KIM ENG “RESIST NOTHING” COURSE – RESOURCES FROM THE VIDEO
“Beyond the doing is the being.” -Kim Eng
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
“Seek the stillness.” -Kim Eng
INTRO
Welcome to the Female Flex. I’m your host, Staci Nichols, founder of SpiritualVirago.com. Today I’m going to be doing a review of Kim Eng’s course through EckhartTolle.com called “Resist Nothing.” This was a live four-week course. It contained four 90-minute sessions, and it included one free month membership to EckhartTolle.com. I would say it was kind of a beginning level course but wandered into some intermediate areas. Week One was “Presence Through Movement: Body Awareness Practice.” Week Two was “Presence Through Movement: Yin Yoga Poses.” Week Three was “Presence Through Movement: Shaking and Releasing Negative Energy.” Week Four was “Presence Through Movement: Body Balancing and Chakra Balancing.” There were three course bonuses, and each week there was also, in addition to the live session, a pre-recorded video about that week’s topic. In a nutshell, the basic concept of the course–resisting nothing–is really, um, she was just modernizing and presenting to a Western audience, the Buddhism tradition of the Four Noble Truths.
She didn’t mention this in the class, but just from my own personal knowledge, that’s what it was. So the Four Noble Truths are to Buddhism like what the commandments would be to Christianity, for example. So the Four Noble Truths are one that life is painful. Life involves suffering. Two: that suffering or pain is caused by wanting or expecting, by identifying with things. The third Noble Truth is that enlightenment or mindfulness can stop us from wanting and therefore reduce our pain. And the fourth and final Noble Truth is that if you follow the Buddhist path, or the Eightfold Path, that will help you reach enlightenment and reduce the suffering. So, in a nutshell, the overall theme of the course is if you resist nothing, you’ll suffer less. Really if you boil it down into like four words, it would be: let go, let God. This is a quote I really like, but essentially the course is just surrender, you know, surrendering to what is.
I’m going to go through some gems from Kim from each of the four weeks of the course. Then, at the end, I’ll give an overall feedback on the course as a whole.
WEEK ONE
Kim Eng talked about how waiting for something to happen and stress are both signs that we are in resistance. I get a lot of stress. I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes worrying about, you know, is this going to fall through, is that going to happen, or is this going to finally come to be, and so forth. To me, that was particularly helpful. She talked a lot about the pain body, of course, which is one of Eckhart Tolle’s principle teachings. If you haven’t read any of his books, pick one up, but the pain body is really just that kind of baggage–our energy baggage–you know. It’s all my baggage from millennia of energy of being a woman burned at the stake and the victim of domestic violence–that’s all part of my woman pain body. I also have, you know, a single mother pain body, and I have a divorced pain body, and I have an American pain body. All these things that kind of make up who we are: daughter of an alcoholic pain body, right? Anyway, Kim Eng also talked about how our pain bodies can, by themselves, create resistance. That’s why it’s so important to fully experience and process or trauma and our suffering. If we’re not aware of that, it’s going to be much harder to get into that place of surrender.
A little story that Kim told, which I like, was: “Before enlightenment: laundry. After enlightenment: laundry.” I’ve actually heard Phil Jackson, the former Lakers coach, who’s known as the Zen master, say, “Before enlightenment: chop wood. After enlightenment: chop wood.” So a similar type of teaching, but it’s about getting through daily life, you know. Just because you reach enlightenment doesn’t mean you’re still not going to deal with getting cut off on the freeway, right?
Another thing from Week One is that everyone experiences duality and, really, duality is a key part of mastery. Once you kind of reach that “upper level” of things, you start to understand more the duality, the dual nature, of almost everything. For example, if you look at the theme of the course, how do you manifest a certain thing and have a specific goal, which is good to strive towards goals and, and have those goals for yourself. But how do you live in that space, at the same time, when you resisting nothing and aren’t attached to results, right? That’s a place of duality that we must live within.
WEEK TWO
Week Two was really interesting. Kim Eng told a story that I really liked…that your body, your physical form, is a bamboo flute. So it’s primarily empty. It just has these holes in it, right? And it’s kind of this inanimate, clunky thing without the air blowing through it. It’s really nothing, right? So Kim’s saying that our body is like this flute, because, we’re made up of 98% water, and we’re comprised of universal energy and all that. So we’re really just this vehicle for the “air” to flow through us, and the air, of course, would be universal energy. What she’s saying is, when we have an identification with a thought, or we have an expectation, that those are like kidney beans clogging up the holes of our flute. If you get too many of those kidney beans, those sort of “pain body baggage” beans, in the flute, then the air cannot flow through the it anymore. And the tone of the “music” changes. Kim was saying that really the air coming through the flute is creativity. It is inspiration. It’s those things that we get from life when we are fully present.
