment. So you want to arrive more at the end of this particular activity than be engaged in this particular activity. Now, many people live at their whole life.

Almost every activity they do is of that kind in their daily life. Maybe when they’re on vacation, if they’re lucky, they, for short amounts of time perhaps they are free of it, but perhaps not even then. So this dysfunctional state greatly diminishes what we could call the quality of your life.

The quality of the present moment, because your life is the present moment.

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So instead of fully acknowledging the doing of this moment, you would rather be at the end of the doing of this. Now, what happens then as the result? Very often, the result is what we call stress. That’s what our stress arises. You are here, but you want to be there, either in space or time.

You’re here now, but you really want to be in the later. When this now is over, that’s where you want to be, or you’re here physically, but you’d rather want to be somewhere else physically.

You’re doing your shopping but you’d rather be at home. But when you’re at home, something else arises where you would rather be or what you would rather be doing, because then you’re preparing your dinner but you would rather be already done with it and finally be able to relax.

And when you’re finally able to relax, some thoughts arise about what’s going to happen tomorrow. Problematic things. Never, never really aligned with the present moment. These are normal ways of living, and they’re not usually recognized as dysfunctional, because almost everybody lives like that.

When you watch movies, that’s how they all live with some exceptions, and the exception being of course, humans who are beginning to awaken, awakening, or awake, whatever, you begin to live in a way that is more harmonious, more and more aligned with the “isness” of the present moment. And that is not to resist the isness of the present moment. What arises in the present moment.

So ultimately, since the present moment is all there ever is, since your entire life unfolds in and as the present moment, so therefore, when you resist the present moment, you are living in an antagonistic relationship with life. That is, no matter then what you achieve if that is your

conditioned mind pattern, you will never arrive at a place of real joy or happiness or inner peace, except when you are moving towards unconsciousness. After a few drinks, you might become more into the present moment, but you’re moving towards sleep.

You’re falling below thinking. People are trying to get away from themselves, because who they are is experienced as unpleasant because of their dysfunction. So people are trying to get away

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from themselves in all kinds of ways, drugs and so on, and sometimes, dangerous activities could help you to get away from yourself temporarily when you’re climbing a rock wall or even when you’re surfing, perhaps. You can’t be thinking about your problems, and you won’t be then and you can’t be in a state of resistance.

You have to be fully there, otherwise you will not succeed in whatever activity it is. You have to be fully there. There have to be free of yourself, the resistance to self, the egoic self. So that can temporarily free you, too. But then, once the activity is over, you go back into your normal resistance state.

And then you have to do it again, and then people then say, “Well, these people are addicted to the adrenaline rush they get when they’re engaged in these activities,” which is a physical thing that happens in the body, but there’s more to it than that. They are free of themselves. There’s only the Presence.

There’s no longer the person. The person cannot be there. The person ultimately survives the personal sense of self in the absence of awareness, when there’s only the personal sense of self, that’s the ego, and that cannot survive that resistance. It needs that.

Now, an interesting part of this course, as you will see, is that body practices enable you to place more and more tension into your body, because very often, resistance, you may not be able to recognize it. You may even deny it, or it may have been there for such a long time that you just cannot see it. Likely, if you have the noise of-- let’s say you have a noise of air conditioning noise or the noise of a refrigerator and it’s on almost continuously.

You’re not aware there’s a noise in the background, but when it suddenly stops, you go, “Oh, what was all that? There was this noise going, I didn’t even know it,” because you were so used to it. You didn’t even know there was this continuous-- the lack of Stillness was there, because there was continuous noise, but you didn’t know it because it became habitual.

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And so certain states of resistance, you may not be able to detect directly because they’ve been there for so long. Therefore, a good way of detecting those things is to direct attention into the inner energy heat of the body. And as you do that, you may discover certain areas in the body that are in a state of contraction or tightness. And often, that is the result of long periods of time spent in resistance, which is reflected in the body as tightness, as holding on, and what it means is the state of resistance obstructs the otherwise harmonious energy flow in the body, which is what we can be called chi, and there are other names for it.

