Resilience Magic 2. How to Flourish in Unconventional Times

Adapated from an original image by Andriyko Podilnyk on Unsplash

Here are some questions you may wish to ask to help your investigation into yourself.

This person looking back at me, in the reflection as I read these words, what is it that he/she loves? What habits does she practice (we’ll stick with ‘he’ for ease of writing, but we’re gender neutral here and in all meaning of third person I’m always referring to ‘you’)? What ecstasies arouse him? Who are his dead? What’s growing in his garden? What delights him? What intoxicates him? What empowers him? Where is he from? What does he care about? What will be his significance on this Earth? What books are in his library? What history has he lived through? What dreams has he had come true and are still yet to come true, longed for? What touches his soul? What fascinates him? What does he like to talk about, to who, how, where, and when? What hobbies does he practice? Who are his gods? What does he shop for and why? What is he curious about? What enchants him? What does he find uncanny? What does he think his personal magic is? What does he think resilience means? How does he find resilience in troubled times? How does he find it for others? How does he bounce back, with or forward from uncertainty and challenges? What is his nature? What drink does he like and what drink would he buy a friend? What’s his music? Who is his network of friends? What wisdom does he have already to impart? Who is his lover or partner? With what, who, when, how does he entwine?"

There’s more.

"What does he find sacred? What is his personal glory? How deep is his soul? What are his memories? What does he reflect and reminisce on? How does he feel? What makes him feel sensuous? Sad? Joy? What does he ponder on at night? What are his nightmares? His hopes? Who is his community? What’s his personal preferred alternative future? What’s his vision for tomorrow? What does he tell his children about tomorrow? What did his parents tell him way back when? Who are his people now? Where is his elegance? Can he heal others? Has he healed himself? Has he wounded himself? Where does he want to live, geographically? Where does he feel ‘home’ is? What’s his personal philosophy of life? What or where are his rough edges? How does he respond to trauma? What are his coping strategies? What has he struggled through? What would he willingly struggle through again if push came to shove? How does he ‘use’ pain? What does he appreciate – in himself and in others? What lights his fire? What pushes his buttons? What would he hunt for?"

And finally, ask: 

"When will he begin?"

Ready then. Here’s the map. And a torch. The path’s ahead, just a bit badly lit right now. Your eyes will become accustomed to the dark. All set? I bless this trip. Blessed be all things. So, let us proceed.

What are the ordinary things that you can do everything to help yourself, your friends, and families with their resilience? Most of us are already resilient, it is not rare nor fixed as a trait. Ann Mastens, an expert in the field, calls this ordinary magic. The art and the science that we bring to this process (simple stuff like gratitude, optimism etc) can elevate it to resilience magic. The expert Dr. Lucy Hone, author of the book Resilient Grieving, says that resilience has four purposes, four ways of being useful in our lives. Firstly, it helps you to overcome your childhood wounds and mend any childhood neglect or problems from that time still unresolved in your adult self. Secondly, that resilience helps you steer through the everyday worries, the minor stress we all tend to live through and sweat over every day. Thirdly that you can use resilience to tackle all the traumatic major upheavals that life must throw at us – the big bad stuff, like pandemics. Fourthly, it is about a proactive path to the future. The first three functions can be classified as reactive, how you and I respond to life. The final utility is creative, generative (or regenerative) how you can reach out, build, grasp, grow, adapt and evolve through and out of change. It helps us with all the bumps and hills – big or small.

The magic of resilience helps us deal with our red warning zones; Dr. Chris Johnstone imparts to us. These are times of utter extreme challenge (coronavirus and its subsequent lockdown is a great example of a very real red zone event). Resilience takes the root in Positive Psychology (advocated by experts at Pennsylvania University, Martin Seligman and Karen Reivich). Its use is in everyday life to help us get through and to adapt to an uncertain environment.

Resilience is about the importance of community - looking after family, co-workers, neighbours, children and looking out for them as they look out for you. Resilience is about the importance of gratitude - noticing the small things that you are grateful for that are in your life and that make a difference. It is about building a new-normal by re-establishing routines in a traumatic environment as soon as possible. When your whole world is threatened, routines tell your poor old brain that it is safe again and that it can take baby steps to recovery.

