To create means to take raw materials—canvas, pigment, paint, brushes, pencils, paper, clay, dirt, stones, glass, water, seeds, food, technology, fire, even pressure; and most important of all, our thoughts—and create.

We create art and music, tools and technology, community and communities, fun and fitness, first with our thoughts and then with things. In all instances, we have to either allow (with our minds) the changes that make what is into something different. If we don’t allow thoughts to develop, then change is thwarted.

The biggest block to change is resistance. We tend to look for the person or thing that’s behaving like an obstacle when resistance interferes with our plans. Often, however, we’re actually getting in our own way with our own split energy.

Split energy sounds like this: I want this or that, BUT ___________ (fill in the blank). Mental resistance has no size or weight. It can’t even be seen. Yet, it’s the BIGGEST reason we don’t get what we want in our lives.

The Way

Kung Fu starring David Carradine was a popular TV in the 1970s. I enjoyed watching Caine, as he was known in the series, demonstrate the power of non-resistance. Every episode had a fight scene and when Caine was threatened, he practiced non-resistance. I don’t mean that he let himself be attacked. But when the person came at him, Caine deflected the attack or stepped aside and allowed the attacker’s momentum to carry him until he stumbled and fell, sometimes over a cliff. In every instance, it was the attackers’ behaviors that caused their own self-undoing.

The Kung Fu philosophy is grounded in the Tao, meaning “the way, or the path,” and that means simply living in harmony with nature, other people, and within oneself. While living with nature and others is important, it’s the relationship to self that forms the foundation for everything that follows. And thinking anything that goes against yourself and splits your energy will make it more difficult to create whatever it is that you desire to create: artwork, a fit body, healthy relationships, etc.

What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size. 

Carl Jung