Resistance or Surrender?

I fell asleep in my recliner as I often do these days—old people thing. Oddly though, I have some really great dreams. This one stuck with me though because some words were written on a piece of paper and also spoken, which told me that this was important and worth paying attention to.

The words were: “Whatever you resist, persists”.

I have heard these words so often in various contexts. Once labeling myself as an activist, it was often a rallying cry, with fists raised high in the air—“RESIST!!”. Or in another language, as it was often shown as well: “Vive la resistensia” from the French, fighting against the Nazi’s in World War II. It tells us to stand up for our beliefs, signifies defiance, etc. It often points to acts of sabotage and guerrilla warfare.

The point of resistance, truly, is to stand your ground and fight back—“fight” being an important operative word here. To resist involves a struggle, a facing down in some way of  “the enemy” or the situation one is facing that is oppressive, or the person or system that is dehumanizing.

To fight, enter into combat, is sometimes brutal, sometimes fatal. Victory is never guaranteed, yet, in activism, there are usually a whole group of people on a particular side, and therefore, victory is a possibility. Yet, there is also the possibility that the “battle” may only be “won” in small increments over a long period of time. A part of the whole resistance piece is that those involved are in it for the long haul, sometimes over many years, utilizing protests, and other various forms of bringing attention to whatever the injustice might be.

Over time, I have fought many personal battles—my weight, my urges, my appetites, etc. as do most of us born into human skin. When I “resisted” doing anything about the situations, or was unwilling or unable to bring myself to look at or engage in whatever it would take to bring forth change, some level of suffering was involved--

Yet…what I have wondered was this message trying to tell me, so bluntly, clearly, and poignantly? I have had come around to a different way of thinking about this statement. When we come to engage in any battle, on any front, we are facing someone, or something that we have deemed enemy or other, different and diametrically opposed to ourselves, our point of view, our way of being, there may be injustice involved, harm being done by the other side which justifies our need to go into battle with them.

What if there was another way? What if how we have gone about things served us for a time—in our lives, in history, or in a particular movement? This doesn’t mean we suddenly aren’t concerned about our rights, our sovereignty, our lives, or the lives of others. What I’m wondering is how it might be for us to simply lower our fists, put down our weapons and step back from the battle to consider another way?

I recently got a new Oracle deck, and three times in a row, I pulled a card whose simple message is: “surrender”.  It depicts a woman face down in a winding river, and you can see fish swimming with and around her, yet, she is serene and her body is seemingly and effortlessly bending  with the curves of the river, and she glides along.

After the 3rd time, and then this dream, I knew that something within me and something in “the field” was asking to be present in my understanding of who I am and how I have been. From my current vantage point, I feel that even to understand this asks of me to surrender, to lay down the weapon that is my razor sharp mind and to look into the soft, still, gentle place inside me, the place where my wisdom has been birthing itself, over and over again throughout my life.