Resistance is a Gift

“I am committed to seeing everything in my life as fodder for my own evolution. So when I’m met with resistance, what’s the gift?” – Lola Wright

When you over-identify with your net worth, your job title, your house—everything in your life gets very serious. We get so tied up in what we think we should be doing that we perpetuate our own suffering. It takes stepping back to determine where our attention really should be.

It’s easy to live in a reactive state, chasing what we’re told to chase and constantly worrying about the past and future. But there’s a different way: the choice to keep our attention in the present moment. Through that active practice, we can recognize the gifts that obstacles bring us.

This week on Find Your Fierce & Loving, I’m bringing you another talk from my series on Eckhart Tolle’s Stillness Speaks. This chapter, The Now, leads us through examining our attention and refocusing it in order to be more conscious in our own lives.

• (01:57) – The Now
• (13:03) – Choosing to be conscious
• (19:28) – What’s stirring in you?

Do you want to unleash your inherent love and goodness, liberate yourself, and free humanity from the oppressive systems and structures we have created? We are here to support you in finding your fierce and loving life. Join us in Our Circle, a vibrant membership community rich in opportunities for engagement and transformation. Find out more at lolawright.com/our-circle.

You can follow Lola Wright, on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter and learn more about my work at lolawright.com.

Chicago born and built, Lola grew up in wealth and privilege, yet always sensed something was missing. She sought out aliveness and freedom in music, immersing herself in the hip hop and house music scenes of 90s Chicago. After finding herself on her own at 23, as the mother of two young children, she became determined to create a new experience.

Lola is an ordained minister with a gift for weaving together the mystical and material, she served for many years as the CEO of Bodhi Center, an organization committed to personal transformation, collective awakening, conscious activism, and community-building. 

This podcast is produced by Quinn Rose with theme music by independent producer Trey Royal.

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Lola Wright (00:01): Something is stirring. Maybe you’ve felt it. We are reckoning with the reality of injustice and binary thinking that feeds the political machine. Humanity is in the midst of a heartbreaking and painful paradigm shift. That is a good thing. My name is Lola Wright, and this is Find Your Fierce & Loving. This podcast is intended to help you disrupt, untangle and free your mind of personal and collective agreements, patterns and beliefs that are holding you back and weighing you down. We desperately need your fierce and loving purpose now more than ever. Today’s episode is a talk I gave near the end of my time at Bodhi Center, an incredible community in Chicago that really existed for personal transformation, collective awakening, conscious activism, and community building.

Lola Wright (01:13): The talk that you’re going to hear today is inspired by Eckhart Tolle’s book, Stillness Speaks, an absolute favorite of mine, a timeless invitation into your own awakening. This particular talk is an opportunity to explore our attachment to the way things were or the way we want them to be. The opportunity is to really notice how this now moment is rightly and perfectly designed and how we really can surrender to the gift of this moment in any given moment. Enjoy. I want to start with a Toni Morrison quote that we cited a couple of weeks ago, and I just feel like it really captures the essence of this eight-week journey. It’s from the Song of Solomon. She writes, “Want to fly? You got to give up the shit that weighs you down”. That’s the wisdom of Toni Morrison.

Lola Wright (02:22): And, I think the way that that applies to this particular body of work is that the shit that weighs us down is mental congestion. It is an over-identification with the mind, the thinking mind. And if you remember, we started this journey by exploring stillness and silence. That was week one, stillness and silence. The quality that you can access within one’s own being through stillness and silence is like none other. We then went on to talk about the moving beyond the thinking mind, this idea of an over-attachment to our thoughts. And, he goes on to say, “Here’s a great spiritual practice for you: don’t take your thoughts too seriously”. And that’s really, that is where so much suffering comes in when we really do believe our thoughts. It’s like a seduction of our thoughts.

Lola Wright (03:22): I bet all of us could just take a breath and reflect on a thought pattern that showed up today that seduced us, perhaps even within the last five minutes. You and I are not our thoughts. We have thoughts. When we think we are our thoughts and we take them seriously, we over-identify with them, and then we walk on the planet inside of these constructs. So, he says, “Let us move beyond the thinking mind”. And, I think the practice for doing that is stillness and silence. He then goes on to talk about the egoic mind, your false sense of self. So, the question is, and this is a little bit of a precursor to next week, in the next week’s chapter is who you really are. So, there are all these ideas of who we think we are, and they’re located in this dimension of reality.

