To resist is to stand against something. And this experience of standing against, of standing for or standing up for is so ancient, so deep in us, that we cannot recall when it was not part of us. A child is born into a moment of surrender for which no surrender was necessary. Where there is a self, there is a standing-against, standing against being, standing against the world. Even the infant’s first convulsive motions are reflex of unarticulated struggle to not fall back into pure existence, to exist, to express to live.
But don’t we want to surrender? Isn’t surrender the moment of at last clearing the path to who we are, to what we are, to our desire to be ourselves?
It is a shielding, a protection of what we are. It is a reflex toward a danger, a threat to our substance.
What is it that we are that requires protection? The jargon of the psychological studies refers to ‘defence mechanisms’, instruments, structures and organic mechanisms whose function is nothing other that to protect that-which-needs-protecting form that-which-threatens-it. These two invisible but dramatically present entities that we take fundamentally for granted. What does ego psychology tell us they are and why should they be threatened? What are we afraid of? What is under threat in our surrender?