Stormy Weather
If you realize that your strength is in knowledge, which is your experience and the resiliency of your consciousness, no one can affect you. Not even the Universe can diminish that one whit. Gregge Tiffen (Open Secrets: Mystical Longings)
Resiliency, defined as the ability to recover readily from illness, adversity or the like, seems worthy of our attention today and in the times ahead. It has my attention this week as my energy is focused on recovering from a, rare for me, bout with a ‘bug’. In addition to that ‘up close and personal’ perspective, I’ve been reflecting on the need for resiliency in the face of the discord and challenges that seem to be growing in our country and those that exist in so many places beyond.
Resiliency is not nurtured by hibernation or closing yourself off from the world (as appealing as that idea sounds some days!).
Resiliency is nurtured when we seek knowledge, in particular knowledge about how life works. This includes both the laws of the jungle, life ‘out there’ as the world defines and dictates, and Universal law, life - up close and personal, you to you and you to the Universe. We learn a great deal through our participation in the world: relationships, business, politics, finance, health, etc. We learn through observation, awareness and experience. We learn when we succeed as well as when things don’t go as we wanted them to.
The lens through which we view life is a key factor in our capacity to ‘bounce back’ as well as to be strong in the face of any challenge. Think of the stories of the people who face medical challenges, of those who survived concentration camps, of those who lose a loved one to violence only to bounce back and turn the tragedy into a positive movement.
After you’ve reflected on those, think of a particular challenge that you’ve faced in your own life. In what ways were you resilient? In what ways was your resiliency hampered? What did you learn that built your resiliency for future challenges? What are you curious to learn?