The Human Condition: Understanding Resistance and Its Role in Creativity

Resistance is a fundamental aspect of the human condition, a force that shapes our experiences, relationships, and creative endeavors. It is a constant companion, always present but never quite visible. As the writer notes, "the resistance being there and the struggle to overcome it" is what drives us to create, innovate, and push beyond our limits.

However, this resistance is not just an external force; it also resides within ourselves. The writer acknowledges that "it's not real at all, it's not even like it's an actual force, it's all here." This realization allows us to surrender to the resistance, acknowledging its presence without becoming overwhelmed by it. By embracing this surrender, we can turn our attention inward, exploring the depths of our own minds and creativity.

The writer also recognizes that resistance is a dynamic entity, constantly changing form and manifestation. As we evolve as individuals and artists, so too does our resistance adapt to new challenges. This means that even when we feel like we've overcome one hurdle, another appears, testing our resolve and forcing us to grow once more.

One of the most relentless sources of resistance for many creatives is their own self-doubt. For the writer, this source of resistance takes many forms, from external expectations to internal fears. However, by acknowledging these doubts and fears, we can begin to work through them, using our creative endeavors as a way to fortify ourselves against them.

The writer notes that even the most spiritual or high-minded pursuits require a fundamental understanding of human nature. This means recognizing that resistance is not just an external force but also an internal one, rooted in our own fears, doubts, and limitations. By acknowledging these inner struggles, we can develop the skills and strategies necessary to overcome them.

In terms of specific techniques for overcoming resistance, the writer emphasizes the importance of establishing a daily routine and cultivating a sense of discipline. For them, this means waking up early, going to the gym, and engaging in other physical activities that help build resilience and mental toughness. By fortifying ourselves physically and mentally, we can better face the creative challenges that lie ahead.

Perhaps most important, however, is the question of what comes next? What's the next idea, book, or project? For many creatives, this question represents a source of ongoing resistance, as they struggle to find new inspiration and meaning. However, by embracing this uncertainty, we can tap into our own inner muse, allowing ourselves to be guided by our unconscious mind rather than logical reasoning.

This process is not unlike the principles of quantum mechanics, where the act of observation itself can influence the behavior of particles in a given system. In this sense, the writer suggests that once we've observed or acknowledged a particular creative possibility, it becomes fixed in our minds, no longer subject to change. This allows us to trust in our own instincts and intuition, knowing that they will ultimately guide us toward the next great idea.

Ultimately, the human condition is marked by its inherent complexity and uncertainty. Resistance is an integral part of this puzzle, representing both a challenge and an opportunity for growth. By embracing resistance as a natural aspect of our creative journey, we can tap into its power, using it to fuel our passions and bring new ideas into being.

For those looking to navigate the challenges of creativity, the writer's words offer valuable insights into the nature of resistance and its role in shaping our artistic endeavors. By acknowledging the sources of their own resistance and cultivating strategies for overcoming them, artists can tap into a deeper wellspring of inspiration and innovation. Whether through physical discipline, mental toughness, or trusting one's inner muse, the key to creative success lies in embracing this fundamental aspect of the human experience.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enin your book the war of art you talk about resistance with the capital order as the invisible force in this universe of ours that finds a way to prevent you from starting or doing the work where do you think resistant comes from why is there force in our mind that's constantly trying to jeopardize our efforts with laziness excuses and so on that's another great question I mean in in Jewish mysticism in Kabbalistic thinking it's called a yetzer Hara right and it's it's a force that if this up here is your soul of neshama trying to talk to you us down here the ants are her eyes this negative force in the middle so I'm not the only one that ever thought about this but and I don't know if anybody really knows the answer but here's my answer I think that there are two places where we as human beings can seat our identity one is the ego a conscious ego and the other is the greater self and the self in the in the Union sense the self in the Union sense includes the unconscious and butts up against what Jung called the divine ground which what I would call the muse the goddess or whatever and I think and the ego is just this little dot inside this bigger self and the ego has a completely different view of of life as from the self the ego believes I'm going to give you a long answer here like no perfect the ego believes that death is real the ego believes that time and space are real the ego believes that each one of us is separate from the other I'm separate from you I could punch you in the face and it wouldn't hurt me it would only hurt you and in the egos world the dominant emotion is fear because we were all made of flesh we can all die we can all be hurt we can all be ruined bumpity-bump so we were protecting ourselves and even our desire to create as we were talking about before comes out of that fear of death myself on the other hand the greater self that butts up against the divine ground believes that death is not real that time and space are not real that the gods travel swiftest thought and the ego also believes that I mean the self believes that there's no difference between you and me that were all one if I hurt you I hurt myself karma right and in the world of the self of the greater self the dominant emotion is love not fear now so I think that let me I'll go farther back here try a long way to answer your question when Jesus died on the cross or when the 300 Spartans willingly sacrificed their lives at Thermopylae they were acting according to the rules of the self death is not real no difference between you and me time and space are not real predominant emotion is love so in my opinion we as conscious human vessels have are in a struggle between these two things the ego and the self to me resistance is the voice of the ego saying and it's a fearful voice because if when we identify with the self we move our consciousness over to the self as as artists or scientists opening ourselves up to the cosmic dimension to the to the other forces the ego is tremendously threatened by that because if we're if we're in that space that headspace we don't need the ego anymore so I think resistance is the voice of the ego trying to keep control of us you there in a way I'll give you a bad example Trump is the ego that's probably a very good example right you know it's a zero-sum world for him yes and for anybody that's in that and the opposite of that would be somebody like Martin Luther King or Gandhi and that's of course why they all wind up getting assassinated because that voice that ego is hanging on to itself and feels so threatened yeah by I could talk more about this if you wanna know for sure that that's that's fascinating is just it's interesting why the fear is attached the ego I really like this dichotomy of ego and the self and that struggle it's just ego has a you know the the self obsession of it why why fear such a predominant thing like why his resistance trying to undermine everything the it's very year it's out of fear let's think about the whole thing in terms of stories in a story the villain is always resistance is always the ego the hero is is always of course always not everything but you know what I mean pretty much it represents kind of the self if you think about the alien on the spaceship that's like the ultimate kind of villain it keeps changing form right first it goes on the guy's face then it pops out of his chest but it always just has that one monomaniacal thing to destroy you know and just like the ego just like resistance and maybe alien is a bad example because Sigourney Weaver has to sort of fight on the same terms as as the alien but maybe a better example might be something like Casablanca where in the end the pumphrey Bogart character has to acting operating out of the self has to give up his his selfish dream of going off with Ingrid Bergman Nilsa lund the love of his life and instead you know puts around the plane to Lisbon while he goes off to fight the Nazis and you know in the desert I don't know if that's clear but it but in almost every story the villain is the ego is resistance is fear is that zero-sum thing and in almost every story the hero is someone that is willing to make a sacrifice to help others it's letting go of that fear is what leads the productivity into success yeah do you think there's a a that's probably the answer is either obvious or impossible but do you think there's an evolutionary advantage to resistance like what would life look like without resistance that sort of yet another great question I think I also believe that resistance like death gives a meaning to life right if we didn't have it it's gonna be you know what would we be we'd be in the Garden of Eden picking fruit and just happy and stupid you know and I do think that that myth of the Garden of Eden is really about this kind of thing you know where where Adam and Eve decide to sort of take matters into their own hands and and acquire knowledge that until then God had said I'm the only one that's got that knowledge and of course once they acquired that knowledge they're cast out into the world you and I live in now where they do have to deal with that fear and they do have to deal with all that stuff the human condition and the human condition and the meaning and the purpose comes from the resistance being there and the struggle to overcome it the overcome it right that's and also the other aspect of it is that it's not real at all it's not even like it's an actual force it's all here right so the the sort of in a way is sort of a surrender to it you know you know like turning on the light in a dark thing it's like it's gone but not quite because it's not quite because it comes back again