It obstructs that, and so quite a few illnesses, many illnesses arise as a result of obstructions in the energy flow through the body, and the reason why the otherwise natural energy flows through the body is obstructed is the mentally generated resistance to life, which is the present moment. So you may-- as you begin to dissolve resistance in your daily life, you also have to pay attention to the accumulated residues of resistance in the body, sometimes accumulated over many years.

So this can only be dissolved, as you will hopefully experience for yourself, by placing attention into the inner energy field. Bringing, one could say, bringing light, the light of consciousness, into the inner body. And then you suddenly feel, “Oh, there it is.” And then if you shine the light on it, it begins to loosen.

It’s like ice, or something like that that has frozen, and then you shine the light of consciousness, and it’s like sunlight shining on a piece of ice that is there, and then gradually, it dissolves, and then it returns to its natural-- it joins the natural flow of energy again. It was never separate from the entire energy field of the body. It just seemed to be something the obstructions in the body, the tightness, the knots in the body, they’re nothing separate from the actual energy; that’s just where energy becomes trapped.

And by placing attention into that, it softens and it begins to melt, and then you feel an increase in life energy, as it begins to flow more freely through you. Well, these are all very important parts of learning to resist nothing, which again, remember, it refers to your relationship, with the

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present moment. The resistance-- are you able to let go of resistance to the present moment no matter what form it takes?

And very often, you may not be able to, but then you can detect the resistance that has arisen. By detecting it, you’re already half out of it. And often, you haven’t had a choice-- “Do I want to be in this state of resistance?”-- once you recognize it. Is it pleasant? Is this denial of the present moment, or would I rather be free of it?

And often, it’s to do with certain narratives in your mind that tell you that there’s something wrong with the present moment. Now, that’s a big one, because for many people, they feel amply justified in believing that there is, indeed, something wrong with the present moment always.

And for that, you can blame, and is what the mind does, the egoic mind, you can blame circumstances, you can blame yourself, you can blame other people.

You can blame God. You can blame the system, political system, economic system, social system. When I say this, I’m not saying that all those things cannot be improved on the horizontal level of existence. Things can be improved, and it’s part of your mission in life to improve yourself in life to become better, learn things, become more knowledgeable, help people, help you improve situations, and so on.

All that is fine, but this is not to be confused with acceptance of the isness of the present moment. If that is the foundation for action that you take, then you have a very powerful foundation. If you don’t accept the isness of the present moment and if your foundation for action that you take is resistance to the present moment, which ultimately always is a negative state. It’s a negative state.

Negative emotions arise through resistance to the present moment, then the negative emotions may motivate you to act, and sometimes, you get things done. When you get angry enough, you get things done. But it’s karmic action, and very often, you might actually solve a particular situation through your anger. You’ve just hit the situation long enough, so to speak, until

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something happens, but very often, the way in which you seemingly change the situation for the better actually turns out to be the opposite. You make it worse.

Often, the lack of wisdom, because if the foundation for your action is resistance, which is negativity, then there is certainly a lack of wisdom in what you do. And you may superficially succeed, and then you’ll often see that your action was actually counterproductive, because the solution to the problem that you wanted to eliminate creates a bigger problem than the one that you had before. Or if there are unconscious people and you get very angry with these

unconscious people, of course, obviously, they’re everywhere, so you get very angry with these unconscious people and you do something, you’ll now have to fight these unconscious people.

And you may temporarily succeed. Maybe whatever the cause is. Maybe you belong to a particular movement or whatever it is for change and you succeed because you defeated those people, and then you continue to fight those people, because those people are obviously, they are monsters, obviously, because they’re so unconscious. You may not call them unconscious, you probably call them evil, so you fight them.

And of course, the danger is if that-- if the foundation is that, fighting monsters-- the great danger is that you turn into a monster yourself without knowing it. That’s happened on many levels, even on the biggest level, collective level, political levels. There needs to be a change in your state of consciousness for it to really succeed.

If the ego is still operating in you, then you would recreate some other dysfunctional state, because the ego is a dysfunctional state of consciousness. So in order to change the world, we need to be aware that outer reality, the world that we create, that humans create, reflects collective consciousness. And so that applies to both the individual, the world that you experienced as your personal world, it applies to the collective, also.

The most important thing is therefore to, as a foundation for what you do, is to be in alignment with the isness of this moment. This moment is actually not-- it’s not you. It’s just this, which

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means whatever is here, the situation that I’m in now, that’s what is. If you argue with it, you immediately create suffering and negativity internally.

So it could be a very undesirable situation, and you certainly know that it would be very good for you to get out of it. That can happen quite easily. So you’re in a very undesirable situation, but whatever. Your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. It’s raining, it’s cold. There’s nobody around.

What do you do now? Of course you take action. You have to take some action, but are you able to-- even there, in a seemingly very undesirable situation, are you able to just-- “Well, this is what is.” OK, then there’s a moment of aligning yourself with the “isness,” and then you see,

“What can I do now?”

The intelligent action arises. If you don’t come to this place of acceptance of the “isness,” letting go of the resistance, it is much more likely that unintelligent action arises. You do things that are not really helpful or make the situation worse.

So to learn to accept the isness of this-- why should I accept the isness of this? Well, because it is. There is a certain inevitability to the isness of this moment. It is, and the entire history of the universe has brought about the isness of this moment, because everything is connected to everything else.

So the isness of this moment may be a situation that you find yourself in or something you’re doing, or a person that you’re with. And again, here we come to the resistance often is the case.

You’re with somebody maybe in your office or at home, but you’d rather not be with this person.

And some couples live like that for years and years.

They can’t really-- they don’t like really like each other anymore, but there’s a habit, and there’s some sense of security but it’s continuous and then you dislike on every little thing you know your partner does. The way he or she laughs, and how he or she eats, the food, everything is--

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and you’re trying to hold it down and that goes on for years and you even don’t even know it anymore. And that’s habitual.

So people are with but you’d rather not be with them, and again, what do you do there? Can you accept this moment? If you want to break this pattern, can you accept this moment without mentally labeling it anymore as undesirable, the isness of it. It’s a relief.

If you can accept the isness of this moment, everything changes, and that’s surrender. That’s the act of surrender, not the surrender that means, “OK, you win, I give up. You win. I’ll do what you say.” Nothing to do with that. That’s a negative surrender. The positive surrender is the relinquishing of resistance to the isness of this moment. And this is just this moment.

You don’t accept a narrative. You don’t accept the social system that you live in, the economic system that you live in. People don’t fully understand what it means to accept the “isness.” It doesn’t mean that, “OK, now, I accept that the economic system that we live in and the social system is the best, because I need to accept the isness”-- no, that’s not it.

That’s the whole superstructure. “I have to accept that my life has failed because I’ve ended up in this prison cell here after every decision I’ve taken in my life has been wrong. And the whole thing is totally f-ed up and I have to just accept that I’m a total failure.” No, that’s a narrative in your mind.

Acceptance of the isness of this moment is not the acceptance of a narrative in your mind or “the acceptance of the social structure that I live in are so great, I have to accept all those.” No, it’s just your immediate experience of this moment, which is life itself. It never happens anywhere else.

That’s all. It’s very simple. So maybe you’re even going on a political demonstration, because you want to change society. Maybe that’s a good idea, maybe it’s not. I don’t know what kind of a demonstration it is.

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Are you there in the state of anger? Is that the most empowered state there is, or are you able to accept the isness of this moment? You are engaged in this and you’re fully engaged in this, and there is that something more powerful at work than anger, it’s reactive?

Something more constructive, more powerful, more intelligent is at work. Or as you argue with somebody, is this person your enemy, in which case you resist, or are you able to communicate in a different way, where you accept this person in this moment the way they are with all their limitations in this moment with whatever it is that you see in them or feel. You accept this is the reality of this person at this moment, instead of creating enormous resistance, which then usually dehumanizes the other person.

So acceptance of the isness of this moment is actually a very simple, but very powerful. So I suggest, as part of the course, you will, of course, practice that more and more. I suggest that you start already, and why not try every day, set aside half an hour. Say half an hour.

No matter what you’re doing during this half hour. And so during this half hour, I will pay attention to acceptance of the present moment, particularly. Maybe you’re at work. Would be good things you can do it at work.

