RESISTANCE
After more hours upon hours of spiritual autolysis, I wrote something else that is true:
What you resist persists.
I think I first heard that from L. Ron Hubbard – one of his “genius” moments as a scout many years ago – before others started saying it, and before he got lost on his way. So it is not something I came up with; but I did test it, and I did find it to be true.
In searching the Internet, I see references to this sentence attributed to a lot of different sources and groups, from the famous psychiatrist Carl Jung (although I could never verify he said it), to EST (although Warner Erhard took the basics of EST from L. Ron Hubbard), to Neale Donald Walsch in Conversations with God. It was also used in Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret. But as is necessary inside the movie theater, the true meaning and application were altered so the Human Adults who try to use this gem of wisdom for their own self-improvement would find themselves going deeper into limitation instead.
“Every time we resist something, we are spending our energy in the wrong way. It is much better – and much easier indeed – to stop resisting what we don’t want and focus on attracting what we do want. Instead of resisting poverty, and struggling to make more money to prevent it by getting a second job, try to focus on attracting prosperity by having positive thoughts while working. If you hate your job and are thinking about this every morning, you are resisting going to work. Therefore, it will be harder to get a promotion or find a better job.”1
“The Law of Attraction simply says that you attract into your life whatever you think about. Your dominant thoughts will find a way to manifest.”2
By now you should be able to see what is not true about this interpretation of “what you resist persists,” how it was twisted inside the movie theater to make it unworkable for a Human Adult (as all things must be). But just in case, let me state it clearly….
The premise is that you should stop thinking negative thoughts and focus on the positive thoughts, because if you focus on the negative thoughts, they will persist and make it impossible for the positive thoughts to manifest. Fair enough?
But that entire premise is based on a judgment: “negative” thoughts versus “positive” thoughts. It is also based on the untruth that you can manifest anything in your holographic universe, much less attract the “positive” things if you focus on them.
The truth is that all resistance is based on a judgment; or put the other way, resistance would not exist without a prior judgment. If you judge something to be “negative,” you resist it. So the solution is not to try to deny or ignore the “negative” thoughts and focus on the “positive ones,” but to eliminate the judgment altogether that is the source of the resistance.
You want a “better” job? Stop judging the one you have and you will stop resisting it at the same time.
Although I don’t want to state this as “Truth,” it has been my experience that as long as I judge and resist something, I stay in that experience. Only when I stop judging, and therefore automatically stop resisting, is it possible for my experience to change.
My first example of this came when I was twenty years old. I was deep into Peter Marshall at the time, and I called God, “The Chief,” as he did. I was in Caracas, Venezuela, helping to create the Spanish equivalent of Up With People for that country.
I had been with Up With People about a year and spent most of that time as the drummer; but I wanted to be more than that. I wanted to be a musical director, and I kept judging my drumming to be “less than” what I wanted and was capable of, and therefore resisted it.
One day as I was going to sleep in Caracas, I had a major transformation and said a very sincere prayer....
“Chief, I have made a decision. If you want me to be a drummer for the rest of my life, if that’s the best way I can serve you and the rest of mankind, I will do it – joyfully, gladly, and enthusiastically. I promise.” And I meant it.
…and I gave up all judgment and resistance to drumming at that moment.
The very next day I received a call from the CEO of Up With People, telling me he was creating a third cast and asking me to come back right away to be its musical director.
I could give you numerous other examples like this from my life, but I think you get the point.
* * *
What you resist persists.
In fact, the more you resist “negative” thoughts and try to replace them with “positive” thoughts, the more “negative” thoughts you will have. Isn’t that what it says? By trying to focus only on the “positive” thoughts, aren’t you automatically resisting the “negative” ones? And then won’t they persist?
It’s like the old game, “try not to think about elephants.” Of course, elephants are all you can think about then.
That’s why The Secret and the “Law of Attraction” don’t work; or at least, it’s one reason. The other reason is that they were part of life inside the movie theater and therefore couldn’t work except to create more limitation.
For example, there seem to be a lot of “peaceworkers” springing up all over the place these days. But if you resist war, war is what you will get; if you resist violence, violence is what you get; and if you are a “peaceworker,” you are resisting war and violence, despite what some of them will try to say. So as more and more “peaceworkers” appear, we get more and more war and violence in the world. Just read the news these days.
