This Rethinking Impulse explores how ancient philosophical wisdom offers timeless strategies for resilience, empowering us to embrace change, …
Rethinking: Resilience – Timeless Wisdom for Modern Strength (THOR5099)
The national park put out a press release last summer after human-bear encounters were on the rise. The message was to reiterate that bear spray is not to be used like mosquito repellent – as some people assumed. You do not spray it on yourself in the hopes it does the work for you. You are responsible for your awareness of your surroundings and how you interact.
Bear spray is for those who participate in the wilderness. The wilderness is the bear’s (deer, moose, cougar, wolf, owl, eagle) backyard. So pay attention and be prepared.
In the event you feel you are being directly threatened by a bear you spray it in the eyes, as you shake and scream, and you run like hell. Hopefully it deters the bear because it runs faster than you.
As eluded to above some people, at the trailhead, sprayed their body with the chemicals thinking, I guess, it would be offensive to the ursine palate so the bear would hold its nose and walk off. Not true.
Likewise a misunderstanding of our relationship with AI can get us into trouble. Primarily if we insist on a passive/aggressive relationship where we are happy to have the advantages of AI assisted living but claim we are victims of corporate greed when we lose our job due to automation.
Often we don’t think twice about punching in an address to the GPS on our phone and being told where to go. Granted this is more automation than adaptive AI. But it is a gateway drug into normalizing tech permeation of daily life at the expense of our human ability to: make our decisions, make mistakes, share, connect, ask questions, ask for directions, get our hands dirty, get off our ass.
Speaking personally, I need to push back in small ways; because fighting big AI would be dangerously foolish and tiring.
We can generate a little Push Back:
By putting down the phone.
By believing in the original AI – Authentic Intelligence which is connected to purpose, human, humanity, soul, longing, journey.
By sharing more (and putting less energy into forgiving = get over yourself).
By resisting Google = wondering about the origin or a word, puzzling out how something works, grabbing a book or asking an old fart their experience.
By loving your intrinsic value as much as your need to make $ and the stress we attach to this.
N.B. – How to differentiate between Arti I and Auth I?
Longing – I doubt an algorithm can long, like you can, for connection with : your higher self; with others and with the greater story.
If this were a series, this would be part 3 of a 3-part series, including the previous 2 posts about praying and forgiving. Perhaps they are a couple of your pastimes …?
To finish the title of this post, it should read in full: You are Practical, Real, Sincere, and Growing Strong. Nice, eh? And at the same time, there is a certain degree of accuracy to that statement.
This post then takes the next step, after praying and forgiving, by being aware of your capacity to not only to forgive but make a living with forgiveness. No. You are not a professional forgiver. That must be a dirty job; just ask a priest.
Make a living in the sense that you are responsible for your own response to your destiny. Despite what happens to you in your childhood, youth, and marriage. Despite the reality that your destiny scares you. Yet, if you can see it for what it is, this speaks of a freedom grounded in truth, respect, and power: The Truth you are entrusted with to embody, share, and project into what is next. Respect for the decisions and experiences of your journey. Grace and accomplishment with the Power of the human and their kaleidoscope of abilities.
This is why, when we can forgive, there is so much waiting for us. So much acceptance awaits us in the realms that oscillate above pettiness and grudges. These realms emanate peace and perception. They generally live at a frequency that is accessible above daily life. This means you have to do the work if that is what you want. Meaning, do you want your unique expression of human to congregate with like-minded people?
If yes. That work can be called Emotional Agility.
The previous post entitled P.R.A.Y. ended with a reference to how praying can be a catalyst for forgiveness.
You can think about it in a way that airlines permit you a limited amount of luggage on a flight. If you exceed that limit, they have a price list that rises in leaps in bounds for each additional piece.
For us, in daily life, after you have an encounter with someone that goes poorly, you can insist on reconnecting to the hurt it caused you, or you can learn from the moment and move on. When you can’t move on, it is like you have 3 extra pieces of luggage you feel you need to bring on the flight, regardless of the cost. If you are able to ‘move on’, then it is like boarding the plane with just a carry-on bag.