Lola Wright (04:19): I am a woman. I am thick. Some we prefer. Some we don’t prefer, right? So, there are all these ways that we label ourselves. And, I think one of the things we actually uniquely talk about here is it’s not to dismiss your identity. That’s actually, I think, the great misnomer that oftentimes occurs in these teachings. It’s sort of a dismissal of your identity like, “You are not this body”. And it’s like, “Well, no, you actually are this body. You’re just not only this body”. And so, if you know… What is the I am presence? He talks about this in the first couple chapters. The I am presence is your spiritual nature. There is something that breathes you. As we said last week, I don’t sit here and go, “Breathe dammit, breathe”. Something breathes me. What is that?

Lola Wright (05:14): There’s some way that you and I are deeply and profoundly connected. We were talking about this earlier today. It’s like something happens, and then all of a sudden you see patterns of that. You will all of a sudden say, “I want that car”. And all of a sudden, you see that car everywhere. What is that? That is this interconnected web of what may be called the universal mind or the universal field of awareness. When we have an over-identification with this dimension of reality, we lose sight of that. So, when I’m over-identified with my net worth, when I’m over-identified with my job title, when I’m over-identified with the roles and responsibilities that I have in my job, in my family system, it gets very serious.

Lola Wright (06:04): The topic this week is The Now moment, which probably his most famous book is The Power of Now. The Now Moment is essentially the exploration of there is only now, and yet we spend so much time and energy replaying the past or freaking ourselves out about the future. If we actually were… In this now moment, we could all take a breath. No matter what baggage we walked in the door with, in this now moment, all is well. In this now moment, all is well. Oftentimes, I was sharing this week with someone, I spent a lot of years with a profound experience of struggle, financial struggle, profound experience with financial struggle, experienced many years in this single mom struggling paradigm. I have that in air quotes, yeah? And, it really was who I knew myself to be.

Lola Wright (07:12): And, I have very distinct memories of feeling like, “I don’t know what we’re going to do for dinner tonight”. Now it’s like, “Oh, my God, if we have turkey tacos one more night.” But back then, it was like, “Okay, we got two cans of black beans, and we have a minced garlic jar”. If you make yourself crazy, you can look at that and go, “We do not have enough”. But for me, the best spiritual practice I cultivated at that point in time was the ability to look at those two cans of black beans and that minced garlic jar and go, “We have enough. In this now moment, there is enough”. That is an active practice. So, I would just invite you to check right now and see what may be an area of my life that I am experiencing angst. I am experiencing struggle or suffering.

Lola Wright (08:14): It doesn’t have to be like, “I don’t have more than two cans of black beans”. It doesn’t have to be that serious. It could be, “I have a child that I just chronically worry about. I have a parent that I’m deeply concerned about. I have a nagging health experience that I won’t go to the doctor about, but I think about it obsessively”. Really check and see what is an area of my life that I am perpetuating an experience of suffering around. So, he says in this chapter, he says, “The division of life into past, present, and future is mind made and ultimately illusory. Past and future are thought-forms, mental abstractions”. So, we will obsess over our past and our future, always robbing us of this now moment. It’s just what the mind does, but when we are not able to watch the mind, we create lots of suffering.

Lola Wright (09:23): So, again, take a deep breath. I invite you to close your eyes for a moment and check and see what experience in the past or in the future constantly hooks my attention and becomes some kind of hamster wheel of thought. Oftentimes, showing up as worry, anxiety, fear, doubt. If you’re willing, just take a deep breath, and bring yourself into this now moment where all of your needs are met. You’re fully supported. And, when you’re ready, go ahead and open your eyes. To have your attention in The Now is not a denial of what is needed in your life. It is recognizing what is primary. Then, you can deal with what is secondary with great ease. It is not saying, “I’m not dealing with things anymore because there’s only The Now”. I have seen many people do that. It does not work out so well for them. I don’t recommend that approach.

Lola Wright (10:30): It is not saying, “I am not dealing with things anymore because there’s only The Now”. No. Find what is primary first and make The Now into your friend, not your enemy. Acknowledge it. Honor it. When The Now is the foundation and primary focus of your life, then your life unfolds with ease. We could each walk on the planet in a perpetual affirmation of like, “In this now moment, all is well. In this now moment, all is well. In this now moment, all is well”. Because what happens neurologically, you are able to shift out of a triggered and reactive state. Your biochemistry gets amped up when you’re not present to The Now, and you’re out in the future or back in the past, and literally your blood pressure starts to go up, and you can feel yourself. You may sweat. You might bite your nails. You might eat. Whatever your thing is, your biochemistry is getting activated.

Lola Wright (11:29): You have the capacity because you are not a machine. You are this extraordinary infinite being that can tap into the universal field of awareness. What a profound idea, that you are the individualized manifestation of that which could be called God, life, spirit, the universe. There is not you and some externalized being. There’s you. It’s you. Imagine you created this entire movie that we’re sitting in. Every being in this room gathered in service of you. That’s pretty powerful. Every being that comes into your experience of life is some kind of holy teacher. Even if they are a giant pain in the ass. Those are the best teachers because really what they do is they expose all of the ways I’m not trusting in some higher order of existence.