tomorrow morning exactly so you have to keep changing light bulbs every day so what's been uh maybe recently but in general maybe you know life what's been the most relentless or one of the more relentless sources of resistance to you personally I mean it's always the same it's about writing for me and an evolving within my own body of work you know it never goes away it never gets any less you have particular excuses particular justifications that come out no it's always the same well I would say it's always it's saying but it's really not because resistance is so protein you know it keeps changing form and as you as you move to hopefully a higher level resistance gets a little more nuanced a little more subtle trying to fake you out but I think you learn that it's always there and you're always gonna have to face it so I mean you're but your battle is sitting down and writing to some number Awards to a blank page yeah give a process there with his battle you have a number of hours you put in honestly yeah I'm definitely a a believer that even though this battle is fought on the highest sort of spiritual level that the way you fight it is on the most mundane I'm sure it's like martial arts must be the same way I mean I go to the gym first thing in the morning and I sort of am rehearsing myself faced you know the gym is called resistance training right you're working against resistance right yeah and I don't want to go I don't want to get out of bed I hate that you know so but I'm sort of fortifying myself to to be ready for the day and you know like I said over knock wood over years I've learned to sort of get into the right kind of mindset and it's not as hard for me as it used to be the real resistance I think for me and I think this is true for anybody is the question of sort of what's the next idea what's the next book what's the next project that you're going to work on and when I when I ask that question I'm sorry I'm asking it of the muse I'm kind of saying what do you want me or I'm asking up my unconscious if we're looking at Bruce Springsteen's albums it's kind of well what's the next album you know now he's on Broadway that was a great idea right um where'd that come from you know but and then for him what's what's after that you know because that that body of work is already alive it already exists inside us canonical woman's biological clock and we have to serve it and we have to otherwise it'll give us cancer you know I don't mean to say that if anybody has cancer that they're not yeah but you know what I mean it'll it'll do it'll take its revenge on us so the next resistance to me is sort of a big aspect of it is what's next you know when I finish the book I'm working on now I'm not sure what I'm gonna do next and I see at the same time you have a kind of you have a sense that there is a Bruce Springsteen single line of albums so like it's it's already known somewhere in the universe what you're going to do next is the sense you have in it in a sense yes I don't know if it's like predetermined you know but it's but there's something like that yeah I'd like to believe that there's uh was this kind of like quantum mechanics I guess once once you observe it maybe once you talk to the muse it's it's it's one thing for sure it was always going to be that one thing but really in reality it's a distribution it could be any number of things yeah I think so there's an alternate reality alternate realities yeah they're not that far apart I mean Bruce Springsteen is not going to write you know a Joni Mitchell song you know no matter how hard he tried when I'm brought I mean he still did that which is not a Bruce Springsteen thing to do so I think I think your being in retrospect I think it is nice teen things you know it's a next sort of evolution form why not take his music to there you know in retrospect it all makes sense I think yeah because he if you pull it off especially youin your book the war of art you talk about resistance with the capital order as the invisible force in this universe of ours that finds a way to prevent you from starting or doing the work where do you think resistant comes from why is there force in our mind that's constantly trying to jeopardize our efforts with laziness excuses and so on that's another great question I mean in in Jewish mysticism in Kabbalistic thinking it's called a yetzer Hara right and it's it's a force that if this up here is your soul of neshama trying to talk to you us down here the ants are her eyes this negative force in the middle so I'm not the only one that ever thought about this but and I don't know if anybody really knows the answer but here's my answer I think that there are two places where we as human beings can seat our identity one is the ego a conscious ego and the other is the greater self and the self in the in the Union sense the self in the Union sense includes the unconscious and butts up against what Jung called the divine ground which what I would call the muse the goddess or whatever and I think and the ego is just this little dot inside this bigger self and the ego has a completely different view of of life as from the self the ego believes I'm going to give you a long answer here like no perfect the ego believes that death is real the ego believes that time and space are real the ego believes that each one of us is separate from the other I'm separate from you I could punch you in the face and it wouldn't hurt me it would only hurt you and in the egos world the dominant emotion is fear because we were all made of flesh we can all die we can all be hurt we can all be ruined bumpity-bump so we were protecting ourselves and even our desire to create as we were talking about before comes out of that fear of death myself on the other hand the greater self that butts up against the divine ground believes that death is not real that time and space are not real that the gods travel swiftest thought and the ego also believes that I mean the self believes that there's no difference between you and me that were all one if I hurt you I hurt myself karma right and in the world of the self of the greater self the dominant emotion is love not fear now so I think that let me I'll go farther back here try a long way to answer your question when Jesus died on the cross or when the 300 Spartans willingly sacrificed their lives at Thermopylae they were acting according to the rules of the self death is not real no difference between you and me time and space are not real predominant emotion is love so in my opinion we as conscious human vessels have are in a struggle between these two things the ego and the self to me resistance is the voice of the ego saying and it's a fearful voice because if when we identify with the self we move our consciousness over to the self as as artists or scientists opening ourselves up to the cosmic dimension to the to the other forces the ego is tremendously threatened by that because if we're if we're in that space that headspace we don't need the ego anymore so I think resistance is the voice of the ego trying to keep control of us you there in a way I'll give you a bad example Trump is the ego that's probably a very good example right you know it's a zero-sum world for him yes and for anybody that's