Daron's Friendliness Resistance Mix Tape

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
~ Rumi

Friendliness resistance training (my spin on loving-kindness practice) offers an opportunity to explore the notion that human behavior is driven by common drives to be safe, happy, healthy, and comfortable. This is in contrast to our normal default mode of evaluating the observable actions of others.

Here are some songs that tend to reduce my resistance to friendliness.

Everybody
by Ingrid Michaelson

Everybody, everybody wants to love
Everybody, everybody wants to be loved

Happy is the heart that still feels pain
Darkness drains and light will come again
Swing open up your chest and let it in
Just let the love, love, love begin

Oscar Wilde
by Company of Thieves

We are all our own devil
We are all our own devil
And we make this world our hell

Company of Thieves performs "Oscar Wilde" on Audiotree Live, August 2, 2011. Watch or download the complete session with interview at http://audiotree.tv/session/company-of-thieves/ Watch more live shows at http://audiotree.tv/sessions/

Even in the Dark
by Company of Thieves

This life is constant hunger
See it in the dreamers
Believe in the believers of never-ending love
An endless kind of love

Even in the darkness
Whoa...
Even in the dark

Find your calling
Even in the dark

The Way Clouds Do
by Christine Kane

Well you know, we got a lot to do before we're done
God bless the world and all the ones for whom the night is long
And all these drivers and their dreams
And all these children and their needs
And all the earth and all the trees
All in all it looks like me

Shine
by Alexi Murdoch

We only love each from afar
This is how we are fading

You have everything you need right here
Still you want more
Oh this is how we are fading

I'm just a spirit trying to be human
But I'm thinking this is how we are fading

The Way I Was Made
by Griffin House

Legend says our family tree grows black and white and Indian leaves
And if the history books are right, none of us are really white
In fact, I think that means, that everybodys’ blood is just the same

Whoa oh! It feels so good to have your blood in my veins

I See Who You Are
by Björk

Let's celebrate now
All this flesh on our bones

Let's celebrate now
All this…

From the album Volta.

Let It Be Me
by Indigo Girls

Let it be me
(this is not a fighting song)
Let it be me
(not a wrong for a wrong)
Let it be me
If the world is night
Shine my life like a light

See also: "Music and Finding God in Church and Smoky Bars, " On Being, Nov. 25, 2015

Someone's Daughter
by Beth Orton

I'm someone's daughter,
And your somebody's son,
Can I ease your pain 'til the morning comes?

I'm no one's daughter,
I belong to the sun,
Gonna ease your pain 'til the morning comes.

Sing
by Dresden Dolls (Amanda Palmer)

Sing for the bartender sing for the janitor sing
Sing for the cameras sing for the animals sing
Sing for the children shooting the children sing
Sing for the teachers who told you that you couldn't sing
Just sing

The Dresden Dolls' original video for "Sing" from the record "Yes, Virginia..." 2006 Roadrunner Records Shot, Cut, & Directed by Michael Pope

Me
by Paula Cole

And it's me who is my enemy
Me who beats me up
Me who makes the monsters
Me who strips my confidence
And it's me who's too weak
And it's me who's too shy to ask for the thing I love
And it's me who's too weak
And it's me who's too shy to ask for the thing I love

But I love

Everything Possible
by Fred Small

You can be anybody that you want to be
You can love whomever you will
You can travel any country where your heart leads
And know I will love you still.
You can live by yourself
You can gather friends around
You can choose one special one
And the only measure of your words and your deeds
Will be the love you leave behind when you’re gone.