The carry-on bag contains your Emotional Agility. Emotional Agility refers to the human capacity to synthesize elevated emotion in daily life. In this case, the elevated emotion would be Forgiveness.
There are lots of reasons why not to forgive and many other reasons to forgive. If we forgive the person, then it feels like we are accepting their disrespect of our feelings. This makes us feel small and impotent and not valued. Who wants to give a free pass to the person who made you feel like that? Not me. So forgiveness might not be a matter of whether to close down or reopen your flow of connection with the other person. It might be to make your persistence toward self-awareness the priority. As a result, the hurt you felt gets minimized indirectly by your energy being focused on growing yourself and not on being a victim of someone else’s lack of awareness.
So now you can loop back to the cross-section of the word P.R.A.Y.
P – practical, R – real, A – attitude, Y – yaw. The way you pray is 100% yours. However, the motive of praying is to let the light into your life where it needs to reach at the moment. And when possible, to reflect that light onto others. That light being the light of the response to your prayer, with the persuasion of your zest for life. Again, this is an example of Emotional Agility.
Forgiveness, when possible, is in your favour. Whether it is them forgiving you – again. Or you forgiving them as a by-product of your desire to keep growing.
To pray is universal.
It is often depicted by putting your hands together in front of your chest, closing your eyes, and asking your higher power for something.
I hope that works.
Prayer has more nuance than Hollywood would have us believe.
When we pray, it can be exclusively or a combination of fun, religious, powerful, and spontaneous.
To pray is natural, healthy, helpful, elevating, and liberating.
The experience can be more meditative or more ‘talkative’.
It can help to train us in how to live the way we want to.
There is an element of give and take.
And it might not have the ‘answer’ you are looking for nor deliver your salvation as you feel you need it.
P.R.A.Y. – A cross-section.
P – practical. If you seek the light in life, then what can happen is your life becomes an offering of light to others. Which is very practical.
R – real. It is an accurate reading of your energy at the moment and the power you have to communicate your intentions.
A – attitude. Sincere intention to allow the intelligence of ‘new’ to arrive in the now as it was meant to be. Simple yet deep and often difficult.
Y – yaw. This means to leave some space. Call it having an open heart, or simply carving out a little time in your day for something unplanned and non-personal to enlighten your thoughts and grace your life.
Which has a lot to do with Forgiveness – which is for next time.
Photo by Fayette Reynolds M.S.: https://www.pexels.com
What activates T cells?
They are activated on the surface of antigen-presenting cells, which mature during the innate immune responses triggered by an infection. The innate responses also dictate what kind of effector cell a helper T cell will develop into and thereby determine the nature of the adaptive immune response elicited.
From that description of T-cell function above you can see your body has an innate response on a cellular level to maintain your physical well being.
When it comes to the vibrancy of your soul connection life requires you to develop your response. For that we can embrace our Emotional Agility.
What is Emotional Agility? It is the natural capacity to synthesize daily and devotion emotion.
Like T-cells will morph into the type of cell they are asked to be by your thymus, your soul is petitioning your personal readiness to respond to the daily tasks and development opportunities of human life.
As T-cells are in conversation with your genes as a way to keep you healthy your soul is seeking your Emotional Agility to engage the challenges and possibilities in your life.
Daily emotions are your feelings that your ego works with to ensure your continuance within the cultural domain. Devotion emotion is your emotional power to rise above your personal needs and wants into service to something greater than you.
While we are all active with both of these emotional dialects often our fluency is greater in our ego than in our service. This highlights the homework we all have as we become responsible for our own energy. The task is to be aware of what we are resonating in our thoughts, words, actions and intentions. This entails investigating how why arrive at our thoughts and actions. Do you want thoughts of anger and judgement? Or do you want thoughts that bring solutions and intentions that attract forgiveness?
341
341 is a useful tool for this situation of looking for ways to grow. It involves three ‘fors’: Forgive, Foretake and Foretell.