Lola Wright (12:38): He goes on to say, “Do you treat this moment as if it were an obstacle to be overcome? Do you feel you have a future moment to get to that is most important? Almost everyone lives like this most of the time. Somewhere to go, somewhere to be, something more to be done, and yet the practice is right now is enough. Right now is enough”. I wanted to bring us back into really what we opened this series with, “The transformation of human consciousness is no longer a luxury, so to speak, available only to a few isolated individuals, but in necessity, if humankind is not to destroy itself. At the present time, the dysfunction of the old and the arising of the new are both accelerating. The dysfunction of old consciousness and the arising of new consciousness are both accelerating. Paradoxically, things are getting worse and better at the same time, although the worse is more apparent because it makes so much noise”. 

Lola Wright (13:45): My favorite entertainment is the surprise upon which we find ourselves in this current American climate. Like what? That’s a very big delusion. There is a part of us that has chosen, opted to be deeply unconscious about what is occurring and what has occurred for a very long period of time. And so, it bubbling up to the surface, as I said to Tim today, it’s not new. It’s just new awareness for some. If that is true, then all of the stuff that’s bubbling up in our own experience is in service of something. You and I are in this dimension of reality to have a greater awareness of self. And by the way, that is not the popular choice to make. There is a way that numbing out feels much easier. So, you’re opting into a conversation that’s disrupting status quo consciousness. Status quo consciousness says this is the most real thing. That bank account is the most real thing. What your partner did to you, that is the most real thing.

Lola Wright (15:19): But, imagine you pressed into this dimension of reality, you called forward this cast of characters that was divinely orchestrated for your evolution. I oftentimes talk about my dad. If you look at face value, arguably a very challenging relationship. You know, sort of a perfect, perfect first 12 years of life. I mean, really, if you could have architected a more perfect father, you couldn’t. He was magical. And then, life happened and it shifted. And, who my dad is for me now is my great practice partner in compassion and patience because I feel provoked by him on a regular basis. And, I can feel really victimized by that. And, guess how much that changes. Nada. Zippo. Nothing.

Lola Wright (16:32): And so, then I can get deeply curious and go, “Okay, how is this guy here for me? What is being asked to look at to learn? How is this now moment perfect?” On Saturday, my dad was over, and he gave my children a lecture on, “If you ever get to the level of fame of Barbara Streisand, don’t use your fame as a political platform”. And, I had sort of an explosive reaction to that, as you might imagine. I essentially said, “We are living in a fucking fascist regime. Use that platform and don’t tell my kids not to”. Now, arguably it was a bit extreme response at which point I get to breathe and go, “Wow, what was that? Wow, Lola, what was that?”

Lola Wright (17:35): Now, what’s true is I’ve sat with that. I realized I actually want to have a conversation with my dad about that topic. And, I actually want to deconstruct what I heard him say, and then my reaction to it because I am committed to seeing everything in my life as fodder for my own evolution. So, when I met with resistance, what’s the gift? If this now moment is perfect, if that interaction with that destructive force in your life was somehow organized for your soul’s evolution, how was it perfect? You and I will get loads of feedback if that’s not true. No, someone really did do something to you. They really did. Again, it’s not to suggest that we have not each had very heartbreaking, painful experiences. Now what? Now what?

Lola Wright (18:44): You want to be more alive. You want to unleash your inherent love and goodness, liberate yourself, and free humanity from the oppressive systems and structures we have created. We are here to support you in finding your fierce and loving life. Join us in Our Circle. This is an affirming and radical space that will gather weekly, on-demand or live, whatever works best for your life. For more information on how you can engage in Our Circle, visit lolawright.com/our-circle. I’d love to have you with us. What’s stirring in you? What are you noticing when you hear this, when you chew on this, what’s coming up?

Speaker 2 (19:37): You reminded me when you talked about your conversation with your father, struggles I have when someone says something I disagree with.

Lola Wright (19:45): Yes.

Speaker 2 (19:46): And, I find my reaction is fight or flight, that I’m threatened somehow, and I have to discern why am I threatened. What’s going to harm me if someone disagrees with me? And, trying to get into a non-dual thinking and accepting both sides is what I struggle with all the time. If I meet a friend or I have a friend that really annoys me a lot, I’m thinking, “What is it about that person that I don’t like about me?”