WEEK THREE
In Week Three, Kim Eng said that we must retrain ourselves to process emotions like the way that we digest food. To me, I thought that was really intelligent because, I mean, you’ve got the chewing part, which maybe akin to the initial crying phase of a trauma, right? So you have the chewing, but then after, you kind of forget about the food, right? It goes into the stomach where it’s dealing with all these harsh acids–it’s like this volcano with magma–that’s the atmosphere in there. It’s just harsh, right? I mean, it’s really a hellscape. Then after that hellscape–and some food can be in there for hours before it gets processed–it’s a long journey into the intestines, of course, where it’s dark like a scary cave…all these turns and corners. You can’t see anything, you don’t know where you’re going. I just thought it was a really great comparison, a really smart analogy. Ultimately, you break down an emotion the way that you break down food, little by little, but I think there’s a tendency in society, “Well, I’m done chewing it. It’s gone now.” Chewing is like 10 seconds of this like 24-hour long process, right?
Kim Eng talked about how the fear of feeling is also a form of resistance. If you have a feeling within yourself, like, “Hmm, I want this emotion gone,” or “I want this part of me gone,” it means you haven’t truly surrendered or accepted that personality trait or that emotion.
She said that “right action” is not necessarily intelligence, right? Action comes from an intuitive knowing. In her analogy of the flute and beans, in order for intuitive knowing to pass through us fully and completely, we have to be in a place of stillness.
Kim also used the word stillness a lot in place of meditation, which I appreciated, but stillness and meditation, I think, are really interchangeable in her teaching.
This was really interesting, OK. I had this vibe from the beginning of the course, like she kind of seems like maybe she’s Eckhart’s girlfriend, you know. I don’t know why I had that feeling. I didn’t see anything on the website when I signed up for the course. It was literally just a gut feeling the first week. Kim didn’t really mention him at all. In the second week, there were a few mentions of him. Now we’re into the third week and she’s like, “Yeah, we live together…and this bum is not doing his fair share of the dishes.” I mean, for me, honestly, just to hear that made the whole class worth the value of what I paid for it! I really felt like she was saying, “Before enlightenment, complain about Eckhart not doing the dishes. After enlightenment, complain about Eckhart not doing the dishes.” I really feel like, first of all, in response to him not doing his fair share of the dishes, she said that she meditated on her expectation of what a partner should be–she didn’t use the word husband, OK? I did google it later–I was curious, and I find out they are indeed married. Anyway, doing the dishes in the home of these two very prolific spiritual teachers for me, it was just really nice to hear that reality, that transparency. I really appreciated it. So thank you for sharing that, Kim.
Finally, from Week Three, Kim Eng just talked about what is awareness? Because, like I was saying at the beginning, of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, awareness is the key out of this constant cycle of life pain. She was saying that what awareness is simply a power of presence. She’s saying that awareness doesn’t come from studying and practice. Knowledge and awareness comes from knowingness, and knowingness is being present, right? Like Ram Doss says, “Be here now,” or, like Eckhart, some of his earlier teachings say the same thing. All these teachers are saying overlapping things, of course.
WEEK FOUR
Let’s get into the final week, Week Four. In this week, Kim Eng talked about the more you cling to happiness, the more you just gotta be happy every day, then the more grief and sadness you’re going to bring into your life. You’re being rigid in this environment; energy is meant to be flow-y, like a river stream. When you’re fixed and you’re holding onto this thing in a stationary way, that’s when you’re going to interrupt that flow and experience, not more happiness, but less. You can still have goals, OK. This, to me, was a really important clarification because, you really feel like, “Well, if I’m resisting nothing, should I still want to make more money? Should I still want to move to that other house?
Kim Eng just talked about the “resist nothing” concept coming from the present moment. “Resist nothing,” the concept, is rooted in the stillness and the practice of meditation. Awareness comes from who we really are, which is universal energy and that presence.
Finally, from Week Four, Kim said that it doesn’t take any time to get to know who you are. People will say all the time, “I gotta figure out who I am,” and “I don’t really know who I am or what I want.” She said knowing who you are and being who you are that doesn’t take any time at all–it’s just awareness. It’s just knowingness. It’s just going and spending time and stillness and just being. What does take time? It can be a lifetime of trying to understand our conditioning and our programming–or pain bodies. That’s where the investment is.
CONCLUSION
Let me talk in general about the overall course and how I feel about it. Kim Eng is a truly masterful spiritual teacher, and I would highly recommend any of her courses, any of her books, any of her retreats. I was really, really impressed, really impressed. One of my favorite things about her, first of all, I just liked her energy. I liked her presence. I liked her vibe. I like the way she spoke, but one of the things that I particularly appreciated was that she could move between quoting a scripture from the Bible and then comparing that to an Indian tradition. Then she’d compare it to the Buddhist version of the teaching. You’re like, “How does she know ninja-level stuff in all of these different spiritual traditions?” I mean, she’s Bible quoting, Buddha quoting…like just two thumbs up for real.