Peaceworking is a great distraction from the real issue – you and your judgments and the layers of your ego. Mahatma Gandhi said “be the change you wish to see in the world.” He didn’t say, “be the change you wish to see in the world, and then go out and change the world,” or “then go out and try to make everyone else to be the way you are.”
It’s really pretty simple. Only when you stop judging war and violence to be “wrong” or “bad” and understand and embrace them as perfect, along with everything else in your hologram, will you stop resisting them, at which point they no longer need to persist.
Jesus said…
“But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.”3
So it’s not just about not resisting. It’s about embracing what you resist; about not trying to fix or change or improve something, but about realizing it is all perfect, war and violence included. That’s what “what you resist persists” means.
And what is there to resist? Every experience you have, down to the smallest detail, was created for you by your Infinite I, so why resist it? What are you actually saying when you resist an experience? You’re saying your Infinite I got it wrong and you don’t trust it.
* * *
By now I’m sure you understand that writing this book is part of my own spiritual autolysis, so it doesn’t surprise me when an experience pops up in my hologram to point out something to me to process as well as include it in the book.
As I was writing the last chapter, some family of my friend had come to visit for a couple weeks, along with their four-year-old son who had a habit of screaming at the top of his lungs, both in anger and in excitement. The screams were piercing, magnified by echoes off the walls and surrounding buildings. They hit a pitch that would shatter a glass.
The parents did nothing when he screamed, except laugh a little. When I asked my friend, he said this was the way Germans and Swiss bring up their children, that only the UK would try to “suppress” their kids from screaming.
Okay, I can accept that different cultures have different attitudes toward childrearing, and I had no judgment about it, although it’s not the way I raised my children nor would raise them today (which has nothing to do with “suppression”); and I had also recognized from the time I spent living in Europe that Europeans in general were often more oblivious than Americans to anyone else around them, whether they were driving a car, or standing in the center of a busy doorway, or ignoring the effects of a screaming child on those around it.
So I did resist these screams for a few minutes, especially since I was trying to finish Chapter Seventeen. Then I took some moments to process my resistance, realizing I was attached to this ego layer of being an author and needing my space to write. Once I had let go of that, I was free to follow the flow and decided my Infinite I wanted me to take a break before starting the next chapter in the book.
Fortunately, the day was cooler than usual for the middle of the summer, cloudy with a few thunderstorms building; so I could take a walk for the first time in several weeks without the scorching heat, something I really enjoyed doing. I donned my mp3 player and set off down the beach along the Mediterranean toward town, listening to Abba’s greatest hits, doing my own version of the boogie to Take a Chance on Me and Dancing Queen.
It was so great to be out walking again, something I appreciated very much and took as a reward from my Infinite I for the hard work I had been putting in on the book. But it got better the further I walked. The wind and the Sea were picture-perfect, and I met beautiful women along the way, one after the other. One woman was so beautiful I had to stop and tell her so, which she answered with a smile and a “Thank You,” in English!
At the far end of the beach, I sat at a café and had a couple ice teas and some potato chips – a treat I had not indulged in for a little while. I was so happy to have taken this walk and experienced so much pleasure and enjoyment and refreshment for both body and mind.
Of course, I expressed my appreciation (silently) to the four-year-old boy, his parents, and my friend for playing their parts to allow me to see and detach from another layer of my ego, and to get me away from my computer and out on the beach again; and to my Infinite I for the amazing and beautiful experience; and to myself for be willing to examine my resistance as soon as it came up. I wouldn’t have missed that walk for the world.
This time I doubt the boy will stop screaming…. Wow! He didn’t stop completely, but the frequency is a lot less, and now it doesn’t bother me nearly as much.
* * *
I had a friend many years ago who made an obscene amount of money scraping old rubber off airport runways. Around the age of fifty-five, he was diagnosed with cancer and given two years to live.
Rather than resist the cancer, he decided to accept his fate and wanted to spend his last two years giving something back to the country he loved so much and had given him such incredible opportunities. He started a magazine called “The Duck Book,” educating his readers about the true nature of the U.S. economic system, and sold lifetime subscriptions for $10 – his lifetime, not yours. He figured he’d be dead in two years, so what the hell.
