Although this book is a little too Zen and has some colorful language, it was personally inspirational and interprets the spiritual battle of the artist in a new metaphorical way.
You
know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven
hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study. He applied to the
Academy of Fine Arts and later to the School of Architecture. Ever see one of
his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement, but
I’ll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World war II than it was
for him to face a blank square of canvas. (end
of intro)
Resistance will come in reaction to any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor
of long-term growth, health, or integrity. Or, expressed another way, any act
that derives from our higher nature instead of our lower. Any of these will
elicit Resistance. (p.6)
Resistance
is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is
self-generated and self-perpetuated. Resistance is the enemy within. (p.8)
Resistance
will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure,
fabricate, falsify; seduce, bully, cajole. Resistance is protean. It will
assume any form, if that’s what it takes to deceive you. It will reason with
you like a lawyer or jam a nine-millimeter in your face like a stickup man.
Resistance has no conscience. It will pledge anything to get a deal, then
double-cross you as soon as your back is turned. If you take Resistance at its
word, you deserve everything you get. (p.9)
Like
a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly
point to true North—meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us
from doing.
We
can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance.
Letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all
others.
Rule
of thumb: the more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the
more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it. (p.12)
Resistance
has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it possesses comes from us. We
feed it with power by our fear of it.
Master
that fear and we conquer Resistance. (p.16)
Resistance
obstructs movement only from a lower sphere to a higher. It kicks in when we
seek to pursue a calling in the arts, launch an innovative enterprise, or
evolve to a higher station morally, ethically, or spiritually.
So
if you’re in Calcutta working with the Mother Teresa Foundation and you’re
thinking of bolting to launch a career in telemarketing…relax. Resistance will
give you a free pass. (p.17)
The
most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We
don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.
Never
forget: this very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment,
and never will be, when we are without the power to altar our destiny. This
second, we can turn the tables on Resistance.
This
second, we can sit down and do our work. (p.22)
The
counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to
death. (p.39)
The
more Resistance you experience, the more important your unmanifested
art/project/enterprise is to you---and the more gratification you will feel
when you finally do it. (p.42)
Resistance
doesn’t want us to face our fears. So
it brings in Rationalization. Rationalization is Resistance’s spin doctor. (p.55)
The
professional, on the other hand, understands delayed gratification. He is the
ant, not the grasshopper; the tortoise, not the hare. (p.75)
The
professional respects his craft. He does not consider himself superior to it.
He recognizes the contribution of those who have gone before him. He
apprentices himself to them.
The
professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes
technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in
possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come. The
professional is sly. He knows that by toiling beside the front door of
technique, he leaves room for genius to enter by the back. (p.84)
The
author uses and approves of Jungian concepts, and finds helpful a distinction between
Self and Ego:
The
Ego hates artists because they are the pathfinders and bearers of the future,
because each one dares, in James Joyce’s phrase, to “forge in the smithy of my
soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”
Such
evolution is life-threatening to the Ego. It reacts accordingly. It summons its
cunning, marshals its troop.
The
Ego produces Resistance and attacks the awakening artist. (p.41)
The
artist is the servant of that intention, those angels, that Muse. The enemy of
the artist is the small-time Ego, which begets Resistance, which is the dragon
that guards the gold. That’s why the artist must be a warrior and, like all
warriors, artists over time acquire modesty and humility. They may, some of
them, conduct themselves flamboyantly in public. But alone with the work they
are chaste and humble. (p.163)
