"The last twenty years or so, spiritual/new age authors have sent this message
to readers: "You have something broken about you and I can fix it."

Now a newer, truer message must be heard: "You are here to deliver a beautiful gift to
the world - and it's a gift that benefits everyone. Remember it, and get on with it."

RESISTANCE MAY BE an unfortunate word to use describing a spiritual principle, as its ordinary meaning brings up harsh judgment and psychologically charged emotions. Its spiritual definition asks you to put those pre-conceived notions aside and consider a non-ordinary characterization of the energy.

The spiritual principle we call Resistance is that force that allows life to experience itself by rubbing up against itself. In physics, it's called an interference pattern - an impediment that redirects the flow of energy. In electronics, it's called a transformer.

A person with Resistance in his or her garment functions as an interference pattern. Such a person will often feel as if she is inserted into a situation just for the purpose of transforming or transmuting the energy, redirecting its flow.

From The Invisible Garment:

You have an innate knowing of what needs to be done. You can transform the energy of thought, for example, into the most efficient and beneficial possible form. You have a natural knack for creating exactly what you need. In addition, you are a people person because you know how to put the energy of a group on the right track to make things flow well between people. It is a good metaphor for you to look at yourself as the transition point of a circuit of electricity.

I spoke with a friend recently who has Resistance in her garment. She made a remarkably memorable understatement, "I find that a little Resistance goes a long way." I had a good laugh in my agreement with her.

Resistance does not always create comfortable situations, either for the person who "wears" it, or for the people or groups who come into contact with it. Most humans don't change gracefully or rapidly. Although many of us like to think that we're spontaneous and flexible, in fact when radical change confronts us we often go to great lengths to avoid embracing it. People who have Resistance in their garments are the agents of change, and therefore often feel saddened by the responses they receive. In fact, they sometimes suffer from being misunderstood, or from being feared.

Let's consider some examples throughout history:

People who remember the difficult decades of the 1950's and 1960's in the United States know the story of Rosa Parks, the African American seamstress who refused to relinquish her seat to a white man on that Montgomery, Alabama bus in December of 1955. That small decision by Rosa Parks triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which catapulted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. into the leadership of the civil rights movement, a movement often called The Resistance. That small decision by Ms. Parks is perfect example of my friend's understatement, "A little Resistance goes a long way." Rosa Parks has Resistance in her garment.

In that same time period, Betty Friedan, after escaping from an extremely abusive marriage, birthed the Woman's Rights movement. Her bestselling Feminine Mystique still stands as a manifesto for women around the world who continually examine the subjugated roles in society and in the workplace to which women are still too-often designated. Friedan's organization NOW (National Organization of Women) functions as one of the most vocal political voices in the United States. After her death Germaine Greer published an article about Betty in which she stated: "Betty Friedan changed the course of human history almost single-handedly." Betty Friedan had Resistance in her garment.

Betty Ford's name has become synonymous with substance abuse recovery. She had been possibly the most candid and openly feminist First Lady in USA's history. In interviews she supported the Equal Rights Amendment, spoke non-judgmentally about pre-marital sex, marijuana use, and intimacy within marriage. After a bout with cancer, she developed an addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs, which eventually led to an intervention by family and friends. She agreed to treatment, and after her own successful recovery, founded the now-famous Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, CA. ("The Betty" as it is called by celebrities.) Her contributions to the world's view of and approach to chemical dependency have been arguably as important to American society as her husband's contribution to national politics. Betty Ford had Resistance in her garment.

Robert Holbrook Smith grew up in the early 20th Century in a rural church-centered community. He first discovered the "pleasure" of alcohol in his college fraternity house. Like most serious alcoholics, he was able to fake his way through school (all the way through medical school, in fact) and through many years of adult life without having to face his problem. He hid liquor under floorboards and in closets during Prohibition, he found clever ways to over-indulge without being caught when traveling on business trips, and he continued to drink, even while practicing medicine, until his health completely gave way. One night at a dinner party, a stranger spoke to him about addiction, explaining that, while it manifested as a chemical imbalance, it was caused by a spiritual aridity. Addicts long for connection to the Source, the stranger assured Mr. Smith. Bob went to bed drunk that night, as usual. When he woke up the next morning the stranger was there. He sat by patiently as Bob drank a breakfast beer to stave off another hangover. The stranger gave Bob some esoteric and spiritual books to read. Bob never took another drink. That morning he wrote the first words of his now-famous memoirs. He founded Alcoholics Anonymous shortly after this experience, and spent the rest of his life doing for others what the stranger at that dinner party had done for him. Bob Smith had Resistance in his garment.

Certainly not everyone with Resistance in his or her garment will start a world-wide movement like NOW, Alcoholic Anonymous, or The Civil Rights Movement. However, each of us who wears Resistance will be called on from time to time to make small decisions as courageous as Rosa Parks', or to take control of our lives like Betty Friedan, Betty Ford, and Bob Smith did. In so doing, each of us will transform a spiritual energy into an appropriate form.

In my own life, Resistance is the physical thread (Mars). My store is definitely a physical story. An illness brought me to a position of receptivity (two years in bed, mostly asleep - if you don't know that story, please go to my websites and read about it). It appears in retrospect that an amazing spiritual energy has flowed through me during that and subsequent periods of physical convalescence. My way of transforming that energy has been to write about it. All my books are the direct result of an in pouring of information from the spiritual realms. All my work in the world since that time has been to do for others what Spirit was kind enough to do for me - explain to the best of my ability what a miraculous gift Life is for every person, and what an important gift each person is to Life.

What is the key, then, to allowing Resistance to thrive through your life? Self knowledge. Resistance focuses itself in the human's ability to know the self, to be conscious of the self, to bear witness to the self. It is through an individual's self- confidence and self-consciousness that Resistance waves its powerful hand.

Every person I've researched who wears Resistance has a story of self-discovery in his or her life. Here are a few of the famous ones: Ram Dass, Paramahansa Yogananda, Kahlil Gibran, Carl Sandburg, Joan of Arc, Carl Jung, Frank Lloyd Right, Elizabeth Taylor, Albert Schweitzer, Edgar Cayce, Leonardo da Vinci, Al Gore, Goethe, and Winston Churchill.

While most of these examples are men, such amazing women as Betty Ford, Rosa Parks, and Betty Friedan point to a unique issue for we women who wear this principle. We have to know ourselves, yes, but we must also understand woman-ness itself. In order to achieve self-understanding in the 21st Century, a woman must embody the history of her gender. I'll close with this quotation from Maya Angelou's (yes, she wears Resistance, too) prose-poem In All Ways a Woman.

Being a woman is hard work. Not without joy and even ecstasy, but still, relentless, unending work ... to become and remain a woman command the existence and employment of genius.

[A woman] must resist considering herself a lesser version of her male counterpart. She is not a sculptress, a poetess, authoress, Jewess, Negress ... If she is the thing, then ... she must insist with rectitude in being the thing and in being called the thing.

Our gift to the world is to BE the thing we were born to be. If we are to be resistors, interference patterns, transformers, then let the BE-ing BE our gift, our passion, our purpose, our joy.

© Connie Kaplan, 2007

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