Two years later his cancer had disappeared. Now he had a new problem: thousands of lifetime subscriptions for $10 to honor. That was solved when he was assassinated within a few years in Costa Rica, having become too much of a threat to the world’s financial cartel. But that’s not the point, obviously. The point is… well, you get it, not resisting the cancer….
* * *
In 2009 I delivered some workshops in Europe on the topic of the Holographic Universe and the Human Game. Naturally, as part of any workshop, you want to have some exercises the participants can do to make the theories real to them, to give them a personal experience of the truth you’re trying to impart.
There were three particular exercises I used the most and highly recommend for you as well. The first is to take one day – just twenty-four hours – and do nothing that doesn’t excite you to do. No “must do’s,” no “have to do’s,” no “should do’s.” You are allowed to do only what you want to do and brings you joy. You might find it’s not as easy as it sounds. After all, we have a lot of habits hanging over from our days in the first half of the Game – beliefs that might pop up in the process. But just remind yourself it’s an experiment for a day and nothing more and see what happens. For example, see if your Infinite I gives you a sign or rewards you in some special way, just to let you know it works, and will work for you as well.
The second exercise is, again, to take just twenty-four hours and not try to do anything to “make something happen,” but to only react and respond to the experiences you encounter, that come to you. No goals, no agendas, no objectives. No thinking you have to do anything at all to make things happen in life. Simply react and respond to the experiences your Infinite I creates for you and see what kind of experiences you get, and whether they bring you more joy and happiness than you’re used to.
The third exercise is my favorite. For one day – just twenty-four hours – the participants in my workshops were only allowed to say “Yes” to whatever appeared in their hologram. They had to take the word “No” out of their vocabulary and just say “Yes” to everything that came their way. After all, if our Infinite I is creating each and every experience we have, down to the smallest detail, why not simply say “Yes” to whatever it creates and see what happens?!
You can’t imagine the resistance I encountered….
“What if someone asks me to do something I don’t want to do?”
“You say ‘Yes’ and do it.”
“But what if someone else tries to take advantage of me, knowing I can only say ‘Yes,’?”
“That’s another fear you’ll have to face.”
“But what if it’s illegal or immoral?”
…and the objections went on and on, all based on fear and judgment; and of course, that was the whole point, exposing these fears and judgments for them to see – that, and giving the participants the experience of saying “Yes” and realizing they could trust their Infinite I and the experiences it would create for them.
Then I found out there was a movie released in 2008 which I had never seen (or heard of, since I had been isolated in Portugal the whole time) called Yes Man with Jim Carrey. When I finally saw it, I thought it was one of the most brilliant films ever made, and one of the best “hints” and “clues” ever presented to Human Adults inside the movie theater. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it.
Some have tried to minimize its “Yes” message, claiming the guru character, Terrence, retracts his own advice in the end. But that’s not so at all.
Here’s the set-up…. Jim Carrey believes he has made a covenant to only say “Yes,” and if he breaks that covenant, something bad will happen to him. He did, in fact, break the covenant and is in the hospital with Terrence after a car accident. (Watch the video here.)
“Terrence, you have to remove the covenant. It’s killing me!”
“There is no covenant. There never was. I was just riffing.”
“Riffing?”
“Well, I had to say something. You were being difficult, embarrassing me in front of my crowd.”
“So the whole ‘Yes’ thing is all bullshit?”
“No, you just don’t know how to use it, that’s all.”
“Yeh, I do. Say ‘Yes’ to everything – real tough to grasp.”
“No, that’s not the point. Well, maybe at first it is, but that’s just to open you up to it, to get you started. Then you’re saying ‘Yes,’ not because you have to, or because a covenant tells you to, but because you know in your heart that you want to.”4
That’s the whole point: Why wouldn’t anyone want to say “Yes” to any experience their Infinite I creates for them? Why would anyone want anything else than the experience they are having right at the moment, knowing their Infinite I designed it especially for them, down to the smallest detail? Why would anyone resist anything in their hologram?
Actually, I can think of a couple reasons why, and pretty good ones at that.
