Becoming Aware of Your Resistance
Becoming Aware of Your Resistance: The Key to Surfing and Surviving the Chaos of Today's Uncertain World
By Lynn Andrews
By Lynn Andrews
Did you know that you are fearless, generous beyond thought, gracious, creative, able to shape shift your destiny?
You are! So what is keeping you from celebrating yourself, from living the bountiful life you deserve and can create?
In looking at the events of the past several years, I found a thread, a luminous thread that led me through the maze of challenges we face today. How did the events of our time form into the chaos of the world today, as well as the turmoil in our own personal lives? As you hold up your star shield to the Great Spirit, you see that there is a dangerous imbalance of the male and female energies on this earth.
We must balance the intellect and mind of the male with the intuition and emotion of the female in order to understand how we came here from nature and what we are made of. If not, then maybe we are lost. Maybe our evolution as a species will actually cease.
But there is a choice we can make to prevent that and achieve a critical balance. I believe it comes down to the one lesson that the Sisterhood of the Shields taught me over and over: how to give up resistance and pick up the shield of empowerment.
The events of this past year, in particular, demonstrated the turmoil of uncertainty. We have always lived with a sense of insecurity, and until lately, most of us have spent our energy trying to ignore it or pretend it doesn't bother us. So how do we--as shamans--learn to make uncertainty our ally? How do we let go of our resistance to change, our fear of what is different? This has become a focus within my Shamanic Mystery School.
If I could teach you only one thing, I would choose for you to learn how to ride uncertainty like a wave. If you can learn to ride within the power of the wave, to allow its energy to propel you forward, you can tap into a source of personal power.
Using energy in a focused, conscious way will reduce the sense or experience of chaotic energy for yourself and others around you. Chaos is a part of creation, and instead of resisting or responding in fear, we want to shift how we respond to it by directing our awareness to the beauty and opportunities it manifests.
Dynamic energy is given off by an act of creation, and the energy that comes from the chaotic side of creation is powerful. It is uneven and somewhat like being in an earthquake. This dynamic energy is certainty. But it is an amazing energy once we tap into it and ride it like a wave.
The Sisterhood taught me to not stand and fight the wave, but to throw myself into it. Like the dolphins riding the surf line, when you relax and move with the current, you rise to the surface and maintain your sense of direction. Uncertainty in life is like that and we choose how to face it.
As shamans, we learn to see the energy between all living things - the energy of true power. I want you to be aware of the truth that energy is just energy. It is not good or bad, not dark or light, until someone or something focuses it. Energy itself is pure and unaffected in its original state and is incredibly powerful. By understanding and refocusing these frequencies, you can move into their flow and achieve the male/female energy balance. You can learn to surf!
It is your awareness of energy that allows you to begin to use it, to tap into its power to create the life you desire, to bring healing to yourself, your loved ones, the planet. Within that awareness, you make a shift of consciousness. However, the chaos you experience today is the result of your resistance to this shift.
Furthermore, throughout much of the world now, the economic field of energy is very stressed. This stress spills over into almost every aspect of your life, as you worry about how to support your family, as our countries move ever deeper into debt, creating an instability that will become the legacy your grandchildren inherit. This all results in fear. Your inability to create meaningful changes in response causes you to put up walls of resistance, to separate from others, to fear and distrust those with whom you disagree on ways to improve our world.
So it is essential, now more than ever, that you look at the choices you make and why you hold resistance in your body - which, in turn, creates a block, literally, within your life force. That resistance depletes your energy, separates you from Great Spirit, creating more chaos in your life and thereby in the world.
How do you shift away from resistance into riding the wave of uncertainty?
Let me offer a practice using the Sacred Wheel of shamanic tradition.
Find a place where you can be comfortable and at peace...whether that is outdoors or in your living room. Grab a piece of paper or journal and a writing implement. Draw a circle around you and sit inside of that circle, with your journal at hand.
• First face South, which represents the physical part of spirit and the physical aspect of the energy. Begin asking the following questions, recording your answers in your journal: Where do I experience resistance in my body-Am I closing my mind to change? Am I experiencing illness or physical pain? Where do I feel stress? And finally, what would I experience if I let that go or opened my mind?
• Then face West, which represents the emotional aspect. Ask: How am I responding, am I reacting? What do I feel? What emotions am I experiencing? And then: what emotion would allow me to flow with this change?
• Next face North...this is the direction of Spirit, the place of inspiration and creation. The questions to ask here are: Am I listening to God? What am I resisting in my spirit and why? What is God trying to tell me? Finally, if I was working in concert with God, how would my spirit respond to this challenge or change?
• Lastly, turn to the East, the direction that rules your mind. Propose these questions: Without emotions interfering, what is the rational response? What does common sense say to do? And then ask: If I was facing this choice with a calm and unattached mind, how could I best embrace this change?
If you have gone around the circle once and you have not yet released most of the resistance, do it one more time. This is like peeling an onion...with each turn, a layer of resistance will peel away. The chaos will subside and-eventually--you'll make friends with it. This is where balance is restored.
It is also where you begin to experience the freedom of letting resistance go, feeling the flow of energy moving through you again, and allowing creativity to bring new choices and new opportunities. That unencumbered creativity is the great healer that enhances your personal power, and is your portal into the energy field of a truly fearless, generous, purposeful, and bountiful life.
Lynn Andrews is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of over 20 books and workbooks beginning with her Medicine Woman series. Today, she is recognized worldwide as Western society's leading female shaman and mystic. Lynn is an initiated member of the Sisterhood of the Shields, 44 women who are healers from cultures as diverse as Panama, Guatemala, Australia, Nepal, Egypt, North America and the Yucatan.A leader in the fields of spiritual healing and personal empowerment, her Lynn Andrews Mystery School, offers a 4-year course of study and training in the Sacred Healing Arts. Learn how to enter the sacred Dreamtime to discover the mysteries and wisdom of life, how to create and use tools of perception and awareness that help you See, understand and choreograph energy and develop your own inner power and vision. Receive free gifts from Lynn! Click here for details: lynnandrews.com/mystery-school/mystery-school-early-registration.