Resilience Isn’t the Same as “Bouncing Back”
In common cultural understanding, resilience usually refers to our ability to “bounce back” after a challenge or hardship. Our bodies can be resilient; so can our minds, our relationships, and our aspirations.
We often think of grand accomplishments: the injured athlete who goes on to win gold; the unlucky-in-love co-worker who finally finds his soul mate; the artist who never gives up on her dreams and finally lands the leading role.
In the framework of mindfulness, resilience is about much more than just pushing through struggle in order to win. It’s less focused on overcoming and more interested in knowing how to integrate life as it’s happening. There’s steadiness, and there’s also wisdom.
In this excerpt from her book Deep Resilience, teacher Melli O’Brien explores what it means to be resilient and how this mindful quality actually reveals our true selves.
In everyday language, we talk mainly about “the body,” by which we mean our physical body, and “the mind.” This is sometimes referred to by some teachers and traditions as “the thinking mind,” “the human mind”, or “the ego.” To use the analogy of the ocean, the thinking mind, when compared to the depths of awareness, is like the small waves on the surface of who you are.
Your deeper nature is able to observe both your physical body and your mind, all thoughts and emotions; therefore, it is more fundamentally and essentially you. It is the deepest, the most core aspect of who you are.
The deep self is awareness, the part of you that is aware of everything else: aware of every feeling, every thought and every perception that you ever experience in your life. All thoughts, feelings and perceptions arise, unfold and dissolve in awareness like waves coming and going on the surface of the ocean.
Some people on a personal development or spiritual path make their mind into an enemy to overcome, subdue or get control of. They may even want to “destroy the ego” or get rid of certain parts of themselves. In my experience, this attitude sets up an inner battle with ourselves that aggravates the mind, brings tension and stress into our system and blocks our ability to wake up to our deeper nature and higher potential as human beings.
Read the entire article on Mindful.org: