I often read that we must resist the negative, fight to hold on to the positive. No we don't. If we have to fight, or to live in resistance, to be happy, we're going down that wrong road again.
If we're ever going to really learn to resist not evil, as the Sermon teaches, we must needs let go of the idea of resistance to anything and everything. What could be more negative than evil? Yet, there it is in black and white... or red, depending on your Bible: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil.... (Matthew 5:39)
I have tested that many times. One example is that I know from experience the more I resist chocolate, the more chocolate I sneak into my daily non-diet. So I don't resist chocolate today. I just surrendered to it, as in declared it the winner, and I don't go there today. Chocolate is not everybody's evil...we each know our own. What's more important to know is that the core of each is fear, and that's where the answer is the same for each person for our own evil: Cease fighting, surrender unto acceptance and be freed.
See, if we fight fear, as is so often suggested, we become wary (fearful) of the fear that we fear is coming. I know fear...I call it anxiety, but who's kidding whom? Anxiety is fear in eight-inch heels and a feather boa. All dressed up as something else, it can't get us, or at least nobody will ever guess, we fearfully hope.
It all comes down to acceptance...to pain unto surrender unto acceptance. I'm guessing nobody comes to surrender feeling good about it. The very word is off-putting. Which proves the point...those who fight their pain, holding it off even a tish, are in fact keeping it in place. And it lives to batter us again.
I have not conquered my anxieties, but I no longer fear or dread them...or try to pray them away. I know anxiety will visit me again, I expect no less of it. I know, too, that God is with me, within me, always. I expect no less of God. I live in acceptance of both of those facts, and I know peace.
Resist not...thank God...get grateful. The formula for a mind at peace.
Thank you.
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