Title: Resistance to Loving Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D. E-mail: margaret@innerbonding.com Copyright: © 2003 by Margaret Paul Web Address: http://www.innerbonding.com Word Count: 1375 Category: Emotional Healing, Spiritual Growth

RESISTANCE TO LOVING

I have counseled individuals, couples, families and business partners for last 35 years, and I am author/co-author of eight published books on relationships and emotional healing. In course of my work, I’ve seen thousands of people get stuck in misery, even when they knew how to move into their peace and joy. How often do you get stuck in anger, anxiety, withdrawal or depression of your wounded self? You know you can open, pray, invite love into your heart and do your inner work, yet how often do you find yourself resisting doing so? You might hear yourself say things like, "It won't work," or "I can't" or "God isn't there for me so why bother?"

The problem is that our wounded self often gets stuck in Resistance Syndrome. We don’t want to open, we don’t want to love, we don’t want to be controlled by what we "should" do, nor controlled by God. Perversely, even though we may feel miserable, we refuse to open to learning and loving ourselves and others.

When we finally do open, we feel happy and peaceful, wondering why it took us so long. In fact, once we open, we may find ourselves thinking, "I’m never going back to that misery. This feels so great, so full. This is what life is about!"

Yet next time we are triggered into our hurt, anger or fear, we go right back to being stuck in our darkness. Why? Why do we persist in resisting very thing that would bring us joy?

Understanding your intent is key to understanding your resistance to loving. When you resist opening to Spirit, resist doing your inner work, it’s because your highest priority in that moment is to control and resist being controlled. Controlling and not being controlled becomes your god, your purpose. When control is your highest priority, you will not open to loving. You may believe that if you open you will be too vulnerable to being hurt, rejected, dominated. It is more important in that moment to avoid pain of what you fear than it is to be loving to yourself and others, even though you are causing yourself worse pain by disconnecting from Spirit. So you punish whoever you think caused your pain - which may be yourself, God, a loved one - by staying in darkness.

All of this is because your wounded self thinks it can find its way by itself. It thinks if it stays safe by shutting down, not caring, numbing out with substances or processes, it will be okay. It wants control, especially control over not being controlled, more than anything, and it can’t maintain illusion of control and open to being guided by Spirit at same time.

This is human dilemma with which we all struggle: who is in charge of our lives - our wounded self or our spiritual Guidance? Many of us turn to Guidance when things are going well, but immediately revert to controlling ways of our wounded self as soon as our safety and security are threatened. What do you do when someone is angry at you, blames you, doesn’t do what you want? What do you do when things don’t go your way? Do you do your inner work and turn to your Guidance for what is loving to yourself and others, or do you turn to your addictions to anger, withdrawal, substances and processes? How long do you stay stuck in your wounded self? Following are some examples of people choosing to stay stuck in Resistance Syndrome.

Title: Beauty, Gratitude and Open Heart Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D. E-mail: mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com Copyright: © 2003 by Margaret Paul Web Address: http://www.innerbonding.com Word Count: 721 Category: Spiritual Growth

Beauty, Gratitude and Open Heart Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

"…beauty on your earth is a shadow of beauty of our heaven, and it’s a bitter thing to have a blindness for beauty on earth, for it makes a longer teaching to see beauties of heaven." Spoken by an Irish spirit in book The Boy who Saw True (anonymous author).

I have been counseling individuals, couples, families and business partners for last 35 years, and am author of eight published books. Since my work is spiritually based, I have developed many ways of helping people open their hearts to love. Opening to beauty is one of those way.

I have always appreciated beauty. Since I’ve been a small child, I’ve collect beautiful things - shells, rocks, wood, as well as works of art, and there are always lots of plants around. There is nowhere in my environment where there is not something beautiful to look at, both inside and outside in nature. When I walk through my home and land around it, my heart fills with awe and love as I appreciate beauty around me. I’ve done this so automatically throughout my life that it never occurred to me that many people do not open to beauty nor create beauty around them.

In working with some of my clients struggling to keep their heart open, I’ve mentioned focusing on an object of beauty, and have been surprised to find that many of them have no beauty around them - no plants, flowers, works of art or objects of nature. When they look around they see walls, appliances, computers and other buildings. Their left brain functions just fine in this environment, but what about right - creative, intuitive, spiritually-connected aspect?