Inner Security (Mind Shift #2): From power to resilience

The art of embracing chaos with peace

Power is one of those things I learned to love-hate because of my early conditioning. It has this enticing energy of a delicious forbidden fruit, since I grew up as a “good girl” following all of the rules according to polite society. I learned to wield power surreptitiously, while at the same time pretending to be in total innocence and ignorance about how it works. Power? Who, me? I am sugar and spice and everything nice. As a woman, I’m not supposed to want power. And on some level, I’m not allowed to have power, or at least not seen as having power.

My comfortable role in the family, among my friend groups, or with my work colleagues is to be helpful, supportive, caring and nurturing. That is/was a big part of my core identity. It was my job to be pleasant, not to be powerful. But this was actually my strategy for getting what I needed. In other words, ironically, feigning powerlessness was the crux of the power game I have played for decades. I performed as requested and pleased other people to get them to do what I wanted.

The thing about having power over others is that the individual strategy to get this kind of power can vary widely. It depends on your gender, your culture, and your family of origin, among other things. And the formula changes constantly. We learn and repeat the best way to get what we need from others, by adapting to fit into the box of what we think is required. When an old strategy fails we find another one; we orient and adjust our behavior according to what’s going on around us. The specific behaviors are different for each of us, but the aim is the same. We maneuver in an ongoing attempt to manipulate our external reality.

Having command over external events and influence over others’ actions is another false source of security. The truth is that the forces of nature are wild. The emotions of humans are erratic. The changes of life are inherently surprising. No matter how well we manage to play our assigned roles, there is always the element of unpredictability. Because the nature of life is to be in constant state of flux, always transforming and evolving. To think that your life is under control, is delusion, and it’s temporary. Our attempt to control the chaos of nature, is another misguided pursuit in the name of security.

We can connect with the oceanic nature of our being-ness as the field encompassing all of the observable movements of life. And we can also connect with the agency of surfing the waves, as the one who navigates and chooses the way to move in this scene. But the randomness of the wind is something else. It is neither the infinite field nor the fractal expression; yet it smells of both. It is neither the ocean nor the surfer; yet it impacts and is acted upon by both. This chaotic impulse is beyond what the mind can grasp. Beyond predictability. Beyond control. Beyond meaning-making. By resisting this truth, again we meet suffering.

We put such a huge amount of energy into establishing and reinforcing power dynamics to assure us of our security. It’s yet another misdirection of our precious energy. If we turned our attention away from power dynamics, I wonder what we could build with this energy instead.

Developing resilience is the opposite of the traditional power game where we are making efforts to climb to a one-up position, or to avoid being stuck in a one-down position. Resilience-building means we’re no longer pouring energy into identities that are constructed to get us what we need from the world. Instead we focus on cultivating an unshakable power in presence no matter what is going on around us.

With old-school power games, we try to exert our personal will on other people and situations. We strive and struggle to force reality into a shape that pleases us. With resilience, by contrast, we align with divine will, and stand still in the center of all the movements, trusting in their divine intelligence. We learn to roll with the jabs and the joys of life, taking them much less seriously and less personally. The core of being is the well from which we re-source ourselves, and from the deep space of witnessing, we remember this well is untouched in the background of all the shapes moving.

Resilience is part of our basic nature. It’s the power that comes from simply resting in existence, without pushing and without resisting. Some might call this inner peace. Others might call it inner strength. When we embody resilience, there is some quality of being unf*ckwithable under any and all storm conditions.

The time and effort we can spend on power games is never ending. Sometimes we’re up; sometimes we’re down. But this power is inherently insecure. Because any advantage you gain is paired with the vulnerability of potentially losing that gain. Resilience however doesn’t require anyone to be up or to be down — it’s free to enjoy and equally available to everybody.

Resilience helps anchor an experience of inner security. It supports a sense of calm clarity and empowers us to stay centered in conscious creator-ship of our experience, so we are not so caught up in the ebbs and flows of external reality. It allows us to enjoy the fruits of life more fully and to weather storms more easily.

This essay is a continuation from the previous one: Inner Security Mind Shift #1: From Money to Resourcefulness. All three pillars of inner security are naturally part of the human experience — unlike money, power and status, which lead to striving. In this essay series, I describe each in detail and explore how we connect with them intentionally.

Next in this series: Inner Security Mind Shift #3 — From Status to Relatedness. Subscribe to free email notifications to make sure you don’t miss anything.

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