Devotion, Desire and Discipline
Devotion, Desire and Discipline
We all have resistance. And we all know that if we stay in resistance then realisation doesn’t get realised. The changes we want to make remain out of reach. The person we know we can be and all the potential that is simmering beneath the surface stays right there. Simmering, yearning, longing to be known.
I’m pretty sure most people’s response to change is resistance. It’s a safety mechanism. If I resist then I won’t have to go through the pain of changing. Of letting go of my protection strategies, of being honest, seeing my flaws and dissolving my ideas and identities.
Back in the day when I really wanted to be able to do a handstand (I still love playing with handstands btw) I received a great teaching from an Acroyoga teacher. He said behind fear is unlocked joy. How many times have you resisted something and then done it and been like weeeeeeeeeeeee. Let’s go again. That wasn’t so bad!
I also received a teaching from The Recognition Sutras that resistance is just commitment to your conditioning.
RESISTANCE IS COMMITMENT TO YOUR CONDITIONING.
Read it. Repeat it. Remember it.
So how committed are you to your conditioning? How much do you want to stay exactly where you are? Do you like acting and behaving and thinking in ways that aren’t your own?
The only way I know to really and truly dissolve my conditioning, meet my resistance and realise my potential is spiritual practice. I’m sure there are other ways but this is the one I know.
And it works.
Time and time again.
Practice is incredibly challenging. It’s intimate, close, unforgiving. It asks me to look in the shadows. It demands that I sit in meditation, whether I want to or not. It asks me to sit still and listen to my own bullshit. It asks me to make contact with my unconscious through journalling, movement, inquiry. It asks me to burn through anything that is false and not in service of my own clear seeing. It asks me to do things that are scary to my small self. But ultimately it brings me into relationship with Source. It gives me a direct line to the Divine. It is an endless reservoir of energy and support and trust. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
And beyond all of that, it is a response to the call of my soul.
It is the movement of iccha shakti, of the inherent desire of the Self to know itself through aligned action.
And when you’re connected to that, you don’t need discipline. You just need devotion to the sweet burn of your own longing.
In love and flame,
Collette
xxx