Last night I listened to a speaker who shared his technique for dealing with someone who was upset or angry. His approach was very simple; he would silently pay attention to the person while thinking  "I am here for you." He told his audience that he would just repeat that unspoken phrase in his mind and that the responses he got were pretty consistent. People would rant and rave and then lose steam and then come around to a reasonable perspective of their own accord, often with an apology for their spew.

I was reminded how powerful is the position of 'no resistance', to simply accept. Too often our excuses, the 'automatic no', or our need to be right put us in a position of conflict and struggle. There seems to be a part of human nature that argues, questions, insists on things being a certain way right now. To surrender our need to control is actually an empowering move. Many of the martial arts follow this precept. Twelve Step recovery programs practice the principle of 'surrender to win'. Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King brought about significant social change using non resistance. By surrendering to the reality of what is, we become free to flow in the experience without creating discord and can make choices that lead to positive outcomes. 

If one of the most powerful components of positive change is the letting go of resistance, learning to become aware of how you resist is important especially since much of it is unconscious. Abraham Hicks suggest that our emotions can help us be aware of when we are resisting. When we are feeling bad, that is a good indicator that we are 'pushing against' something. And "..... when you are laughing, when you are applauding, when you are joyous, when you are feeling that feeling of appreciation pulsing through you, in those times, there is no resistance within you." 

 A wise man said to me the other day, "The capacity for acceptance is inversely proportional to the magnitude of your misery". Letting go of resistance by accepting what is allows more joy into our lives and supports our ability to create what we want, a lovely paradox of becoming powerful by giving up trying to control. The contrast between the emotions of acceptance and those of struggle helps our awareness and can be used to guide our choices.



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When and why do our instincts betray us? I often talk about listening to our inner wisdom, allowing our guides / angels / unconscious connection to the cosmos provide us with direction. However, our unconscious wisdom "can be thrown off, distracted and disabled. Our instinctive reactions often have to compete with all kinds of other interests, emotions and sentiments" writes Malcolm Gladwell in  a very interesting book called  blink.   He proposes that we all have the abilities to know, to recognize and process data literally in the blink of an eye. He further suggests that such instant knowledge is usually more accurate than rational analysis and investigation.

There have been times in my life that I have had periodic flashes of awareness along the lines of "Pay attention here!.... this could be trouble..... did you see that?....do this now......" And sometimes I chose to ignore them because I was invested in an outcome or caught up in an emotion. In hindsight, it was reminiscent of  "Warning, warning! Danger Will Robinson!"  with me being out of earshot because I was busily engaged in my own agenda. The times that I have paid attention and went with that instant knowing have been extraordinarily rewarding. One time that I chose to listen to my intuition instead of the apparent evidence in front of me prevented what could have been a fatal collision.

I am learning to pay better attention to these flashes of knowledge, and to check in with myself to observe if fear or desire or at attachment to an outcome might be compromising my ability to receive and process information that truly is available to me. And to quiet myself if needed, to inhibit the blockage and redirect my open attention to what is before me. The collaborative connection between unconscious processing and conscious insight allows us to know more than we think we know. 

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