Channeling: The Different Forms of Resilience
Resilience is a word that makes one think of working hard. You might push through obstacle after obstacle, believing that this makes you strong or is making you stronger. You might feel that in overcoming these challenges, you are necessarily growing and becoming more aligned with yourself.
This is not necessarily true. Working hard is not often the way forward, and pushing usually creates more resistance to what you truly want and who you truly are than not.
When you are asked to be resilient, you are not asked to work hard. You are not asked to ignore the challenges and see them as obstacles to defeat through strength and determination. You are not asked to see the obstacles as roadblocks or problems. This is not the way for resilience to serve you and your highest good.
It is important to use resilience in an aligned way. Many have become quite good at ignoring their feelings about a circumstance, or their intuitive understandings of right action, and opting instead for a harder route simply because it feels like a greater call for their resilience, and there can be a subtle belief in your unconscious mind that working hard means greater reward. There can almost be a spiritual element to this: many believe that denying themselves pleasure, or suffering, will yield greater reward. As if to enjoy the journey of life was a luxury that should not be engaged.
It is important to understand the truth of this. Resilience is a beautiful thing when it is used to serve your soul’s wishes for you. It does not need to serve the grueling demands of the ego, always asking more of you, demanding that you sacrifice more to be worthy of receiving. Resilience simply asks that you stay the course, that you are disciplined to the truth and return to it over and over.
Resilience is a commitment to caring for yourself. It is fundamentally a caring energy, that speaks of the strength of your heart. It is the peaceful warrior – the heart-based champion of the truth of who you are that lives inside of you, that wants the best for you, and will encourage you continually to remember this and to return to it, even when the mind wants to seduce you back into smallness, into fear and into worry.
Resilience is a divine gift that can assist you through challenges, because Life will sometimes throw you challenges. And this is not a bad thing. When you use resilience in an aligned way – in a way that serves your soul’s intentions – it is a strong impulse to remember, to return to your most aligned self, regardless of what the circumstances in your life are. It is a strength that extends beyond the limits of your mind because it can see the soul’s bigger perspective: though there may be a challenge or a testing circumstance or feeling in this moment, it is all a stepping stone, all a journey that exists to serve you. Everything in my life is for me, and resilience asks you to remember that truth and to take advantage of it. If everything in life is happening for you and not to you, resilience will always want you to find the highest outcome from life’s gifts.
It is not always easy to implement your resilience. Sometimes, the world feels too much and problems feel overwhelming. It can be easy to feel like you just can’t go on, like you need someone else to save you or that it is all a hopeless affair.
These feelings are heavy, and they weigh in your heart. It pushes down on you and can make you want to sit, sink down into despair. When these heavy waves hit, a different tone of resilience can begin to bud within this weight. Though it will snuff out, temporarily, the fiery strength of what might be called ‘masculine’ resilience, the enduring love, hope and compassion of ‘feminine’ resilience remains in your heart to nurture you and restore you.
This ‘feminine’ expression of resilience is like warm embers that can never be totally destroyed. It speaks to the ability to build up those flames of strength with proper care. It reminds you that the light in your heart never goes totally out, even in the darkest moments.
These warm embers, this softly glowing pulsing light inside you is restorative. It wants to hold you in its warm embrace and comfort you, relax you, the way heat releases tension from your muscles. It needs to be allowed, yes, you will need to be willing to look for it and find it, but it is always there. It is the energy of loving compassion that you need when things feel too much, too heavy to process with your usual speed, and leaves you feeling dense, low, and despairing.
It is your responsibility to tend to this glowing light, and it will reward you with its healing powers. Under strained and painful circumstances, this forever-burning warmth also serves as a reminder of your truth, of your divinity, and it asks for you to feel into the deep, never wavering love that Spirit has for you. This never-ending love is beyond resilience. It is the connecting source of all of Life, and you have this within you.