For half an hour, I will resist nothing. No person, no situation, no things that are not going-- obstacles that arise in your work, where you need to get to. People, the more difficult people here and there. Immediate acceptance-- “Just for 30 minutes I’ll experiment with not resisting the isness of this moment.”

And then you can go back to resistance, if that’s your choice. For some people, half an hour perhaps too much. Start with 10 minutes. 10 minutes of complete non-resistance. Preferably, don’t do it when there’s absolutely no challenge. I mean, then it’s a little bit unrealistic if you’re lying in bed and then say, “OK, for the next 10 minutes I’m not going to resist anything.”

Well, you’re not being challenged by anything, so that’s not too realistic. But in daily situations when challenges are likely to arise. Or stop the practice-- the half hour practice or 15-minute

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practice the moment the first resistance arises in any day. So you get up, start making breakfast.

The moment you notice the resistance. “OK, this is the beginning of my practice period.”

Then you do 15 minutes of-- non-resistance means you’re fully there in the present moment, and the next moment is never more important than this one. So even for example, when you hurry to get out of the house to go to the office. Some people still go to the office these days, although many people don’t anymore. So you’re hurrying to get out of the house to go to the office, and it’s not pleasant, because you’re stressed already before you even arrive at your place of work, you’re already stressed.

And there, you hardly practice. You’re just with every movement, you’re completely present with every movement. “You have to do this-- what I need now. This, this, that, that.” And then maybe you’re in the car or whatever on the bus and then a traffic jam arises. Well, what’s your mind saying about it?

“OK, oh, the isness of this moment. This is what is. Is arguing with the isness of this moment going to make it any better? No, so why are you doing it? Well, I can’t help it.

Well, it’s just so angry, I mean, why can’t these people--” whatever the mindset is, and you let go of that. Then you end the traffic time. This is what is, and there’s the sky and cars and you’re breathing.

This is the isness of this moment. Is that so bad? No. When your mind is not telling you that this is really bad, is it still bad? Well, no.

When you don’t add mental baggage to the present moment, unpleasant mental baggage, then the present is free of mental baggage. That’s just what is. Are you incapable of taking action now?

No.

Maybe you discover suddenly, “OK, there’s a side street I can take a detour. It might be quicker than this.” You’re in a traffic jam, as I gave an example. Maybe that works. Maybe it is.

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But then you learn ultimately that nothing is more important than your relationship with the present moment. And that becomes the foundation for your life, and then you become truly intelligent, which means wisdom arises. And out of that arises what the Buddhists call right action, which is the action that does not arise out of resistance. It is more empowered than that.

It comes from that place of alignment with life itself. The being that you are, and the power of that can then move through you and lead your life intelligently, but not the limited intelligence of the IQ test but a deeper intelligence, which traditionally is called wisdom. And so that arises as you surrender to life.

Wisdom arises, but not only wisdom. As you let go of resistance, surrender to life, which is now and always and never not now. Not only wisdom arises, but also the sense of aliveness or joy, no matter what the outer circumstances are, there’s still a certain inner peace that is could also be called a sense of joy in the background.

Not necessarily an ecstatic, “Ah, I’m so happy,” no. Just an all pervading sense of aliveness and inner peace, which is a kind of joy. And not only that, there’s also-- you can sense more in that state of acceptance of life.

You can sense the aliveness of things. Yes, even of things. The aliveness of people, more importantly, their very Being. You can sense the Being that is underneath the person.

And even if the person holds very different views from you, he or she doesn’t become your enemy, because you can sense their essential Beingness, because it’s one with yours. It’s the same consciousness manifesting. You can still put forward your viewpoints, which may be totally opposite to the other person’s viewpoint, and you might still believe that your viewpoint is actually, really corresponds more to reality than theirs, that’s all fine, but the other person doesn’t become your enemy.

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So you surrender and you become powerful through that surrender. Not ego powerful, not power over another, but aligned with the power of life itself. And it’s all in that simple thing that is the present moment.

So “Resist Nothing” means-- nothing that arises in this moment, except what arises in this moment. And this moment could be a memory of a past moment, because you may have

something in you that in the past that is very unpleasant. It could be either something somebody did to you or even something that you did to somebody in a state of unconsciousness. Suffering in your past that was inflicted on you or suffering that you inflicted on somebody else in the past and now you see it.

