Awareness and Resistance

[coLLege kid07]

hmm....where to begin. First off I think I'll provide you all with some backround of my life right now. I'm 18 years old, a college student of course , and have been dealing with a problem for sometime now. It all started about 2 years ago. I was a pretty shy person and never really hung out with alot of people. Still I enjoyed my alone time and life was good. I was involved in a bunch of sports and enjoyed playing music. Then suddenly one day I realized this is not who I want to be....I want to be socialable, outgoing, ect. From there it all went downhill. I looked at being shy as a bad thing and if I wasn't really talkative all the time I was a bad person. Through these beliefs I slowly stopped accepting myself and everyday grew more and more resentful.

Fastforwarding a little bit, today life has been so much better. I'm going through therapy sessions, taking medication, and am loving every minute of life. Even though I've came to all these realizations and have grown so much over the past two years, I'm still struggling with this. After reading steve's article about awareness and resistance, I have realized two cases where I have been emotionally resistent.

There are two boys in my dorm hall that I look at very negatively and critically. In a way I feel that I am just like them, but my ego tries to tell me I'm not. The first boy is pretty shy and quiet. When I look at him he seems angry and depressed, and barely makes eye contact with me, and for some reason when I look at him I feel angry for some reason. Like I'm not sure why but I feel hostility towards him. The second boy is talkative, but very annoying. He does some disguisting things sometimes like burps out loud, "snot" rockets, and some things like that. Also other boys in my dorm feel the same way about him too, but for some reason I find myself emotionally resisting him too. I'm not totally sure why but it might have something to do with his personality. In that he's kinda like the quiet kid in how he carries himself ect. Finally, I realize that the reason why I may be resisting these things is because I dislike them in myself. However, I still feel pretty clueless about why I'm doing this.

Thanks for any suggestions in advance and also if you have any personal experience please feel free to share. Thanks alot.

[emilee]

Hey kid....It sounds like you're recognizing the "mirror" that these other kids are providing you with. This is good. These irritating factors... can you accept the parts of yourself that irritate you? Can you play with healing the anger and hostility inside yourself? Can you realize that these two people are so much more than the qualities that seem to get your attention? Would getting to know them more as beings, as opposed to just personalities make a difference? Maybe the why isn't as important as the how. How can you get to a place of acceptance? A strong wind is resistance, yet we walk into it sometimes to get to where we want to go. peace, emilee

[Ernie]

That which you defend and that which you attack or dislike in others is usually what we empower in ourselves. It's hard to see, but once you get it, it makes more sense why the Christ consciousness said to turn the other check, don't resist evil, and all those things that make so little sense to the egoic mind! :-)