When the pain feels like too much to bear you do not need to fight it and push onward, believing that strength is always continuing forward, regardless of your emotional state. It behooves you to pause, in fact, when this urge arises and remember the infinite and constant call of that more feminine expression of resilience. The resilience of an unending love who shines their compassion for your suffering unconditionally. The restorative embrace of a mother tending to the wounds of their child with equal and unchanging love every time.
You have both of these expressions within you. There is the courageous, fiery expression of resilience that asks you to boldly choose your worth, your soul’s path for you despite your ego’s attempts to control, and the warm, embery glow that constantly supports you with an undying understanding of life’s difficulty and your worthiness of nurture and replenishing.
If you try to utilize the fire of the masculine resilience without filling your cup with the compassion and care from the feminine, the flames will burn out. Likewise, if you remain only in the nurturing energies of the feminine resilient love, you may find that you are not taking the appropriate action steps forward that your soul desires for you. There is a balance that must be struck, and you must use your discernment to determine when either is necessary at any given time.
This is why resilience is a gift. It is a force that supports and encourages you toward your path. Even while fear would talk you out of it.
Spiritual resilience is a requirement for walking your journey in an aligned and elevated position as other energies can also be resilient, which is to say, persistent. If you have long-held habits of worrying, the mind will be incredibly resilient against efforts to remediate this. The brain has wiring in it that has been reinforced for many decades for many people. Fearful thinking is persistent, as are negative thoughts that reinforce poor self-image or critical thinking that continually makes one feel that they are insufficient. These habits of the mind are resilient, as the mind can also be strong and seemingly unmovable in its commitments.
But remember, the soul will always be stronger than the mind. The mind works only with shadows and illusions. It may control your behaviour, at times, but it can never interfere with your soul or the truth of who you are on a soul level. So, when you use your spiritual resilience to continually choose new thoughts, breathe through the fear, and take more loving and aligned action, you are retraining your mind, rewiring these habits. With your commitment, you will always succeed. The truth of who you are, which is love, will always overcome the illusions and fears of the mind.
Do not let resilience become a tool of self-punishment. Do not be demanding or committed to an unrealistic expectation, an expectation set for you by the mind. Do not let the mind fool you into thinking that resilience is a tool to use to become what it wants you to be, or what your wounds think you should be. Resilience is not to make you perfect or better or more loveable.
Resilience is a spiritual force you can draw on that will continually ask you to remember: you already are perfect and you already are Love. And it is from inhabiting that space of knowing that spiritual resilience requires you to choose your actions in a way that aligns with these truths. It does not demand perfection, though it does take discipline and discernment. It does not encourage you to exhaust yourself, though it does ask you to both challenge yourself and continually return to nurture yourself.
And this is the key: resilience is a force that will always guide you home, when you tap into it from a space of knowing that your home is already within you. It is not interested in external validation or approval. It knows that your reward is in the feeling in your body when you stay aligned with your truth, even when the mind seeks validation or external recognition. The satisfaction of using your resilience to serve your inner satisfaction is the most aligned and joy-producing expression of this tool, of this gift.
And it is not a gift to take lightly. It is a gift that you should use everyday to encourage yourself, support yourself and nurture yourself. Resilience will support you in pushing beyond your comfort zone, and it will push you to comfort yourself when it is time for you to tend to your upsets or fears. It will never rush you, judge you, or shame you for where you are on your journey. It only asks that you return to it in love, truth, and a sincere desire to grow and evolve.
For when you truly have a sincere desire to evolve, the Universe opens up for you and will support your growth with opportunities, with challenges, and with abundant love and support. It is your greatest teacher, and resilience is a gift that assists you in being a balanced, aligned, awake and aware student who longs to be the best version of themselves that they can be, but knows to equally accept where they are in this given moment.
Allow resilience to hold you and propel you toward your highest and most aligned self. Allow it to serve your growth and your joy. Allow it to remind you of your truth and all that is good within you already, as it reminds you, too, that you are worthy of all you seek. Resilience will reward you. Accept its gift and allow both its flames and its warmth to encourage you and nurture you as needed.