And the memory of that can be very painful. In that sense, you still resist the past. In the present moment, you resist the memory of the past, this should not have happened. But of course, you can only remember the past in the now.

When it happened, it was the now, and as you remember it, it is still it is the now. So how do you deal with an undesirable past which can be a problem for many people? Part of the surrender practice is to surrender to what happened in the past, which means acceptance, which means a recognition that there’s unconsciousness in humans and in you, and the unconsciousness created the suffering.

Somebody did something to you or even to groups of people to which you-- you belong to a group of people that suffered because others inflicted suffering on them and you recognize that.

And then you accept that this is what happened. You accept it in the present moment. It’s no longer-- it’s no longer part of your identity.

If you resist, it says, “This should not have happened.” It’s part of the identity. It’s the same thing as saying this shouldn’t be happening, but it is. This should not have happened but it did.

The history of the world is full of things that should not have happened.

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Full. Your individual life is full of things that shouldn’t have happened. My childhood, many things shouldn’t have happened. I would have been such a happy child if these things had not happened, but I wouldn’t be sitting here now. I would not have found the deep place where wisdom arises if life had not forced me to go deeper because of these things that shouldn’t have happened.

If everything happened as it should, there would be no change. The history of the world is full of-- I mean, look at the history of the world. It’s insane, and you have to accept all that. In this moment, you accept the insanity of a lot of-- not all of it, but a lot. There’s good things, too, that’s arising gradually.

There is an evolution of consciousness, true, yes but also pretty insane. Look at the history of the world. And then you accept the insanity up to now, because you recognize it for what it is, and that’s called forgiveness. So forgiveness is an essential part of acceptance of letting go of

resistance, because non forgiveness is continuing resistance. And you’re resisting something that already happened and the memory’s there and that perpetuates the resistance as we become free.

It’s a lot of letting go, baggage. And all that baggage was part of the person holding onto of course. Drops away. “Oh.” And you will not always succeed, even after this course, it will detect most likely resistance coming back occasionally, but you will more easily detect it.

Unless you detect it, you’re able to let go of it very often. Even the recognizing it as resistance often already dissolves it, because when you make something unconscious conscious, it tends to dissolve. It’s very interesting. When you make something that is unconscious conscious, oh, it can’t survive in you very much longer.

Anger, for example. You know the famous thing-- people are shouting. One person says, well, why are you getting so angry, and the person shouts, “I am not angry!” “Aren’t you?”

(18)

18

Tolle Resist Nothing

Oh. Perhaps at that moment, there’s an insight, “Oh, yes, I’m really angry.” And when you recognize it, actually, when you really know that you’re angry and it doesn’t really solve anything, it begins to dissolve. Sometimes, dissolves very quickly.

With the pain-body, as you’ll see in this course, you also work with the pain-body, which the accumulated emotional pain. That may not dissolve all that quickly. It could take quite a while, depending on the density of the pain-body. It could take a while having to shine the light of consciousness on it in the present moment as it arises in situations.

So that’s fine. It’s all wonderful adventure to be practicing all this. Nothing is more important in your life than this. Your career, even your relationships, and whatever you do, comes second to that “must do,” because we’re dealing is your state or is your consciousness. That’s the

foundation for your life.

And it’s wonderful to see that everything else becomes secondary, and then your daily life reflects back to you where you are at, and you will then, as you let go of resistance, do you find that there’s a lessening of conflict in your life. Less and less conflict. Yes, it still can arise, but you’re not so much a participant in it anymore and it evolves more quickly.

If people come at you wanting conflict, you’re not feeding it through reactivity. You accept the present moment and whatever state the other human being is in. You’re not feeding conflict, so it tends to dissolve much more quickly. So the world will reflect back to you where you’re at in your practice of resisting nothing.

So I wish you well in this wonderful adventure of the flowering of human consciousness. Thank you.

© Eckhart Tolle, Kim Eng ℗ Eckhart Teachings Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this transcript may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from Eckhart Teachings Inc.

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