Lesson 5: Resiliency
Life goes on. This too shall pass. More fish in the sea. All forms of sayings that tell us that life has ups and downs. One day you are on top of the world. The next your feet feel buried in cement like you are about to be pushed off a pier. The good news is that the sayings about life going on are all true. The power of resiliency is that you know that. If you have gotten to lesson 5 mastering the other 4 lessons, this one is easy. 
You know that life is made up of balanced energy. That there is a Yin Yang to things in perfection. You have mastered the idea of knowing that life happens for you. All you need to do is make sure it does, no matter what, there is something in everything that you can use for you. Whether it is for happiness or your growth and development or both, there is balance, and it is all part of the perfection of Yin Yang.
You also know that the balance of life is perfectly leading you to where you are now. That place you are now may not be the best place ever, but it is what is needed to get to where you are ultimately going. I am here now with what I feel, think and know only because I went through some deep shit on the way, and I survived, learned, and grew through all of it. I would not trade one second of it if that if meant I would not be here right now being who I am right now. There is always a balance to life, if you allow things to be as they are meant to be. Fight it, and it does sometimes get harder than it seems to need to be, but since you are fighting it, it actually does need to be harder so you can see it.
In LTSG you learned that holding onto things stops the flow of energy. Like trying to hold your breath. If you do, you will die. You need that energy of the air to come into your body, and you need to let it back out. Breathing is the fundamental exercise of LTSG. Let That Shit Go. It is toxic, just like the air inside your lungs after you take out the oxygen you need. Your pain, suffering, emotions, thoughts, experiences have a purpose, and when that is served, LTSG! Breathe them out again and let them go. This is true for love, joy, excitement, etc. Not just things we think are bad need to be let go. It all does. It all needs to flow in and out like air in and out of our lungs.
In Temperance you learned the idea that the right things happen at the right time, always. It may feel sucky right now in your life. It may feel like you will not make it or live through the pain and suffering, and there is a guarantee that if you do, and you remember temperance, you will know that it has a purpose. It is the right thing at the right time for you. You only need to learn what that is, and if you are not present to learn it, you will miss something potentially truly beautiful and amazing.
Ho’ oponopono taught us that there are several things needed in order to move on, and they are all within our power. They are being accountable, being responsible, being grateful and being love. Ho’ O is all of those things, with no conditions, no expectations, just being what they are fully. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.
And now we come to resiliency, don’t give up. It is about persevering through whatever your life gives you as a gift, even when
it does not seem like much of a gift. It is trusting, having faith, knowing that life is meant as something for your benefit, and it is up to you to figure out what that is. You have time to do that. You have space to do that. You have what you need always to persevere! Resiliency is the power to bounce back, to keep going no matter what.
Two of the above images are from my personal reminder related to resiliency. When they are put together, they form a semi-colon. The Semi-colon movement was started to draw attention to the pain and suffering brought about by someone taking their own life, suicide. A young woman got a tattoo of a semi-colon, looks like the image to the left. It was small and on the inside of her wrist where a person might cut themselves deeply in order to end their life. It became a personal message to herself to not stop, to keep going, to persevere in all odds. The grammatical use of a semi-colon is to extend and connect two thoughts. There is life after pain or suffering. There is another idea, thought, etc. to connect to the rest of your life. Life can go on and extend, with a semi-colon, not a period.
In my tattoo, the image looks like this, to the left. While a simple semi-colon would have been fine, for me, I have this tendency to want to create more symbolism in things. I used the Yin Yang for the dot and inside the comma I put a symbol that means to concentrate on perseverance. It doesn’t mean to persevere; it means to concentrate on the act of perseverance. It is Buddhist in nature.
The Buddha way involves a lot of concentration on things within what they call the 8 fold path. There is no assumption that achievement of these things is the ultimate goal, or that you will achieve them someday if you work hard enough. It is an understanding that the path will continue to unfold until, and then after, you die, and while you are on the path you will just keep concentrating on following the path. You will concentrate on keeping going, and that will lead you to where you need to go. The 8 fold path itself is another lesson, not for today, but the idea of perseverance is the key. The 4 truths in Buddhism are that life is suffering, that there is a cause of suffering, which is desire, and there is a cure for suffering, which is an end to desire, and the end of desire is found in the 8 fold path. The desire to end desire becomes desire. You can read that again replacing the word desire with the word attachment. I have seen the 4 truths written with both words, and the Tibetan language probably is a word that means both. It is not expected that you will achieve the goal of ending suffering. It is an expectation that you will try, and you will fail, and you will try again, and again, and again, all the while getting closer to mastering the skills. You may even need to live many lives over and over again to gain mastery. Even the most saintly of Buddhas, Christians, Jews, Muslims are looking for the same sacred end of suffering, and also don’t really ever find it. All we can do is experience it, use it, and keep trying. We persevere. We become Resilient!
Namaste