Resiliency is a word commonly used to describe ‘bouncing back’ from something. It’s something we want to be able to do, when we have gotten sideways in life or when we’ve been thrown a curve ball or when we’ve fallen off the edge of the world as we always knew it; when we’ve been turned inside out and upside down through one of lifes many twists and turns. 

It can be used as a word to describe our ability to recover from change. And in its purest most beautiful form it is, really, our ability to learn to ride the waves of change that come as a result of being human instead of drowning in them. Or as the Buddhist philosophy says, “learning to go to pieces without falling apart”.

Webster defines resiliency as: “The capacity of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused by compression stress.”

Human bodies are absolutely designed for resilience. We are constantly changing as we grow and as we age. Our skin repairs when torn, our bones mend when broken, even our livers have the amazing ability to regenerate cells when damaged.

But I am talking about the resiliency of our Spiritual and emotional lives. As humans, we all have experiences that leave us feeling compressively stressed. And when those experiences happen, resilience is not automatic. If we think of resilience as 'going back to the same as we were before' , maybe resilience isn't even something we always want to do.

Most of us think of resilience as a way to survive something we would describe as awful or terrible. When our hearts are broken wide open by the loss of a loved one, the loss of a cherished friendship, the loss of a home, a marriage, a job or a dream, we wonder “How will I ever survive this?” .

For those of you familiar with these podcasts, you know I source most of them from what I have seen over the last couple of decades working in end of life. 

My connection to the whole idea of resiliency comes as a result of the work I do with people in grief. So please bear with me, with forgiveness if necessary, if you are not someone who has experienced grief, someone who has wondered in that emotion how you’d ever feel right again. If grief is not something that has ever left you feeling misshapened, think back to a time in your life when you felt thrown off balance, rocked, knocked senseless or unable to breathe due to some unseen or unexpected circumstance and see if any of this rings true.

An elder in my life used to say “What doesn’t kill you, will make you stronger”, and, I have friends in my life today, who are fond of that saying. And I personally admit to believing something similar, something that says, there is, in all things, some form of goodness, some jewels of wisdom.

So, if that is true, that strength and deeper wisdom are what can come from life experiences that leave our Spirits, our Hearts and our Souls wounded or compressed, could that understanding, then, allow us to become more accepting and open to life experiences that are initially so darn painful? Is that part of what lends itself to our resiliency? Can what doesn’t kill us really make us stronger? Can it also make us wiser? Can it help us live lives of more compassion, understanding and forgiveness? 

As I mentioned just a moment ago, being resilient doesn’t mean, necessarily, that we even want to get back to whatever form we were in before the event that caused what Webster refers to as “de~formation”. Wouldn’t we then be missing the whole point of being open to those experiences holding the “seeds of Grace” as Stephen Levine so beautifully states?

And yet, when we suffer a “malformation of Spirit” isn’t that what so many of the people around us want us to do? Get back to normal. Or maybe it’s what we ourselves long for? “I just want things to be the way they were!” “ I just want this to NOT have happened!” are some of the statements I hear from people when a life event has pulled the rug out from under them.

Perhaps resilience means accepting that what comes to our lives has manifested as a result of forces we can’t see or touch…..intelligent and Divine powers that act as sort of intentional constructors of the Matrix of our lives. It is possible, that all events have purpose. It is possible, that we do have a “blueprint” guided by a force that has our highest and greatest good at the heart of it. And is it also possible that if we accept those possibilities we also agree, through, that very acceptance, that we may not always see the Grace right away? We may not always see the gift in the pile of shit that hit the fan.

I am reminded so many times a day that being flexible and open play a vital part in a happy life. That idea I spoke of in a recent podcast of not being attached to outcome. And I am equally reminded many times a day that there are no easy “how to’s” how to go-with-the-flow, how to stay in your center, how to bounce back from traumas, dramas and the emotional hitchhikers that try to stick to us like Velcro.

A seed becomes a tree when it surrenders its separateness, and lies in darkness under the earth, trusting the natural order of things, that intelligent blueprint.

If we let go of our separateness and immerse ourselves in the process of life, and trust the process of the universe, is it possible that we could become what Satish Kumar, writes about as Mahatma Gandhi's vision of world peace when he says, “…we can become the tree of one thousand branches and one million plums but we must first identify ourselves with others. We must understand and embrace our connectiveness, our interrelatedness and our need for one another. He teaches that individuality and wholeness are compliments of one another not contradictions to one another. He teaches that there is importance to a place and a time for a sense of self in our journey as humans, a sense of separateness, if you will, and there is also a time to shed our shell just as the seed sheds it’s shell to become a tree. This is completely not relevant to the topic os this podcast but I have to tell you that just this day, as I walked along the river with a dear friend, we were awestruck over and over again by the tenacity, determination and will of the trees that refuse to be told where they can grow. The way small plants sprouts straight from solid rock and the way the roots of old growth trees burrow and crack long fingers of roots up through the old asphalt that was once the highway to Denver before I70 was built. Trees that were once a seed that shed its shell and trusted that it was ok.

As I review a day in the life of being me, I can look through eyes that protect and analyze and over-think or I can look through eyes that trust. I can see all the ways I align with in-coming energy, that, when absorbed and assimilated, become an obstacle to my well being. I can honor a healthy filter and an aura of energy that doesn’t allow for penetration of those energies that pollute, damage or cloud my personal energy field. And I can embrace and be open to my interconnectiveness to all of life. The way our lives depend on our ability to integrate with all the elements, but most especially, as far as resilience goes, our ability to integrate to one another.

That, I believe, is at least one key. Our relatedness, our connections to one another, our understanding of just how interdependent we all are. Everything we do, effects everything around us. When we are thrown off balance, maybe, just maybe, all we really need to do is remember that we are all so connected through our humanness and our aliveness that our imbalance might be quickly righted just by opening our hearts and asking for it to be. Breathing in wellness and healing and focus and grounding. Remembering that we are a planet filled to overflowing with individuals seeking a higher heart vibration, a better understanding, a stronger connection and that there is truly an intelligence at work here that we can neither see nor touch.

Maybe it’s in believing that at any given moment of any given day, each one of us is exactly where we are meant to be.

This is a topic of discussion I am very grateful to have had the chance to begin to explore and one I welcome an opportunity to continue discussing. There are probably infinite ways to address the idea of resilience, what it is, how we get it and how it serves us in our lives. But for today, for the purpose of this podcast, let me please just say

Namaste

Amen

And may it be so

Thank you so much for your time. There is no greater gift and I hope you will join me again where the veil grows thin....