in that and the opposite of that would be somebody like Martin Luther King or Gandhi and that's of course why they all wind up getting assassinated because that voice that ego is hanging on to itself and feels so threatened yeah by I could talk more about this if you wanna know for sure that that's that's fascinating is just it's interesting why the fear is attached the ego I really like this dichotomy of ego and the self and that struggle it's just ego has a you know the the self obsession of it why why fear such a predominant thing like why his resistance trying to undermine everything the it's very year it's out of fear let's think about the whole thing in terms of stories in a story the villain is always resistance is always the ego the hero is is always of course always not everything but you know what I mean pretty much it represents kind of the self if you think about the alien on the spaceship that's like the ultimate kind of villain it keeps changing form right first it goes on the guy's face then it pops out of his chest but it always just has that one monomaniacal thing to destroy you know and just like the ego just like resistance and maybe alien is a bad example because Sigourney Weaver has to sort of fight on the same terms as as the alien but maybe a better example might be something like Casablanca where in the end the pumphrey Bogart character has to acting operating out of the self has to give up his his selfish dream of going off with Ingrid Bergman Nilsa lund the love of his life and instead you know puts around the plane to Lisbon while he goes off to fight the Nazis and you know in the desert I don't know if that's clear but it but in almost every story the villain is the ego is resistance is fear is that zero-sum thing and in almost every story the hero is someone that is willing to make a sacrifice to help others it's letting go of that fear is what leads the productivity into success yeah do you think there's a a that's probably the answer is either obvious or impossible but do you think there's an evolutionary advantage to resistance like what would life look like without resistance that sort of yet another great question I think I also believe that resistance like death gives a meaning to life right if we didn't have it it's gonna be you know what would we be we'd be in the Garden of Eden picking fruit and just happy and stupid you know and I do think that that myth of the Garden of Eden is really about this kind of thing you know where where Adam and Eve decide to sort of take matters into their own hands and and acquire knowledge that until then God had said I'm the only one that's got that knowledge and of course once they acquired that knowledge they're cast out into the world you and I live in now where they do have to deal with that fear and they do have to deal with all that stuff the human condition and the human condition and the meaning and the purpose comes from the resistance being there and the struggle to overcome it the overcome it right that's and also the other aspect of it is that it's not real at all it's not even like it's an actual force it's all here right so the the sort of in a way is sort of a surrender to it you know you know like turning on the light in a dark thing it's like it's gone but not quite because it's not quite because it comes back again tomorrow morning exactly so you have to keep changing light bulbs every day so what's been uh maybe recently but in general maybe you know life what's been the most relentless or one of the more relentless sources of resistance to you personally I mean it's always the same it's about writing for me and an evolving within my own body of work you know it never goes away it never gets any less you have particular excuses particular justifications that come out no it's always the same well I would say it's always it's saying but it's really not because resistance is so protein you know it keeps changing form and as you as you move to hopefully a higher level resistance gets a little more nuanced a little more subtle trying to fake you out but I think you learn that it's always there and you're always gonna have to face it so I mean you're but your battle is sitting down and writing to some number Awards to a blank page yeah give a process there with his battle you have a number of hours you put in honestly yeah I'm definitely a a believer that even though this battle is fought on the highest sort of spiritual level that the way you fight it is on the most mundane I'm sure it's like martial arts must be the same way I mean I go to the gym first thing in the morning and I sort of am rehearsing myself faced you know the gym is called resistance training right you're working against resistance right yeah and I don't want to go I don't want to get out of bed I hate that you know so but I'm sort of fortifying myself to to be ready for the day and you know like I said over knock wood over years I've learned to sort of get into the right kind of mindset and it's not as hard for me as it used to be the real resistance I think for me and I think this is true for anybody is the question of sort of what's the next idea what's the next book what's the next project that you're going to work on and when I when I ask that question I'm sorry I'm asking it of the muse I'm kind of saying what do you want me or I'm asking up my unconscious if we're looking at Bruce Springsteen's albums it's kind of well what's the next album you know now he's on Broadway that was a great idea right um where'd that come from you know but and then for him what's what's after that you know because that that body of work is already alive it already exists inside us canonical woman's biological clock and we have to serve it and we have to otherwise it'll give us cancer you know I don't mean to say that if anybody has cancer that they're not yeah but you know what I mean it'll it'll do it'll take its revenge on us so the next resistance to me is sort of a big aspect of it is what's next you know when I finish the book I'm working on now I'm not sure what I'm gonna do next and I see at the same time you have a kind of you have a sense that there is a Bruce Springsteen single line of albums so like it's it's already known somewhere in the universe what you're going to do next is the sense you have in it in a sense yes I don't know if it's like predetermined you know but it's but there's something like that yeah I'd like to believe that there's uh was this kind of like quantum mechanics I guess once once you observe it maybe once you talk to the muse it's it's it's one thing for sure it was always going to be that one thing but really in reality it's a distribution it could be any number of things yeah I think so there's an alternate reality alternate realities yeah they're not that far apart I mean Bruce Springsteen is not going to write you know a Joni Mitchell song you know no matter how hard he tried when I'm brought I mean he still did that which is not a Bruce Springsteen thing to do so I think I think your being in retrospect I think it is nice teen things you know it's a next sort of evolution form why not take his music to there you know in retrospect it all makes sense I think yeah because he if you pull it off especially you\n"