Resilience

Resilience is often mentioned only in regards to misfortune but the ability to return to shape or in yogic terms, equanimity, is important no matter the circumstance.  The ability to recover from or adjust to change is not limited to misfortune.

Consciousness, says the Kashmir-Shivite tradition, is both transcendent and immanent.  It is both beyond everything and within the confines of everything.  The fact that it is both is what permits us, as finite human beings, the children of consciousness as it were, to have the capacity to know and experience that which is transcendent while still living in a finite body.  

This is the journey of deep meditation, the recovery of the experience of our transcendent nature and the bringing out of its creative power and abundance into life so that we may be more skillful, more efficacious in the living of life.

When we are able to be steady in times of sorrow and challenge we mirror this transcendence as we transcend the prison of the circumstance.  It’s important to understand that this does not mean it doesn’t matter or that somehow it’s all an illusion.  Suffering, sorrow in this world is all too real and while we wish to ameliorate it to the best degree possible, we do not wish to be held hostage.  What good does that do anyone?  And more, we want our capacity to make better, or more tolerable, any and all suffering to be increased expanded and deepened.

To transcend in this manner does not mean that some things aren’t better than others or more desired. Of course we wish to expand joy wherever and whenever possible.  But we know all things will pass on this relative plane and that includes the joy we experience.  So the question is not to somehow be above such things, but how to deepen our experience of them, to celebrate them while not clinging to what will certainly end.  

Resilience requires strength and flexibility. How can we participate in making ourselves as resilient as possible?  What are the ingredients of living the best life possible.  A life full of meaning and presence and generosity of spirit no matter what arises.

Generosity what a beautiful word.  Generosity requires resilience in abundance.
There is an inner strength that is required to be truly resilient.  A strength that is simultaneously full and infinitely flexible in its unbounded creative power.  

This week I invite the contemplation of resilience and generosity.  Each day, to whatever degree possible I am permitting awareness to steep in these attributes and making the space to see what arises.  In order to hold whatever that may be, to examine it and then incorporate it, I need to take the time to pull it out, to write in my journal.  I invite you to do the same and I would love to hear any of your comments.

Bring The Light.
With Love,
Maria