The greatest obstacle to spiritual practice is often mistaken for something external—a restless mind, intrusive thoughts, or the pervasive distractions of the world. Yet the deeper obstacle is resistance itself. The more one resists present experience in pursuit of a future reality, the further they recede from the promised land.
Many, particularly Western, scholars have repeatedly misconstrued Adi Sankara’s impersonal depictions of Brahman as conveying amorality. Yet, the substratum of Samadhi i.e. union with Brahman remains the cultivation of ethical discipline through the Yamas and Niyamas. These, along with steadiness of posture, regulation of breath, and withdrawal of the senses, aren’t essentially acts of resistance but stoic acceptance. Yet many sincere practitioners struggle precisely because they wage war against every distraction that arises. The harder they resist, the stronger those distractions seem to become.
Modern psychology offers a striking parallel – resisting unwanted thoughts and emotions frequently intensifies them. Anxiety, for example, often evolves into a self-perpetuating cycle in which fear of the anxious state becomes more disabling than the original anxiety itself. The therapeutic principle is simple: control actions, not feelings. By allowing thoughts and emotions to arise without opposition while remaining committed to purposeful action, one deprives them of their power. This process, known as cognitive de-fusion, weakens their hold without requiring their elimination.
The same insight carries profound spiritual significance. Acceptance is not passive resignation but the highest expression of inner freedom. When thoughts, emotions, and distractions are welcomed without identification or resistance, they lose their capacity to dominate consciousness. The practitioner ceases to struggle against the mind and instead abides as the witness of its movements.
To reject one’s own thoughts as alien is to overlook the consciousness in which they arise. Acceptance restores this forgotten continuity. Instead of striving to escape experience, the seeker learns to remain unwaveringly established in the consciousness that illumines every experience. Distractions gradually lose their force, not because they have been defeated, but because resistance has ceased to sustain them.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