Everyday resilience - as part of a resilience magic practice - is to notice the small things, to get the glass even a tiny bit full. To hunt the good stuff and appreciate what is there, rather than dwell on what is lost. To choose where we focus our attention. This strength-based approach helps us. We have a lot of things to live for in life, the people who have lost their lives to the virus or their livelihoods and homes to the economic recession do not have that choice.

Dr. Lucy Hone invites us to ask ourselves: So, now that all hope is lost, what am I hoping for now? We learn to live with the sorrow. Hope is not a single entity. Having lost a very big hope, she says, underneath it we have all these little hopes that mean something. What possibilities can come out of depression, shock, or grief. What comes after the doom, what comes next? What positive human experience can come here? Whatever you face there’s always different ways it can go.

Dr. Chris Johnstone uses a simple tool I love called the Spider Diagram to shows that there are always different outcomes. It helps give us a perspective check and identify as he calls it a new landscape of possibilities emerging. You can see what is more likely, what would be the worst outcome and what would be the best. Your strengths are allies that you can draw on to help you get the best outcome. You can find something useful to offer out of any experience. For example, Dr. Lucy Hone was bereaved (“someone took a croquet mallet, a wrecking-ball to my life and smashed it into smithereens”).

Adversity does not discriminate. Bad things happen to us all and the good news is that we are innately equipped to survive. Victor Frankl is also a wonderful writer to read on this topic.

So then back to the question in hand, how to flourish in challenging times? Is there some sort of guide we can follow to care for our soul and self in these highly unconventional Corona horriblis?

The old magicians tell us that we can make fire from ice, that we can transform something into something else. What if we were to see this time as an invitation to journey to our whole health, albeit via the alchemical path of suffering and pain? Following these ancient ways of magic and merging them with modern psychology, we can explore the hinter lands of our personhood within. We can integrate body and mind, perhaps even transmute. Just like the Universe, we ourselves are a great riddle and mystery. For you are a sacred being, a creative self and imaginative architect of being. 

You are angel, daemon, elemental and energy. You are logos. You are creative substance moulded by human soul, attended by Hermes the boundaries magician. You are a mystery, a medicine, a wheel, a dance, and a circle. You are splendour and compassion and a child of the stars. You are vibration, truth, beauty, and love. You are your whole archetypal self, far more than the sum of your projections, components, and parts. You are Order and Chaos. You are the blackened death of ego and the hidden stone within. You are the green magic, the water, the soil, and the wind. You are storm and hurricane, rain, and sun. You are magic. You have the power to re-enchant your world. You can breathe fire and light. You are liminal. You are imagination. You are dreaming. You are spirit and body. You are meta awareness. You are physicality. You are a centring force. You are resilience magic and it is you. You can be steward of your soul.

In your darkness, you can find precious brilliance. Light then is the gift of depressive melancholia. You are the substance and weight of your being; you are your own god within curing your disease. You are the invisible immaterial and the matter. You powerfully ensoul your own world. You are golden, a garden of shining spirit. You are medicine and doctor. You are heart with depth and wisdom encoded inside. Your royal road to wellbeing is your earthly responsibility. So, nourish, work, play, create, garden, parent and write. Set your imagination to work, be curious about your own opus – for you are a piece of work. And doing your daily work (making your home, getting married, raising your children, engaging with your soul) this will be your ritual. You are exceptional.

We are all our own crisis and own seed of opportunity. We are our own signals and receivers of power from rifts in the cosmic game. We are Babylon, the Kali Yuga, and a broken vessel. And yet we are Aquarian soaring air surfing interstellar waves reaching for a new century and millennia. An ordinary life, a myth, a meaning, a crack in time, a curator of soul and a star born. We are roots and hollows. We are quests and fantasies. We are veiled souls beneath shadows. We are healers in the underworld, bringers of cures and nurses of therapy. We are megalithic. We are wet, moist, green, fertile, shady woods of trees. 

We simmer, stew and boil – transformed by our imaginations. We are magicians. You are magic – your own remedy and ritual for every day.