The first is that they simply don’t trust their Infinite I, and you can’t blame them. After all, they just spent their entire lives inside the movie theater having one experience after another they weren’t too thrilled about, or at least wished would be “better” and thought there was something about them that needed to be changed, fixed, or improved. Said more simply, a lot of first-half experiences resulted in drama and conflict and pain and suffering – which we now know were caused by our own judgments and resistance. But we have a history and a habit of saying “No” to those experiences and assume those kinds of experiences would continue, even multiply, if we started saying “Yes.”
Another reason is that we’re control freaks – all of us, to a certain degree. We spent a lot of time inside the movie theater trying to control everything – our lives, our money, the people around us, the dangerous world we live in, and so on. Of course, it was just an illusion that we had any control at all over our experiences other than our reactions and responses to them.
Saying “Yes” requires giving up that illusion of control, requires releasing the steering wheel, letting go of the tiller, going totally with the flow with no resistance.
But at the same time, starting to say “Yes” and making a new habit out of it is the easiest and fastest way to gain trust in your Infinite I, once you see where it leads you. It may also be one of the most powerful and effective ways of transforming into a butterfly. So give it a try for twenty-four hours and see for yourself….
Saying “Yes” is the antidote to resistance.
Twenty-four hours is not a lot to ask – no lifetime commitment. But if you like the results of these experiments, you might want to do them for forty-eight hours next time; then for a week, and then forever. And remember, at the end of each day be sure to express appreciation to your Infinite I for your experiences, and appreciation to yourself for your role as its Player and for the great job you did.
One note: you cannot do any of this “wrong.” There’s no trick, nothing you have to be careful of, no way to screw it up. So don’t worry. As Nike used to say, “Just do it.”
* * *
When my younger son was sixteen, we had a heart-to-heart, which he may or may not remember. I told him if he woke up one morning and was overcome with excitement to rob a bank, I wanted him to do just that, to go out and buy the mask and the gun (a toy one, preferably) and anything else he needed, and walk up to that bank as if he were going to rob it; because, I suggested, it didn’t mean he would actually have to rob the bank, although I was not able to judge whether that would be a “good” thing or a “bad” thing in the end.
But there were other possibilities. For example, he could be walking up to the bank putting his mask on when a movie producer (this was in Hollywood) would come by, stop him and say, “You’re exactly what I’ve been looking for. I have this part in my movie for someone just like you, and I’ll pay you $100,000 if you’ll take the role.”
In Yes Man, Jim Carrey realizes he would never have met the love of his life if he had not said “Yes,” even though it was under the false impression he had to because of some covenant. (Watch the video here.)
* * *
You remember the day, a few years ago, when I sat in my apartment realizing I had no job, no income, no money, no prospects, no lover, and so on; and I totally surrendered to the reality of “what was” without emotion or regret or any desire to change my situation.
Now I can say, and you will understand, that I let go of all resistance to my holographic experience at that moment.
Within three days, Robert Scheinfeld appeared in my hologram (via one of his DVD “home transformation systems”) and showed me the door in the back of the movie theater; at which point I walked through it.
I can look back on that experience now from a slightly different perspective, that when I stopped judging and resisting, I became useless to my Infinite I as a Player in the first half of the Human Game. I was no longer going to have or send back to my Infinite I emotional feelings in reaction or response to experiences of limitation and restriction, which is why I was playing the first half of the Game to begin with.
I can imagine my Infinite I has other Players it created that may still be playing the first half of the Human Game, who can continue to feed it the feelings it wants of imperfection. It didn’t need me, and I wasn’t going to suit its purposes any more in that role. Instead, I began to feed it the feelings from the second half of the Game – what it feels like once you’re over the top of that first hill on the rollercoaster and into the next part of the ride – which are just as valuable to it, I’m sure.
This doesn’t mean that anyone can fake non-resistance in order to fool their Infinite I to take them into the second half of the Game just so they can get out of the first half, which they still don’t like. You can’t deny or ignore or suppress resistance; you must totally and willingly let it go out of your system entirely. You must be willing to fully embrace every moment of every experience created for you by your Infinite I, and love and appreciate it no matter what it is.
As long as you judge and resist playing the first half of the Human Game, you can never move into the second half. As long as you resist total surrender, letting go of all judgments and beliefs and opinions, you can never make it to the Pacific Ocean. As long as you resist giving up your identity as a caterpillar, you can never become a butterfly.
More easily said than done, perhaps, and very scary….