Resiliency and Inner Work
Written by Terence Gilbey
Today, many of us are leading hectic, digitally-mediated and frenetic lives. Because of that, it is easy to get disconnected from ourselves, from nature, from each other, and from Spirit. When I talk with our program participants, they often describe busy lives, where events are happening so quickly that they find themselves caught up in an increasingly fast tempo – one set more by machines than by biology or nature. Like Grieg’s famous song, “In the Hall of the Mountain King”, the beat of life just gets faster and faster until it feels as if it is racing forward, relentless and out of control. As a result, people feel trapped and exhausted as they are swept along at the rate of technological change. It is no wonder so many report feelings of stress and anxiety, fear and meaninglessness, disorientation and disassociation. When we lose our connection to the essential heartbeat of the Earth, to the deeper pulse of life, to our own breath, there is nothing to tether us as we are set adrift into the waves of accelerating change. Our nervous systems and relationships suffer the brunt of the pressures of modern life. Unknowingly, we get out of sync with the natural rhythm of our life.
Shibuya Crossing, Toyko - photo by Daryan Shamkhali, Unsplash
There is a philosophical tenet that says, “As within, so without.” This is a powerful phrase teaching us that the outside world, our outer experience, is a reflection of our inner world. And it reminds us that when life starts to feel like a boa constrictor tightening around us, it is not a call for us to exert even more outward control on our schedules and to-do lists, but rather a signal that it is time to turn inward, to breathe more deeply, and to find the spaciousness that is always available within.
At the Findhorn Foundation we practice meditation as a way to quiet the noise of our lives and find steadiness and wisdom. As we described in our September 4th article, “Attunement and the Power of Inner Listening,” meditation is a gentle way to open and connect to the Sacred within and find more joy, peace, resilience and focus. The benefits of meditation are well-documented across many disciplines and include reducing stress and anxiety, enhancing mood, offsetting depression, boosting cognitive function, supporting healthy sleep patterns, decreasing blood pressure, increasing self-awareness, and even promoting loving kindness. It’s almost as if meditation is too good to be true! So why can it be so hard to actually take the time to meditate? And even more, to take the time to meditate regularly?
A colleague at a previous job once explained to me how she “could never meditate because she just couldn’t sit still long enough.” I smiled when I heard that and thought to myself, “Hmmm…that might be exactly the reason to start meditating!” It reminds me of a Zen proverb about meditation:
If you don’t have time to meditate for an hour everyday, you should meditate for two hours.
Photo by Matthew Alexander, Unsplash
When I read this twenty years ago, the statement itself was counterintuitive to me, and that wasn’t even considering how the idea of taking “hours” for meditation seemed almost comical to consider in my life. During that period, I was traveling extensively for work, trying to balance difficult family dynamics, and caught-up in the day-to-day grind. It felt like there was never enough time in my schedule and I regularly faced disappointment in not being able to do “more.” I struggled to find five minutes of quiet in my day, let alone sixty! It wasn’t until I started seriously studying Kadampa Buddhism a few years later that I realised just how disempowering my busy lifestyle was, and how much suffering I had unintentionally created for myself. With that knowledge, the meaning of the Zen proverb suddenly resonated with me. I realised that if meditation acts to calm us, regulate our nervous system, bring us into the present moment, and connect us to Spirit, then what better time to do it than when we are feeling stressed and overwhelmed by life? It makes a certain sense – the more stress, the more meditation to neutralise it.
“By growing my own meditation practice over the years I have learned that shifting into the timelessness and peace of meditation is always just a breath away.”
Meditation creates a sense of expansiveness and ease and often opens us to a sweet essence of well-being and possibility. It is a way to get into flow with ourselves and our life. When we set aside our troubles for just a short period of time and focus inward, the trials of life seem less all-encompassing and our perspective is different when we come back to them. This has a calming effect. By growing my own meditation practice over the years I have learned that shifting into the timelessness and peace of meditation is always just a breath away.
