I watched today the 3rd episode of the Eckhart and Oprah webcast. I can’t really say that it was the best until now, because in every episode there is something one can learn, but I was very good and I would like to comment on the following quote from the webcast and share some experiences:

Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists. Then the implication, of course, is there is another way of dealing with things, with situations. Make peace with it. And then action - Take action. The action then comes out of a different state of consciousness. The action comes out of presence. Presence. It’s no longer reaction. It comes out of presence and not out of you being defensive about it. And the action is much more powerful and effective when it’s not defensive and not negative.

Is there something in your life that you resist? For example you don’t want to see somebody, you don’t want to feel so exhausted, you don’t want to do something that you don’t like.

It is about the things that we resist and fight against, and the more we do it, the more we make them alive in us and in the others. It is like putting out some force to something outside ourselves and it is getting back to us.

Why when we resist something it continues to persist? I don’t know how to explain it in a way that won’t be disapproved or resisted and that is not what I want to try. I will just give one imaginative example.

Let’s say that there is an apple in a room. Resistance to the apple would be “I don’t like apples”, acceptance of the apple would be “This is an apple”, love to the apple would be “I love apples”. Now imagine yourself spending the whole day with each of those thoughts towards the apple. What would be the result? If you spend the day saying to yourself “I don’t like this apple” you just enforce your dislike of it and you do not become free of it. If you just accept the apple as it is, this is how you will spend the day. And if you admire the apple, you may have a wonderful day :) In all of those cases you have strengthened your one thought and it persisted during the day. Your continual attention made it persistent in your mind.

Okay, so until now you have expressed your feeling toward one apple. Now image that the whole room was filled with apples. How would you feel when you resist, accept or love the apples? Pretty obvious. If you resist all the apples, you will be full of dislike. If you accept them, then you will maybe just stay between them. And if you love them, you will maybe eat them all and get an apple orgasm. You can decide on your own what you would like to think of the apple.

And this is only you. If you are with other people, then they may catch your thoughts and they may feel towards the apple in the same way that you do, and in this way there will be more than one people through which the thought of the apple persist.

So this imaginative example covers one part of the resistances that we make in our lives. It can show us that by resisting things, we don’t always get free of them.

Recently I resisted a meatball, because I consider myself vegetarian. So I was looking for something to eat and there was a plate with potatoes and a meatball. At first I saw it and said to myself, “Oh potatoes, great”, but then I saw the meatball and thought “too bad, this is meat”. Then I looked at the other plates, but they wasn’t good. I thought again of the plate with the meatball, I wanted it, but there was this resistance coming from the “vegetarian laws” and I left the thought of it again. Then I said to myself, “What is that? I’m resisting this plate. I want it and I resist it. Oh, come on, I’ll do what I want to do now”. So I didn’t resist anymore and took the plate. And how was it? The potatoes were good, but the meatball was a little bit heavy for me and I didn’t like it. But ok, the good thing is, that now I know that I don’t want to eat such a meatball and the next time there will not be so much resistance like “I don’t have to eat it”, but there will be more knowing like “I know how it tastes” and the following non-reaction.

Another very good example of resistance and non-reaction is from my childhood. I and my brother, who is 2 years younger than me, used to fight very often. In some cases our parents would separate us, but when they weren’t present we were left alone. Both of us fighting. I don’t really remember why we had those fights, but they happened. I would fight and he would fight back. At some point of time he stopped fighting against me. I hit him with my hands, legs and feet and he would just protect himself and say something like “And what? You can fight all day long and you will achieve nothing” and at first I just continued to hit him, but then it was not interesting to hit someone who does not hit back and during the fight I was losing my appetite for hitting. And this happened many times. Occasionally he would hit back, but most of the time, we would not. My interest to fight him of course diminished with time and maybe that is one of the reasons why we stopped fighting at all. Now when I look back at these situations, it is clear how bad could be if he resisted me, and how his non-reaction or not fighting back allowed me to experience something different than the lust to fight.

As a final example, but not a personal one, I would like to just mention the people who are dying, but resist death. I’ve read such stories from near death experiences and from people who accompany the dying people. When a dying person resist the death he feels something like pressure in his body, like he is holding on something very strongly, his life. But there always comes a moment of acceptance of the death and he becomes more lighter, his acceptance allows him to experience the death and make the transition much more easily.