inner resistance Quotes

The mind commands the body, and it obeys forthwith; the mind commands itself, and is resisted. The mind commands the hand to be moved, and such readiness is there that the command is scarce to be distinguished from the obedience. Yet the mind is mind, and the hand is body. The mind commands the mind to will, and yet, though it be itself, it obeyeth not. Whence this monstrous thing? and why is it?

Depression is inertia.

Let your resistance, judgements, angers and fears inform you.

The enemy is more easily overcome if he be not suffered to enter the door of our hearts, but be resisted without the gate at his first knock.

The more you have to talk yourself into it, the more it’s not ‘it’.

Inner resistance to whatever arises in the present moment pulls you back into unconsciousness. Inner resistance is some form of negativity, complaining, fear, aggression, or anger. This is important because whenever you complain about what somebody else does you're already beginning to fall into that trap of unconsciousness.

Do things the ego does not like to do.

The greatest enemy one ever faces is one's own self.

Again and again I am brought up against it, and again and again I resist it: I don't want to believe it, even though it is almost palpable: the vast majority lack an intellectual conscience; indeed, it often seems to me that to demand such a thing is to be in the most populous cities as solitary as in the desert.

Get out of your own way. Often, we're our own worst enemy when working towards our goals.

In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who has spoken to us, trying to make the next step in our reasoning. But somehow we cannot start.

One does not miss heaven by a hair, but by constant effort to avoid and escape God.

If we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. It just keeps returning with new names, forms, manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.

Most people tell themselves these excuses - I've always been this way, how can I possibly change, this is my nature, I can't help it - that are just memes

Doing is a quantum leap from imagining. Thinking about swimming isn't much like actually getting in the water. Actually getting in the water can take your breath away. The defense force inside of us wants us to be cautious, to stay away from anything as intense as a new kind of action. Its job is to protect us, and it categorically avoids anything resembling danger. But it's often wrong. Anything worth doing is worth doing too soon.

What are the "ifs" and "buts" that limit my enjoyment of life?

Rather than going after our walls and barriers with a sledgehammer, we pay attention to them. With gentleness and honesty, we move closer to those walls. We touch them and smell them and get to know them well. We begin a process of acknowledging our aversions and our cravings. We become familiar with the strategies and beliefs we use to build the walls: What are the stories I tell myself? What repels me and what attracts me? We start to get curious about what’s going on.

What keeps us from achieving our heart's desires is not anything outside of us, it's the conflict inside.

Before we can be cured we must want to be cured. Those who really wish for help will get it, but for many modern people even the wish is difficult.

Resistance really takes the shape, for me, in voices in my head telling me why I can't do something or why I should put it off for another day, procrastinate for another day.

The trouble with deep belief is that it costs something. And there is something inside me, some selfish beast of a subtle thing that doesn't like the truth at all because it carries responsibility, and if I actually believe these things I have to do something about them. It is so, so cumbersome to believe anything. And it isn't cool.

We need to ascend beyond our own petty Resistance, our own negative self-judgment and self-sabotage, our own "I'm not worthy" mind-set.

My biggest opponent was 'me.'

When you have something to do life will not allow you to ove foward until you do it.

After meditating for some years, I began to see the patterns of my own behavior. As you quiet your mind, you begin to see the nature of your own resistance more clearly, struggles, inner dialogues, the way in which you procrastinate and develop passive resistance against life. As you cultivate the witness, things change. You don't have to change them. Things just change.