The intention, when using 341, is to forgive yourself or others. Strangely, the focus is not on forgiveness. Taking responsibility for your energy is, as they say, the crux of the matter. This will drastically minimize blame and guilt in yourself and others – which is such a service to all involved. What you are doing is deciding to be responsible for you energetic resonance.
Your resonance is composed of your beliefs that are the reason that power everything you do. Everything you do or think or say or intend exists in an energetic sense. You may regret what you do and not say what you think but it all still exists in your personal history. You are supposed to be the author of that story unless you are letting something else control what say and feel and want.
Whether your beliefs are unconscious or not, you are responsible for them, the actions they support and the impact they have on yourself and others. This is the Foretake part of the process. It is a lifelong process, a daily task. So you might need to update some of your beliefs because we can easily assume the beliefs of our family, our religion, the culture when in fact it is not something we want to uphold as a human. We can talk about updating beliefs another time.
Taking responsibility for your energy, your mood means you are not retreating into victimhood. Yes bad things happen to us or around us. Sometimes they aren’t your fault. Still you are responsible for your resonance. Remember we are minimizing blame and guilt as a byproduct of our growth. You are not responsible for the actions of others. You are not a martyr. Taking responsibility converts what would have been an ego reaction to a situation into a soul response. A soul response is clean and strong and true. If that is what you want.
Which leads to Foretell.
What do you want? What do you want to become? To uphold? To radiate to your spouse and children?
Where can you shine your light to make what you want to uphold a reality? When you can forgive and foretake you have more freedom with your light. You can shine your light where you want. Because your light will cause growth in others – because that is what light does – when we let it.
What can you be in service to that will create the conditions for what you want to uphold?
To do this in the world today you need to be agile. Emotionally Agile. That way you elevate the daily experience which allows the flow between the daily and the devotional realms to be a little more fluid.
SEB-3 Sincere Energy Bookends.
This is the third in a 5-part series about your personal energy service.
On a constant basis our energy is diverted in various directions for work, children, spouse, parents, neighbours and of course bad drivers.
With these interactions there is a three-way give and take between: your energy and their energy. This takes place within the energy of the planet/moment.
And as you know, we are using others for their energies while at the same time they are pulling energy from us. It’s a reciprocal exchange of power. Maybe you give a little bit more than you get with some people. Maybe you get a little bit more than you give with others. That’s part of the ‘ebb and flow’ of energy seeking its best expression.
Of course there are other energy engagements that drain energy out of you. These interactions leave you feeling tired or angry because the other person is unhealthy or unhappy. We have all been that person at some point ourselves. This is the up and down of our mental/emotional/physical/chemical rollercoaster. And the sooner we can be trending up in any of these categories the better!! Because life becomes an opportunity when one is seeking the light of growth.
On this trajectory of seeking we can be graced with the perception of why to be of service. That service can be to the planet, your spirit or other people. Helping others climb out of the temporary trough they are moving through is a simple yet powerful service. It’s a service we can offer a person who doesn’t have the internal momentum or external traction to exit the trough. They are feeling stuck. Your service can be like a tow truck that pulls them out of the ditch.
Life is challenging. That challenge feels rewarding when it helps us to dig deep and reveal our innate resources to feel a sense of accomplishment. It’s demoralizing when it just feels too much.
For any and all of us it is fabulous to have help.
Help is available. Help comes from the soul you embody; from people who love seeing you grow+glow or from the higher energy realms.
SEB-3 is a handy, lightweight tool to project to someone a wave of belief.
If it helps, tell them that you sent them the light of belief in themselves.
This practice is designed to strengthen your connection with the person who you are sending energy to. A by product is that you are building your powers of visualization and projection.
Whereas this process is quite similar to SEB-1 and SEB-2, aka The ‘Burst’ and the ‘Boost’, the ‘Bookends’ is a longer process. It requires more resistance to outside interference to maintain focus. It’s a micro-challenge to ‘let life be life’ with no judgement. There’s no problem if you hear, see, smell, feel or perceive other influences. They are just as valid as what you are doing. However for this effort your focus is serving the well being of another person.
