Do the Work

attraction. The law of self-ordering has kicked in. Despite all our self-doubt, the project is rounding into shape. It’s becoming itself.
     
    People are responding to us differently. We’re making new friends. Our feet are under us; we’re starting to feel professional. We’re beginning to feel as if we know a secret that nobody else does. Or rather, that we’ve somehow become part of a select society. Other members recognize us and encourage us; unsolicited, they proffer assistance—and their aid, unfailingly, is exactly what we’ve needed.
     
    Best of all, we’re having fun. The dread that had hamstrung us for years seems miraculously to have fallen away. The fog has lifted. It’s almost too good to be true.
     
    And then …
     
    The Wall
     
    And then we hit the wall.
     
    Out of nowhere, terror strikes. Our fragile confidence collapses. Nighttime: we wake in a sweat.
     
    That “You suck” voice is back, howling in our head.
     
    Did we stand up to someone in authority over us? Now we crawl back and grovel to him. Did we face up to someone who was treating us with disrespect? Now we beg him without shame to take us back.
     
    We’re poised at the brink of a creative breakthrough and we can’t stand it. The prospect of success looms. We freak. Why did we start this project? We must have been insane. Who encouraged us? We want to wring their necks. Where are they now? Why can’t they help us?
     
    We’re halfway, two-thirds through. Far enough to have invested serious time and money, not to mention our hopes, our dreams, our identity even—but not far enough to have passed the crisis point, not far enough to glimpse the end.
     
    We have turned round Cape Horn and the gales are shrieking; ice encases the masts; sails and sheets are frozen. The storm howls dead in our faces. There’s no way back and no way forward.
     
    We know we’re panicking but we can’t stop; we can’t get a hold of ourselves. We have entered …
     

 

     

 

     

 

     

 

     

 

     

 
    Welcome to Hell
     
    Now you’re in the shit.
     
    Now you’re feeling the symptoms. Now you’re ready to listen.
     
    The next ten chapters are the most important in this book.
     
    They’re the movie within the movie, the dance within the dance. If you take away nothing else from this document, take this section.
     
    It delineates the Seven Principles of Resistance and the two Tests.
     
    These principles govern and underlie everything you’re experiencing now. These tests are being set for you.
     
    This is your trial by fire.
     
    What follows is what you need to know to get to the other side.
     
    Principle Number One: There Is an Enemy
     
    The first principle of Resistance is that there is an enemy.
     
    In our feel-good, social-safety-net, high-self-esteem world, you and I have been brainwashed to believe that there is no such thing as evil, that human nature is perfectible, that everyone and everything can be made nice.
     
    We have been conditioned to imagine that the darkness that we see in the world and feel in our own hearts is only an illusion, which can be dispelled by the proper care, the proper love, the proper education, and the proper funding.
     
    It can’t.
     
    There is an enemy. There is an intelligent, active, malign force working against us.
     
    Step one is to recognize this.
     
    This recognition alone is enormously powerful. It saved my life, and it will save yours.
     
    Principle Number Two: This Enemy Is Implacable
     
    The hostile, malicious force that we’re experiencing now is not a joke. It is not to be trifled with or taken lightly. It is for real. In the words of my dear friend Rabbi Mordecai Finley:
     
    “It will kill you. It will kill you like cancer.”
     
    This enemy is intelligent, protean, implacable, inextinguishable, and utterly ruthless and destructive.
     
    Its aim is not to obstruct or to hamper or to impede. Its aim is to kill.
     
    This is the second principle of Resistance.
     
    Principle Number Three: This Enemy Is Inside You
     
    Pat Riley, when he was coach of the Lakers, had a term for all those off-court forces, like fame and ego (not to mention crazed fans, the press, agents, sponsors, and ex-wives), that worked against the players’ chances for on-court success. He called these forces “peripheral opponents.”
     
    Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. It does not arise from rivals, bosses, spouses, children, terrorists, lobbyists, or political