Resistance is Futile

It makes me giggle a little bit to type the title of this article. How many times have I heard this line quoted? A line made famous by the Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation, it has taken me a long time to realize that it’s not just another cheesy quote, but a truism. Resistance truly is a futile action. How successful has anyone been in resisting and keeping the object of their opposition from their reality? I’ve heard it said that what we resist persists, and that has definitely been my experience.

Whether it be issues with money, or relationship challenges with friends and family, the more I pushed against an experience I didn’t want, the more it seemed to appear in my life! I couldn’t understand why all the things I didn’t want kept showing up in my life. Was it some cruel joke that the universe was playing on me? I was finding it hard to believe that God could be so cruel!

It was only when on started my journey of self awareness, listening to recordings of the teachings of people like Louise Hay, Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra, that I learned about the importance of being aware of the thoughts we think. Louise Hay says that every thought we thing is an affirmation! When we focus on the things we don’t want with such strong emotion; our consciousness, which cannot tell the difference between wanted and unwanted bring that which we focus on into our reality.

This realization really rocked my world! At first, I became paranoid about the thoughts I was thinking. It was shocking to discover how much of my thinking was focused on the things that I did NOT want in my life. Then, I began to pay more attention, or rather become more aware of the language I heard on television and radio, and even that of friends and family around me. I started to wonder why we chose to fight so much. Is “joining the fight against cancer” the most effective way to deal with the disease? Why do we want to fight cancer or any other disease? Cancer exists, it is here, a reality I know all too well as someone who has lost family to the disease. I started to wonder if maybe changing the attitude towards disease and other unwanted things in our lives is the first step towards minimizing their power in our lives.

For example, as far as I can tell, wars have never been very successful at bring the result it strives for. Whether it is the war on drugs or the war on terrorism, the more we fight, the less these things seem to go anywhere. Why is it that we continue to use the same approach to removing unwanted experiences with the same unsuccessful result? Isn’t that said to be the definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

I’m not sure what the answer is. I do believe that there is a shift occurring and that more and more people are becoming aware that the status quo is not working. We need to change our approach to the things we don’t want in our lives, personally and on a global scale. Resistance is futile, but that doesn’t mean we do not have the power to choose to focus our efforts on the things we do have control over. It makes me think of the first part of the Serenity Prayer:
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I wish you all serenity in the place of futile resistance!