*****
Steps – Sincere Energy Bookends
-Choose the person you want to send energy to
-Choose your message to them. A single word works well. For example: peace, wellbeing, light. You return to the person and the message at the end of your activity. The idea is to create a constant transmission of energy to them for the duration of your activity.
-Choose your activity, like yoga, cooking, walking the dog, riding the bus etc. This activity will occupy your conscious mind as your sub conscious mind is providing a bridge between the beginning and end of the process.
-Accept the noises of your situation into the fluidity of the present.
-Say the person’s name
-Visualize their face at peace.
-Gently breathe in the light and send it to them in your mind.
-As you do your activity find a mental /physical rhythm that is comfortable and on task.
-Continue to let your surroundings be part of the experience as a way to not get distracted.
-To stay aligned, estimate when you are half way through your activity and say their name again, visualize their face and send them light in a ray of light blue.
-As you finish your activity, visualize them receiving your sincere energy, breathe 3 times and close by saying their name.
*****
It is vital to agree that they owe you nothing for this service. There are no strings attached.
We are simply sending the light of support for who and what they are now.
Try it.
Adjust it to make it work for you.
Share this post.
Let me know how it goes.
This is pretty cool and fun.
It’s a little quest for you in nature to further integrate your life with the planet.
Scan the barcode. It may take a little hunting around to get set up but give it a go.
Let me know what you think. Thank you.
https://actionbound.com/bound/wild-bound
Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com
SEB-2 SINCERE ENERGY BOOST
This is the second in a 5-part series about your personal energy service.
Many things pull our energy in various directions including work, children, spouse, parents, neighbours and of course bad drivers. With these interactions there is a give and take between your energy and their energy within the energy of the place/planet/moment.
And as we know, we are using others for their energies while they are doing the same thing with us. It’s a reciprocal exchange of power. Maybe you give a little bit more than you get with some people. Maybe you get a little bit more than you give with others. That’s the ‘ebb and flow’.
Of course there are other energy engagements that drain energy out of you. The interaction leaves you feeling tired or angry because the other person is unhealthy or unhappy. Basically they are making you responsible for their wellbeing. We all know what that feels like as we have been on both sides of this equation at some point ourselves. This is the up and down of our mental/emotional/physical/chemical rollercoaster. And the sooner we can be trending up the better!!
The more we are responsible for our own energy ‘give and take’ then we can be can organize our energy for service. That service can be to the planet, your spirit or other people. Helping others climb out of the temporary trough they are moving through is a simple yet powerful skill.
It’s a service for another person who doesn’t have the internal momentum or external traction to exit the trough – and gets stuck.
Life is challenging. Challenge feels great when it helps us to dig deep and reveal our innate resources to join the trajectory of growth. It’s demoralizing when it just feels too much.
For any and all of us it is fabulous to have help.
Help is available. Help from; the soul you embody; from people who love seeing you grow+glow and from the higher energy realms.
SEN-2 is a handy, lightweight tool to give someone a’boost’ of energy.
If you feel it is useful, tell them that you sent them the light of belief in them.
This one minute practice is designed to strengthen your connection with the person who you are sending energy to. A by product is that you are building your powers of visualization and projection.
Whereas this process is quite similar to SEB-1, aka The ‘Burst’, the ‘Boost’ being 4 times longer requires slightly more resistance to outside interference to maintain focus. Here the art of focus is a micro-challenge to ‘let life be life’ with no judgement. There’s no problem if you hear, see, smell, feel or perceive other influences. They are just as valid as what you are doing. However for this one minute your focus is serving the well being of another person.
*****
Steps – SINCERE ENERGY BOOST
-Accept the noises and fluidity of life around you.
-Close your eyes
-Establish a posture that is comfortable and on task.
-Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth three times; then just normally through your nose.
-Say the person’s name
-Visualize their face at peace.
-Gently breathe in the light and send it to them in your mind.
-Continue to let your surroundings be part of the experience as a way to not get distracted.
-Estimate when you are half way through and say their name again, visualize their face and send them light in a light blue colour.
-As you draw to a close, breathe 3 times and finish by saying their name.