Lola Wright (20:23): I appreciate you talking about this dualistic consciousness and just to provide a little context around what that means. Dualistic consciousness is either or thinking, good, bad, right, wrong. There’s sort of a zero-sum game, and so there has to be some opposition. I know who I am through opposition. The alternative to a dualistic framework… You know, heaven and hell, that’s a dualistic framework. You’re either going to heaven, or you’re going to hell. It’s a wonderful way by which to control humanity. Really, it’s brilliant, quite frankly. If you can scare people into dualistic consciousness, you can have power and control. So, the alternative to that is unitive consciousness. The premise of oneness, that there’s only one thing happening here. It is the presence of this life that is uniquely expressing in, through, and as each of us. And, the gift of the human experience is in relationship. We get to bump up against each other and see that very thing, the projections, the hurt, ouch, all of that.

Lola Wright (21:49): Michael Beckwith said… We had Michael Beckwith here February 15th of 2007, and he said one of the most profound things that has stayed with me since, “Have dominion over your awareness, and you will have dominion over your destiny”. And so, this journey of self-awareness is the practice of knowing myself as a creative capacity, a creative channel, something that doesn’t see life as oppositional.

Ameerah (22:17): I was having a conversation with my youngest son’s father. And, he and I have been in this long-term ambiguous, very intense relationship for 16 years. He said, “Years ago, I asked you this question, ‘What is the shit that you bring to relationship that adversely affects the other person?’ And, every time I’ve asked you that question, your response is, ‘Well, you would be better able to answer that question than I am’. Because for me it’s like, if what you were experiencing or perceiving is my shit, that sounds like a personal problem. My work is to be aware of whatever you are doing is affecting me. And, that’s what I need to work on, not what I’m doing, how that’s affecting you, because I can’t do anything about that. I can only work on how I’m being triggered by you. And, the fact that I’m being triggered by you and the fact that you’re being triggered by me means there is something there. There’s something there to look at. I am being triggered by you. Okay, what is that? Why am I being triggered by that?” Does that make sense?

Lola Wright (23:39): I mean, I think it’s great. And, I would say, how could both be of service? I actually am deeply interested in how I occur because I see it as a feedback loop. So, it’s like, if I’m getting consistent feedback around how I occur for people, then that’s worth me paying attention to. You know what I mean?

Ameerah (24:00): Yeah.

Lola Wright (24:03): Because otherwise, I think, what can happen is it can occur like always a deflection. “Well, that’s not mine, that’s yours”. And, I think that there is a lot of truth to that, and, I want to get deeply curious around how are you experiencing me? Yeah, ultimately that is your responsibility, but how is that good feedback for me? Yesterday, I said, “With all of the changes going on at Bodhi, I really want your feedback. Is there something that you’re seeing that I’m not seeing?” You know?

Ameerah (24:42): Yeah.

Lola Wright (24:43): So, I don’t know.

Ameerah (24:44): Yeah, for sure.

Lola Wright (24:45): Does that feel true?

Ameerah (24:47): I mean, for sure, I want feedback. There was something that you said, I think maybe it was in the last Sunday Celebration Service or maybe the one before, but you talked about Nathan. You asked him to give you feedback about yourself, and that it’s important to when you’re asking for feedback, make sure that you ask the right person.

Lola Wright (25:10): Yes. Ask the right people. Not all feedback is created equal.

Ameerah (25:14): Right, right. So, that is certainly my experience. He’s not the right person to ask for feedback.

Lola Wright (25:22): Yeah, so that’s great. And, one of the things that I said recently, which I love, certainly she did not create it, but Denise Schubert said years ago, “I may have pushed your buttons, but I did not install them”. And, it’s like, what a great reminder. I’m noticing my buttons are pushed. Yeah, but that one who pushed them didn’t put them there.

Ameerah (25:44): Right.

Lola Wright (25:45): So, when you think about The Now moment and your own pattern of angst, can you see how that angst is usually based in the future or in the past? Very rarely is your angst occurring in this now moment. And, your angst that’s occurring in this now moment is usually instant. It’s not a thought path. The thinking mind is future and past related. So, any reaction that’s actually happening in The Now moment is an automatic response. I’m walking across the street. I didn’t see a car. It’s about to hit me. And, I’m like, Bahhhh. That’s living in The Now moment as opposed to, “Is there enough? Am I enough? Is there enough? Am I enough? Is there enough? Am I enough?” Which by way are the two most predominant thought forms that generate suffering. Is there enough? Am I enough?

Lola Wright (26:53): If you enjoyed this show and would like to receive new episodes as they’re published, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and consider leaving a review in Apple Podcasts. Your review helps others find this show. You can follow me at Lola P. Wright on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and learn more about my work at lolawright.com. This episode was produced by Quinn Rose with theme music from independent music producer, Trey Royal. Some of you may know my husband, he’s basically Eckhart Tolle’s doppelganger.