Unfortunately, one of the things that I did not care for from the course was the way that it was organized. I mean, you’ll notice when I went through the topics for each week, like “Yin Yoga Poses” and “Body Balancing and Shaking, that that’s not what was discussed. Nothing that I said in my intro was what was actually discussed during the live sessions. The live sessions were about resisting nothing, but all the side material was about “Presence Through Movement,” which is, Kim’s main niche. To me, it was just messy.
I felt like I got too many emails from EckhartTolle.com, and it made it really confusing to figure out where I’m supposed to be, what am I supposed to be doing? What’s happening? Where’s my link, blah, blah, blah. I didn’t realize until the second week–and let me just preface this by saying I graduated with honors, was the Honor Society president, debate geek, blah, blah, blah, I’m not a bad student, I really like being a good student. But I didn’t even realize until the second week that there was homework, she never mentioned it. I was like, “Homework? What homework? I didn’t get any homework.” Kim didn’t mention anything in the class. After looking through all my emails and stuff, I realized on the sidebar of the course page that there were little pre-recorded videos. I didn’t even realize that until like halfway through the class. I feel like, again, it just could have been more organized.
It was extremely bureaucratic getting a question to Kim Eng. I mentioned my question about goal setting in the space of resisting nothing in Week One. I asked it again Week Two. I asked it again in Week Three. After Week Three, I got an email from the tech team, and they said, “Your question has been chosen. It’s a great question.” They said they were having this private zoom session version of the class to ask Kim questions, which was a little confusing. I had to go back and forth with the tech person trying to understand. Ultimately, my questions still didn’t get picked. She touched on what I said in the class just by chance, so I did get the question answered, but it wasn’t answered in a format where I raised my hand and the teacher gave an answer. It wasn’t answered like that. She just happened to cover it in her material. That was a little bit frustrating.
We also weren’t really told that there was going to be a meditation at the beginning. During the first class, I had my nine-year-old daughter next to me playing on her tablet and stuff. I’m like, “Oh my God, you have to get out of here. I have to meditate. Go in the other room, close the door, like, ‘I’m sorry.'” You know, there are single parents taking these classes who need to plan for having their children be alone for so long, you know…or their puppies or whatever. It would have been nice to have known that upfront, especially because it wasn’t sold or advertised as a meditation class. Like, “Hey, you know, make sure you’re in a quiet place, in a meditation space, when we start class.” That would have been helpful.
Alright, final thing, last thing…this class finished two days ago. The next day after the final class, I get an email from EckhartTolle.com saying that I’m going to be auto-charged for my free membership trial if I don’t cancel it before whatever day. I mean, I appreciate the email–I guess they certainly didn’t have to send one. But, to me, I feel like this is not an ethical business practice. It’s just not a compassionate business tactic. I run a business. I own a business. I understand that point of view where you need to make money and you want to be tactical about it. I understand that. I appreciate that you have your business strategies, but be able to sleep at night with a good conscience that you didn’t have to make that money by pressuring people or tricking them. You know?
Anyway, having said that, I would highly recommend any future courses or any other trainings retreats from Kim Eng. I don’t know if I would really take another course through EckhartTolle.com. I would, however, recommend a place called SoundsTrue.com. They have courses, pre-recorded teachings, and online conferences–stuff like that–from Eckhart Tolle, from Pema Chodron, from Thich Nhat Hahn–I’m not sure I’m saying that right–and all kinds of other like global leaders in spiritual teaching. Like Tara Brock…just a whole bunch of people. For me, I feel like their courses are just a little bit more simple to understand and follow, and you’re getting material from the same level of instructors. Anyway, SoundsTrue.com.
This has been–oop, my cat jumps up on the table here. This has been the Female Flex. I’m your host, Staci Nichols…and this is DJ Whiskers!
QUOTES FROM KIM ENG’S “RESIST NOTHING” COURSE: POST & SHARE
“Love comes from surrendering. Fear comes from resistance.” -Kim Eng
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S.N. is the founder of Spiritual Virago. She is a vegetarian 🥕 + bonafied geek 📚 + mama bear 👨👧 + investor 📈. This former NCAA Track & Field All-American 🏃♀️ enjoys line dancing & is addicted to Burt's Bees chapstick 💄Read her inspiring story. She offers spiritual coaching, trauma mastery coaching, & business coaching. S.N. is also a celebrated speaker and author. Her personal motto: "It's not the size of the woman in the fight. It's the size of the fight in the woman." 💪💯