*****
It is vital to agree that they owe you nothing for this service. There are no strings attached.
We are simply sending the light of support for who and what they are now.
Try it.
Adjust it to make it work for you.
Share this post.
Let me know how it goes.
SEB-1 SPECIFIC ENERGY BURST
This is the first in a 5-part series about personal energy focus.
Many things require our energy including work, children, spouse, parents, neighbours and of course bad drivers. With some of those interactions there is a give and take of your energy, their energy, the energy of the place/planet and of the moment. Those interactions are for us to use as we grow.
Really it is us using others as well as us being used by other people. A reciprocal exchange of energy. Maybe you give a little bit more than you get with some people. Maybe you get a little bit more than you give with others. There is an ‘ebb and flow’. Generally it feels good, it works out in the short and long term.
Of course there are other energy engagements that pull energy out of you. The other person can be unhealthy or unhappy. We all know what that feels like as we have been there at some point. That is the up and down of our mental/emotional/physical/chemical rollercoaster. The sooner we can be trending up the better.
We can be of service to others so they can rise up out of the temporary trough they are moving through.
It’s a service for a person who doesn’t have the internal momentum or external traction to exit the trough – and gets stuck.
Life is challenging. That’s great when it helps us to dig deep and reveal our innate resources to join the trajectory of growth. It’s demoralizing when it just feels too much.
It is fabulous to have help.
Help is available from: the soul you have, from others who love seeing you grow/glow and from the higher energy realms.
This is a handy, lightweight tool that you can use to be of service to others. It’s one of the options you have for you to access if you wish.
SEB-1 SPECIFIC ENERGY BURST
During the day you can send your light of support to someone.
As it happens hundreds of times a day something comes to mind and you are thinking of a person: family or colleague etc. You may love and appreciate them. The SEB-1 is a way to strengthen the clarity and unique flow in that relationship.
Or, it may be a strained relationship due to a recent argument or longstanding friction. This is a way to highlight the importance of the person despite the current state of your relationship.
It’s ‘Specific’ because it is just to that person. It is not about how good or angry they make you feel. It is you sharing how they live in the light in your mind. It is about using your mental capacity to send them support – whether or not they ever feel it or even know it happens.
It is a ‘Burst’ because it is just 15 seconds long. Everyone is busy and in our phone frenzied life and we easily get distracted without even knowing it. In an instant. So 15 seconds.
You can be waiting at the traffic light in the car and do SEB1. You can be sitting on the bus. Or you can stop scrolling on your phone in bed and send a burst of light.
*****
SEB-1 STEPS
-If it safe close your eyes.
-Say the person’s name (aloud or in your head)
-Picture them in your mind being content
-breathe in the light where you are and send it to them 3 times
-Smile
-Close the session by saying their name again
*****
If you feel it is useful, tell them that you sent them the light of belief in them. Or if not then just let it be.
It is vital to agree that they owe you nothing for this service. There are no strings attached.
We are simply sending the light of support for who and what they are now.
Try it.
Adjust it to make it work for you.
Share this post.
Let me know how it goes.
The Happy Genius Hieroglyph that is Danse Russe
American poet William Carlos Williams penned the 1917 poem Danse Russe:
“If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-
white disc in silken mists
above shining trees,
“If I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!”
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,—
Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household. “
Was the poet a good dancer? Who cares?! He simply danced. Or probably girated and stomped to an unstoppable rhythm.
A man crossing the desert of mid life needs companionship. He must also offer it to himself.
His challenge is not to abandon his creative side even though his focus is the financial demands of now. This refers to the fact there are a few different levels within a man. At daily and devotion levels.
Emotional Agility is the capacity to synthesize daily and devotion emotion. In other words building your life so that your professional life and your family life and your internal life all feed each other.
You make money to provide for your family. In that way your professional success facilitates family satisfaction.
Now to point a little deeper. When you get the time you can create a space for you to generate into your soul life. This can be, instead of listening to your music/podcast/radio in the car you appreciate the moment. It might sound strange to appreciate sitting in traffic on your way to a job with minimal satisfaction. But that is the challenge. To generate the appreciation from a devotional view of embracing middle age even though it seems to not have much in it for your soul.