That said, if you have struggled to meditate, you are not alone. I certainly know it wasn’t easy when I started out. Each of us is complex in our own way. We have life stories and experiences that have brought us to this point in our lives and inner landscapes that may be quite fraught with limiting beliefs, difficult emotions, high expectations, shame, trauma and disappointments. At first, any sort of meditation might feel like it is increasing your anxiety and stress and opening doors within that you’d rather keep closed. Have courage, it will get better! As the poet Robert Frost wrote, “The only way out is through.” I wonder if this is why we often refer to personal growth as “inner work.” It is not easy. It can sometimes feel like work. It takes serious commitment to trust the process of transformation, and compassion and patience to step into self-love and acceptance. But the good news is that when you come out the other side, the rewards are worth it. You will be more resilient and integrated, in sync with your own rhythm.
“When you seek and find that inner peace and stillness, nothing and no one without will be able to disturb it or throw you off balance.”
Finding our own rhythm and being in harmonious flow isn’t always easy. Especially when so much about our modern life creates misleading benchmarks. Many of us are walking through life numbed by all that is happening around us, worried that we don’t measure up. In her book, Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness, and Productivity (2023), author Gloria Mark explores the cognitive and emotional impact of today’s constant bombardment of information, bottomless scroll of social media, immediacy of communication, and very fast “shot lengths” in film and video. She describes how packing more content into shorter periods of time is creating greater stress and fatigue due to constant attention switching and information processing. There is even research that shows that the average attention span (the time a person can focus on one thing) has decreased in the past 20 years from 2 ½ minutes to 45 seconds. For this reason alone, sitting in meditation, especially silent meditation, can feel quite disorienting and intense when we are used to a constant diet of binge-watching, doom scrolling and social media feeds. But rather than fearing the silence of meditation, see it as a sort of “interrupt” and way to reset; a mental, emotional, physical and spiritual reboot of our system that can be activated at any time.
In her book, Opening Doors Within (1986), our co-founder, Eileen Caddy wrote:
“To get into rhythm with life, you have to learn the art of being still, for the more still you become, the more clearly can you reflect the qualities of your soul. […] When you seek and find that inner peace and stillness, nothing and no one without will be able to disturb it or throw you off balance. Look around you; look at the beauty and perfection of nature. Everything in nature is in rhythm. There is perfect law and order in the universe. Nothing is out of tune; there is a time and reason for everything. [...] So get into tune with it. Flow with it, and be part of that law and order.”
If you are struggling to hear a different rhythm in your life, and are looking for a new setpoint, you might turn to nature for guidance and take a moment to breathe deeply and feel into the subtle energies all around you. As quoted above, “Everything in nature has a rhythm” and we can learn to co-create with it. Simply connecting to the seasonal changes outside your door can be a good first-step in finding a different pace and feeling more grounded and expansive. This week in the United Kingdom, hidden behind all the bright Halloween costumes and bowls of candy, we marked the celebration of Samhain (“sow-win”). With its varied Pagan, Celtic and Druidic origins, Samhain recognises the end of the harvest season, of summer, and a transition out of the light and into the dark. Like a conductor at the front of a wonderful symphony, it signals a great slowing down of the tempo of nature’s song and a quietness that will take us into winter. This is a good time of year for reflection, for letting go of what no longer serves us, clearing away old energies, setting intentions for the dark half of the year, and surrendering to transformation. Samhain is a “temporal landmark”– a distinct event that can be the impetus to start a new venture or begin again. Maybe this is your moment to set into motion a new rhythm for your life that will take shape over the winter months to sprout forth its benefits in the spring when darkness turns to light? Maybe this is the time to start meditating?
Dun I, Isle of Iona
Meditation offers an open invitation to go inward, into stillness, so you may connect more fully with yourself, with nature, with others, and with Spirit. If you would like to begin to develop or expand your own spiritual practice, we welcome you to join us in our new, daily meditations online. Together we will practice Inner Listening to bring peace, stillness and balance into our own personal rhythm in harmony with the rhythm of all life. Thus strengthening our inner resilience in these changing times.
Read more about our week daily meditations here.
