The Unlived Life
Most of us have 2 lives – The one we live and the unlived life within us. What stands between those two lives is Resistance.
Book One: Resistance
Resistance is Internal
Resistance can seem to come from external sources, like jobs, spouses, bosses, kids. It doesn’t come from these. It comes only from ourselves. Resistance is the enemy within.
Resistance is Insidious
Resistance will bribe, coerce, fabricate, falsify, seduce, bully, cajole. It will do anything to stop you. It’s always lying and always full of shit.
Resistance is Impersonal
Resistance doesn’t care who you are. It acts objectively and will do everything it can to stop you.
Resistance and Procrastination
The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that is can become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off until we die.
Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives.
There was never a moment, there never will be a moment, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can sit down and do our work.
Resistance and Sex
Sometimes Resistance takes the form of sex. Why is that? Sex provides immediate and powerful gratification. When we have sex, we feel validated and approved of, even loved. Resistance gets a big kick out of that. It knows it has distracted us with a cheap, easy fix and has kept us form doing our work.
Sex isn’t always a manifestation of Resistance. You can usually tell by the measure of hollowness you feel afterwards. The more empty you feel, the more certain you can be that your true motivation was not love or even lust but Resistance.
Sex isn’t the only thing this applies to: Thinking shopping, TV, gossip, alcohol, fats, sugars, salt, chocolate.
Resistance and Self Medication
ADD, SAD, Social Anxiety Disorder. They’re marketing ploys. Drug companies invented these names to sell cures to.
Depression and anxiety may be real, but they can also be Resistance.
We drug ourselves to blot our soul’s call.
Instead of applying self-discipline, self-knowledge, delayed gratification, hard work, we simply consume a product, a drug.
Resistance and Unhappiness
What does Resistance feel like?
First, unhappiness. We feel like hell. Misery. We’re bored. We’re restless. We can’t get no satisfaction. We want to go back to bed. We want to get up and party. We’re disgusted, We hate our lives. We hate ourselves.
Unalleviated, Resistance mounts to a pitch that becomes unendurable. Then, vices kick in. Dope, adultery, web surfing.
Then, Resistance becomes clinical. Depression, aggression, dysfunction. Then actual crime and physical self-destruction.
We will never cure our restlessness by contributing our disposable income to the bottom line of Bullshit, Inc., but only by doing our work.
Resistance and Fundamentalism
Socrates wrote, “the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them”.
Rule yourself or someone else will.
Resistance and Criticism
If you find yourself criticising someone, you’re probably doing it out of Resistance.
When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have no lived out our own.
Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticise others. If they are to speak at all, it is to offer encouragement.
Watch yourself. Of all the manifestations of Resistance, most only harm ourselves. Criticism and cruelty harm others as well.
There is enough success for everyone.
Resistance and Self-doubt
If you find yourself asking, “Am I really an artist?”, chances are, you are.
The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.
Book Two: Combatting Resistance
How to be miserable
The artist committing themselves to their calling has volunteered for hell. He will be dining on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, contempt, ridicule, humiliation.
The artist must know how to be miserable.
This is war and war is hell.
We’re all pros already
All of us are pros in one area: our jobs. What makes us a pro?
- We show up everyday
- We show up no matter what
- We stay on the job all day.
- Our mind may wonder but our hands stay on the wheel
- We are committed over the long haul
- The stakes for us are high and real
- We accept remuneration for our labour
- We do not over identify with our jobs
- The amateur is a musician, a painter, a playwright. Resistance knows he will never write his symphony because he is overly invested in it success and is over terrified of its failure. The amateur takes it so seriously it paralyzes him
- We master the technique of our jobs
- We have a sense of humour about our jobs
- We receive praise or blame in the real world
A professional seeks order
He will not tolerate disorder. He eliminates chaos from his world in order to banish it from his mind. he wants the carpet vacuumed and the threshold swpt, so the Muse may enter and not soil her gown.
Book Three: Beyond Resistance
The authentic self
We can’t be anything we want to be
We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a self to become.
We are who we are from the cradle, and we’re stuck with it.
Our job in life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find our who we already are and become it.
Territory vs Hierarchy
Most of life is defined by the hierarchy. Who’s who in the pecking order, who’s the top do, where do we stand? Hierarchy is the default setting.
Usually in later life, we explore the territorial alternative. Often, it saves us.
The artist and the hierarchy
An individual who defines himself by his place in the pecking order will:
- Compete against all others in the order, seeking to elevate his station by advancing against those above him, while defending his place against those beneath him
- evaluate his happiness/success/achievement by his rank within the hierarchy, feeling more satisfied when he’s high and most miserable when he’s low
- ACt towards others based on their rank in the hierarchy, to the exclusion of all other factors
- Evaluate his every move solely by the effect it produces on others. He will act for others, dress for others, speak for others, think for others.
But the artist cannot look to others too validate his effort or his calling. The artist must do his work for its own sake, for nobody else.
The artist cannot look to others to improve his standing for his work, he must look elsewhere: within.
The Territorial Orientation
What makes a territory?
- A territory provides sustenance.
- The swimmer towelling off feels a helluva lot better than the tired, cranky person who dove into the pool 30 laps earlier.
- A territory sustains us without external inputs
- It’s a closed loop. We put in effort; the territory absorbs this and gives it back to us in the form of well-being.
- When experts tell s exercise banishes depression, this is what they mean.
- A territory can only be claimed alone.
- You can workout with a friend, or team with a partner, but you only need yourself to soak up your territory’s juices.
- A territory can only be claimed by work
- When Schwarzenegger hits the gym, that’s his turf. It took hours and years of sweat to claim it as his own. A territory doesn’t give, it only gives back.
- A territory returns exactly what you put in
- Territories are fair. Energy in = energy out. A territory never devalues. You get what you deposit, dollar for dollar.
The difference between Territory and Hierarchy
How can we know if our orientation is territorial or hierarchical? Ask ourselves, “If I were feeling really anxious, what would I do?”
Or, “If I were the last person on Earth, would I still do it?”
The fruits of our labour
We must do our work for its own sake, not for the fortune or attention or applause
The Artist’s Life
Do it or don’t.
If you were meant to cure cancer, or write a book that would change the world, and you don’t do it, you hurt yourself, you hurt your family, you hurt the planet.
Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it.
Don’t cheat us of your contribution.
Give us what you’ve got.