You determine what gets your focus. Your mind determines what that moment upholds.
Danse Russe as Carpe Diem.
This writing is part of a series that highlights the spirit of the poem Danse Russe by American dentist/poet William Carlos Williams: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46483/danse-russe
Danse Russe is you answering even though you don’t know what the question is.
The question could be what are you becoming; what is this powerful undercurrent I feel??
Your answer is weird. Because you are weird. You don’t look weird but you feel, not weird, but not you.
Seize the day, as they say. Or if that is too hackneyed, let yourself be embraced by the moment. The ‘moment’ could be petitioning an expression of your yearning to blend with its beauty.
So your danse is your way of shaking off the longing in your marriage. Your Danse Russe is your spontaneity in the life stage of now. It is the versatile/vulnerable/volatile you. It’s you growing up, keeping up, wising up.
Your danse is a conversation between the harmony of the moment and your symphony in response. They, harmony and symphony, joke and argue; they appreciate and elevate your danse into something, that while still true to your Middle Aged flow, won’t let you hurt yourself.
Photo by Matheus Natan: https://www.pexels.com
And no my name is not Siri or what’s-her-face.
We have to talk.
Rather you need to listen. I won’t take long – that is the whole point. To put me down. To forget me – on purpose.
We need a break, some time apart. So power me down – turn me off.
You should see yourself – all hunched over, squinting into my screen. In a few years you are going to be a hunchback. Don’t look at me; I’m just calling it as I see it.
And what are you looking for anyway?.
Meaning or connection or happiness? I can connect you to other people and that can bring happiness. But meaning, that is up to you. You won’t find it in your phone.
Yes, I know I take great photos and have lots of funny gifs. But they are not a substitute for reality. There is and never will be an app for breathing the fresh air of a spring morning. No matter how much AI usurps daily life there is no silicon value that can replace greeting your neighbour as you sip your coffee and comment on how well their tomato plants are doing.
So go ahead. Ignore me like you ignore the other people on the elevator. Resist me like you resist talking with that whiner at work. Refuse to engage with me like you do the homeless person begging for money.
Hey. You think you are spontaneous?! You do have options that don’t require a cell phone. Try wondering about stuff as you wait in line at the coffee shop. Or look out the window as you ride the bus. Or even wait in your car at the traffic light for 15 measly seconds.
In those 15 seconds you could appreciate something about nature, send someone a burst of sincere energy or thank your god for being healthy.
PUT me down! HANG me up!
LOOK up! GET out!
Photo by Kendall Hoopes: https://www.pexels.com/
We are all born into 100% Belief – in everything being true to itself.
Along the way we inherited carrier beliefs from family and our surroundings. We usually regurgitate these beliefs to a great extent. We may update them but the expression of the belief but it is likely still in support of the same life meaning.
Or we can use those original and carrier beliefs as a foundation for generating our own.
Our Big B Beliefs are how we feel and think about, for example, a man. What is a man?
Small b beliefs is what we think and feel on a daily basis and apply into daily life. So with our example of a man we ask – What do I believe about me as a man? What powers my expression of a man?
That takes work to keep going through uncertainty on the experience of originality.
It’s good work. It’s work no one else can do for you.
This can develop into our devotional life. A devotional life is how you walk the talk. How you integrate your beliefs into your words and actions and how those words and actions support your human journey.
Living your belief is magnetic. Just look at successful athletes and actors. They believed in their abilities being useful to get what they want.
You can do the same. What do you want ? What do you believe about humans, people, you? How can you put that into daily life? What is the word or phrase; what is the action?
Who me? What do I believe?
I believe a man is capable and willing; creative and determined.
I believe a human development journey is to discover how to accompany the universal spirit on its Creation trajectory. I believe this can be done through making one’s mind and High Emotion available to elevated energies that pack the intelligence of fostering existence at planetary level which in turn support participation in evolution.
The Wild Coach 