Those who know me in real life or even just through this blog already know that I am naturally attentive to synchronistic events; experience has shown me that coincidences are not merely random occurrences, but they often hide a message. It’s as if life is winking at us… Here we are, between the 8th and 11th of November (11-11-2020 – yes, I know, a blessing for New-Agers, whom I greet with sympathy 😉 ), a period during which I received various messages with the word RESILIENCE[1] in them. It started with a WhatsApp message from a psychologist friend, a simple heart with the word “resilience.” Then a video by Selene Calloni Williams, a student of the great James Hillman, whom I enjoy listening to from time to time. Next, an Instagram message from an Irish friend with a beautiful text by Charles Eisenstein. Moreover, I am still busy translating an interdisciplinary article by a professor from a Californian university that unites art, meditation, and the latest discoveries in neuroscience. In the last three days, the word resilience has been popping up everywhere, like mushrooms after the rain. In mathematics, one plus one equals two, but in the realm of the Soul, which I visit quite often, one plus one is a first wink, and if there are two or three more, the alarm goes off! So, armed with the voice recorder on my mobile phone, I noted down the initial thoughts.
In her video, S. C. Williams quotes a famous sentence from memory, which coincidentally (!) I have stuck on my refrigerator some time ago (a purchase from my last trip to London): life is not about waiting for the storm to pass but learning how to dance in the rain.
In this unprecedented historical period that we ALL are experiencing on our planet, it is evident to everyone that, as usual, a true WAR has immediately broken out. Read the newspapers, watch television, and you will notice, as I have, that the most frequently used words are: defeat, battle, war, deaths, positive (poor adjective, it used to be a lovely one, even desirable: now being positive is a horrible thing), and so on.
A neuroscientist would say that the entire world of information spreads fear, using our “reptilian brain,” i.e. our oldest and most primitive brain, which we needed in caves to avoid being devoured by saber-toothed tigers. A very few remind us that throughout the ages, human beings have ALSO been endowed by Mother Nature with a marvelous neocortex, the seat/transmitter-receiver of everything that makes us delightfully HUMAN, namely: empathy, imagination, idealism, and a long list of higher emotions. In short, we are in 2020, and we still think and act like we did in the Lower Paleolithic, to the point of allowing, for example, seventeen million minks to be killed out of fear of a supposed viral mutation (if you missed this umpteenth madness, there you have it). But I don’t want to sadden you.
Life is not just about teddy bears, and we agree on that. But there is a big difference between resistance and resilience. Or fighting and fortitude. The same difference that exists between an axe and bamboo.
Those, like me and many of my friends who practice Tui Shou, Taijichuan and Qigong, know well that we avoid frontal attacks as much as possible, preferring to harness the force of our “opponent,” their momentum, and turn it to our advantage (often quite literally). Laozi would say that we should be like water – Yin – that is, instead of contrasting obstacles, embracing their form. Roses and flowers, among others, know that to reach the sunlight, sometimes it is necessary to exert force – but beware! Force in this case means momentum, energy; it is not a conflict or some exhausting coercion.
I have always been fascinated by plants that grow in the most improbable places, like the humble dandelion that opens this article, which I drew years ago while sitting on the steps of the countryside house where I lived. Or like this sunflower, born from a heap of abandoned sand on a building site.
Sometimes, it is truly disheartening to see how we continually fall back into the same habitual and counterproductive behaviors. The insane obsession with control that has plagued us for centuries still does not let go its grip, although it is time for it to do so. Control, effort, fatigue, progress driven by the “after me, the deluge” attitude, profit at any cost, and the accumulation of tons of any sorts of gadgets and money to protect ourselves from who knows what, are ideas so deeply ingrained in our minds that when we see a sunflower growing in what seems like a hostile environment, we can’t help but think about how much it must have struggled to emerge from the earth. We forget that both the dandelion and the sunflower grow with the strength of their longing/love for the warm rays of the sun and with the nourishment provided by the soil, and that the entire universe supports them!
Moreover, we are no longer capable of seeing that trusting in this wonderful life force always generates Beauty, because Life takes the utmost care of itself in all the forms it manifests, INCLUDING HUMANS.
By analogy, what is the equivalent for us human beings of the loving call of the sun and the nourishment of the earth for a plant? What could make us act and live without selling our souls, without destroying everything we touch (you may have noticed that according to the aforementioned article on saber-toothed tigers, we are likely co-responsible for their extinction)? Is it possible to stop constantly feeling threatened, as helpless victims of a cruel fate? Is it possible to learn how to dance under and with the rain?
I dislike clichéd phrases, and I’ve never been a fan of the messages in chocolates or fortune cookies (they often cause more cavities than the sugar itself), and surely everyone can find their own answer to this question (it’s important to ask it, nonetheless!).
I can tell you what helps me. My inner sunshine is the warmth I feel in my heart when I see the happiness of another living being. Whether it’s a purring cat for whom I’ve prepared the perfect nest, or a woman who, after years of dedicating herself to the family, rediscovers the pleasure of creating, expressing herself, and sharing her discoveries; or even a man who is always tired and melancholic but finds a youthful passion and transforms it into his main activity… I could give you thousands of examples, and I know you have many too.
What has driven me since childhood – amongst cloudy periods, of course, as it happens to everyone – is an unwavering trust in Life, because I know from experience that Life is infinitely wiser, more generous, and richer in meaning than any thought that could ever arise in my small, limited, and often hard mind. This same trust (and I don’t care if you think I’m naive), even in this difficult period already allows me to glimpse beyond the tragic veil of events a light on the horizon, a rebirth. This trust is the sweet fruit of Life itself: I also have an inner statistic that makes me see clearly that “failures” have truly made me grow, most of the time. Each time Life has beaten me down, it has also made me more transparent to the Soul’s rays and more aware of the invisible threads that weave through all existence. It took me years to realize that no event is ever AGAINST me, until, as Laozi says, I finally understood “the benefits of non-action” (Dao De Jing, chapter 43), meaning that if I do not oppose the event with force, if I apply wu-wei, non-action, or non-interference, then an uncontaminated space opens within me. From this still and open space, every event, even seemingly harmful ones, always reveal a hidden gift, something that will teach me to dance in the storm and perhaps even joyfully lead others into the dance.
As a closing for this short article, let me wish for you to have an ideal that warms your heart like the sun, a trust in life that makes you as steady as a rock and simultaneously as fluid as water, and as flexible as bamboo.
[1] Originally, in the title of this article I had put Resilience instead of Fortitude; recently, I changed my mind, as I felt from the start that the word resilience is not… strong enough! What I feel is that resilience primarily focuses on adaptability and recovery from adversity, and the word is borrowed from engineering, as it is originally assigned to metals and other materials. Fortitude, on the other hand, emphasizes moral and emotional courage to endure and stay true to one’s Authentic Heart.
Sparks of Wonder 