Instant Peace: Non-resistance, Part 1

Inner resistance brings unhappiness

Can you be peaceful everywhere you are? No matter what is happening around you, no matter what you are doing?

“When hot be thoroughly hot, when cold be thoroughly cold.”

I forgot where I read this quote, and I can’t find it any more, but over the years it’s stuck with me. I don't even know if I have quoted it right. But that's not important. What's important is: Do you understand it?

It hides one of the secrets of peace – non-resistance. Inner resistance disrupts peace. (Note: For some events like abuse, please read on to part 2 at the Urban Monk website - that requires special treatment and concerns outer resistance.)

Go with the flow, roll with the punches

Back to the quote. Why are you fighting the heat? Why are you fighting the cold? Fighting the heat is causing the discomfort. Telling yourself "I don't want this; I wish I was somewhere else, I hate this feeling." That is causing the true source of the discomfort.

This is not your fault; it is simply an automatic response. But break that habit and realise you are doing it.

If, in the middle of summer, you simply let yourself be hot, without complaining mentally or vocally, and simply feel the heat, won’t there be true peace?

This does not apply to heat only. No matter what is happening in your life right now, is there inner resistance to it? Can’t you see that most of the time, this inner resistance is causing you the unhappiness, not the actual event?

An example might help explain

It was on my own search for constant happiness, that I came across that quote. At first I didn’t understand what it meant.

At that time I made the mistake of trying to fix everything that made me unhappy individually. Argument with my girlfriend? Crack open the Personal Development books and find a tactic to deal with it. What technique should I try? Let her win, defuse her anger, stand my ground, walk away?

When I found one that worked, I’ll stick with it until something else happened. Then I'll repeat. But that was the wrong approach - my core person was the same – my peace was easily disturbed and fragile.

What made me understand that was when something happened that no Personal Development book can fix. Extreme heat.

The 48 degree Celsius heatwave

(Again, this is an example only; non-resistance is a far broader concept. Please bear with me.)

In the middle of a heatwave, I normally turn on the air-con full-blast. I eat lots of ice-cream while working. But there I was one day, stuck in the middle of an important evening class. The fan was on, but with 50 people in the room we were burning.

It got me grumpy and irritated. My thoughts were drifting back to past hurts and memories. For most of the class my mood got worse and worse as the heat got more and more unbearable.

Does the same happen to you? I've done some informal research on this and many people suffer from the same - heat makes everyone grumpy.

Tools: Turn off your mind and therefore internal resistance

I was resisting the heat. It was nothing I could change, since I wanted to finish the class. Then I tried just letting myself be hot. There was no resistance to it.

I turned off my mind. I let myself stop thinking. Just focus on feeling. (If this is trouble for you, observing your breath is a meditation technique that also allows you to switch off your mind, as your mind cannot do two things at once)

I simply let myself feel the heat. What does it feel like? A warm sensation on my skin. My skin was sticky, it was hard to breathe. But that in itself was not bad. It was bad because I made it bad. No sensation in itself is good or bad, it is only your mind that makes it good or bad.

To find out how to apply this to your own life, and for an important warning, read more in part 2, or look for the full article at the Urban Monk website.