Sacred Beauty in the Sangres
Knowledge is strength. Strength is knowledge. … 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)
As it did three years ago when we here in the U.S. were in the midst of a new, chaotic presidential administration, the muse takes me to revisit personal resilience, the resilience of consciousness. As I look out at the chaos and discord in the world systems of man and the dramatic reactions of mother nature, nurturing resiliency might be a worthy priority for each of us.
We must each choose whether and how to observe, to engage, and to act in these times. As such, resiliency, defined as the ability to recover readily from illness, adversity or the like, seems worthy to consider in the face of the discord and challenges that are growing in worldwide. How do we build our personal resiliency?
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. We see this today worldwide in movements of non-violence (check out Non-Violence News here - https://nonviolence.com/news/), climate action, and even in some of the drama of presidential campaigns. We see it as well in personal acts of caring, service, warm smiles to strangers.
This is a time to build personal resiliency. As you reflect on your own resiliency, think of a particular challenge that you’ve faced in 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 now?
The Ziggurat - Stairway to Heaven