I am looking forward to participating in the Resiliency Track for The Awesome Event happening October 27-29 in Charlottesville, VA. In-person and virtual tickets are still available. Considering recent events in the town, it feels poignant that an event focused on awakening the human potential and for inspiring solutions is being held there. Greater access to and a deeper experience of resilience is one of the most clear and practical benefits of having an understanding of the Three Principles. Understanding how the mind works and our innate ability to experience the infinite, formless potential of our true nature is more than a theoretical understanding. It has very pragmatic implications.
This week was a great example for me. I have had a challenging week with a lot of emotional intensity. It was a week where I would feel bowled over by my emotions, would find my bearings, and get bowled over again. I was living the Chumbawamba song Tubthumping without the whisky drinks.
I get knocked down, but I get up again
You are never gonna keep me down
I get knocked down, but I get up again
You are never gonna keep me down
I get knocked down, but I get up again
You are never gonna keep me down
I get knocked down, but I get up again
You are never gonna keep me down
By the weekend my mind was so stirred up I found it hard to settle. I noticed I was feeling restless and having a hard time concentrating. Then, in a conversation with my husband, it became apparent that I had not been taking out my low mood on him. He said he noticed I had been testy a couple of times, but nothing major. This caught my attention.
It lifted my head out of the cloud of my suffering. I stopped focusing on how uncomfortable I was feeling, and noticed that I was actually navigating my suffering more gracefully. This naturally shifted my focus from what wasn’t working to what was working. It was not a technique I was using. It happened organically. When I realized I had been behaving better than I had in the past, I started to see how this time was different. I was not making my experience mean as much as I would have previously. Even though I was suffering, I was taking my thinking more lightly. I was being gentle with myself. I was not worry so much. It was helpful to be reminded that progress is not measured by not having the intensity of the human emotional experience, but by how I respond to it.
I remember George Pransky speaking at the One Solution Conference in Oslo a few years ago, and he shared how human beings are not designed to do well under chronic stress. Chronic stress is detrimental to us on mental, emotional, and physical levels. This was commonsense to me, but I was surprised when he said, that human beings actually do well if they go in and out of stressful experiences. We actually demonstrate great resilience if we can go in and out of stress. I thought avoidance of stress was the goal, but George’s talk helped me to see that I did not need to be stress phobic. I saw that the human design is naturally resilient and can even handle high stress when it is not chronic.
This is what had been different for me this past week. I had been going in and out of the experience of stress. Not because I had had been going in and out of stressful events. In fact, there seemed to be a confluence of events that could be labeled as challenging that were piling up on top of each other rather than one resolving before the next one arrived. Yet, my experience was that I was going in and out of stress.
The understanding of the Three Principles helped me to see in a very practical way that I am experiencing my thoughts and not the events in my life. I was able to recognize that my experience of stress was determined solely by how stirred up my thinking was, how much I identified with those stirred up thoughts, and nothing else. Seeing this drastically reduced my anxiety and my resistance to my experience. I have not enjoyed the feelings of dread and insecurity, but knowing where they were coming from, my imagination created by thought in the moment, gave me a highly beneficial perspective.
This context allowed me to experience greater resilience as I weathered my emotional storms. I didn’t waste my energy trying to change the weather. I didn’t judge myself because of the barometer of my mood. Instead, I enjoyed the moments of sunshine when they appeared and did my best to relax when I was in the thick of it.
My ability to bounce back was more apparent because I wasn’t adding more thoughts of concern and worry to my already stirred up thinking. I decided to see if my internal emotional experience really would stabilize if I left it alone. I wondered, “Will it work when I feel this bad?” And it did. Not only did I find myself stabilizing over and over again, but also my experience when I wasn’t stabilized was easier — hence, my ability to not turn into a complete head case with my husband.
I had more laughter, lightheartedness, and joy overall. Then when I was sucked into the low mood feelings and caught up in the thought storm, feeling despondent and discouraged, I didn’t panic. I did focus on it more than I would have liked, but I also had perspective. I knew it was temporary, and recognized it was a reflection of my thinking not circumstances. I knew I could endure these feelings in an acute way because they were not chronic. There is psychological freedom in knowing I have the capacity to tolerate all of my feelings and don’t need to try and protect myself by trying to manage and control them.
My hope is that this becomes more apparent for all of us. May we all look more in the direction of our innate resilience and ability to stabilize. As Sydney Banks said, “If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.” We naturally drop into our heart and experience the innate state of love that is our true nature when we aren’t compelled by our thoughts. The less we have on our mind, the more we can feel our heart, and isn’t that what the world needs — more heart!
Rohini Ross is passionate about helping people wake up to their true nature. She is a psychotherapist, a transformative coach, and author of Marriage (The Soul-Centered Series Book 1). She has an international coaching practice helping individuals, couples, and professionals embrace all of who they are so they can experience greater levels of wellbeing, resiliency, and success. You can follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, watch her Vlogs with her husband, Angus Ross, and subscribe to her weekly blog on her website, www.rohiniross.com. Rohini and Angus have an upcoming Free Webinar: The Three Principles and Relationships Monday October 30th at 7:30 pm PST as well as an upcoming workshop, Relationship Essentials, November 11 -12, 2017 in Topanga, CA click here for more details.