Coping Skills For Stressful Seasons

by Robert Wilkinson

We live in times that can get pretty strange, difficult, or stressful, and it's widely reported that it's natural that during this time of weak Solar force many have a hard time in one way or another. Today's article offers some ideas about how to view possibilities.

Due to the accelerated pace of global transformation, everyone I speak with seems to be on the edge of profound personal change. When we're in a state of change, usually we're not very sure what's happening or how things will turn out. It's natural for many to get somewhat unsettled due to the ways they are or are not responding to the changes.

While feeling edgy in edgy times is understandable, it is also a very driven way to live, and wears on our nerves. While we cannot change the fact that we're all under pressure, we can learn techniques that lessen the pressure, or help us to steer the pressure toward productive ways of moving through the weirdness.

In my book, "A New Look At Mercury Retrograde," I made a point that can help to clarify the place and function of the many forces and pressures that fill our lives. For all of us, we are either acting, reacting, or being acted upon. If we're under pressure, the first thing to examine in our experience is which of these is at work?

When we are acting, we are moving under our own steam toward goals of our choosing. These can be good or bad, depending on how accurately our desires and vision are guiding or misguiding us. Are we moved by our higher intentions, or acting despite a lack of clarity about what we're doing or where we're going?

When we are reacting, we are moved by something to respond to it. It may not matter that the thing is entirely subjective, unconscious, or even unreal, since in reacting we're responding whether we need to or not, whether it's a good thing or not, or whether our response is appropriate or not.

Echoes of memories of perceptions of memories from childhood often bring these reactive patterns to the surface. Holidays and other "special moments" throughout the year may trigger these perceptions of memories of perceptions of memories since just about everyone had at least one bad holiday experience (and often more than a few!) when younger that were out of our control and imprinted negative feelings on our subconsciousness.

The third option to acting and reacting is that of being acted upon. This is intimately linked to how we reacted to previous situations we have confronted. When we are being acted upon there is something external that has become an immediate part of our experience, whether we react or not. How long we choose to live with it depends on whether we invited it or not, and whether the result of it acting on us feels unifying or dividing in a healthy or unhealthy way.

When we're most having a hard time we tend not to see as clearly as we could. That's why it's good to look at the source of the hard time, so we can know if we're reacting to something immediate or whether it's associated with a past hard time we may or may not have created. When we sort these things out, we have the power to change pattern.

I've always been of the opinion that we should be driving our own boat, cooperating with our Dharma that we may not even be able to formulate in so many words. It's a good thing to hold back a little on how much we allow others, even those who are well-intentioned, to drive our vehicles, since they probably may not know how, or where, or what to do when certain things are about to happen that further our highest good.

When we learn to drive our own boat, we have a sense of power and potential, even when we're just idling and waiting to figure out which direction to go. And it's certainly not helpful for our times to be so weird, and the hitchhiker you pick up could be an angel or a devil in disguise. And so we hope, and wish, and opine, and effort, and hope some more.

Of course, as a whole we haven't been offered ways to cope with feeling weird, or been taught to know how to act or react appropriately to the ever-changing conditions of our evolving reality. We're mostly told it's all part of a Mystery, or "God's plan," or some other homily, and that few can really know how to be in the ever-present NOW of the eternal flux and flow.

Yet the only way we transcend feeling heaviness and a lack of joy is to be in the NOW as best we can, feeling our Eternal Self and its power to shift physical, emotional, and mental patterns that are causing us to suffer. This means translating the words of Spiritual inspiration we learn from our teachers into an inner practice. That we fall short of the ideal isn't the point; it's that we need to try to apply what we know is true in order to break the link between pain and suffering inside or outside us.

Psychology tells us that we are supposed to learn from what others do to us, and if it's bad, to see "our part" and do forgiveness practices. However, it doesn't seem to come with the equally valid point that sometimes we are acted upon by others of no good intention, that someone else's free will has just jammed our gears. Then it would seem useless to overanalyze "our part" beyond knowing we just didn't need to go there, and probably won't ever again.

By seeing and feeling the long cycle of how our feelings and responses came to be formed by people and circumstances in our past, we can learn from our past and present experiences to use our imagination creatively. As we choose to view different ways to respond as Spirits having human experiences, over time these can prevent the recurrence of many old frustrations and karmas since we're changing how we're reacting to old patterns.

We can always learn more skills of how to move through this ever-changing reality, but must first train our mind to interpret our experience and what our 5 senses bring us. As we learn the cause of what arises in our minds and feelings, we can know the unreal from the real, darkness from light, the impermanent and the permanent, and acquire coping skills that can help us feel more competent in the future through knowledge of how to respond accordingly.

There are a lot of rumors, hopes, and dreams about the coming of "the New Age," and how much things will be different. Still, as long as there are humans, there will be lessons of learning and teaching detachment, dispassion, discrimination, and how to generate good will, or "Bodhichitta." With a little effort and mindfulness, we can learn to regard all that comes and goes as part of a greater experience, not take any of it personally, and know the place and function of what presents itself.

When we are able to practice these virtues at will and couple them with a genuine willingness to generate positivity in every moment, whether we're presented with harmony or disharmony, then we will be able to maintain our equilibrium, our perspective, our sense of humor, and our strength and clarity of higher intention despite all the glancing blows of passing fortune. We can get free of the traps of feeling bad, or helpless, or discouraged by the passing parade, and even in the worst of times, be a light in our world, breaking the link between pain and suffering.

Comments

ThankYou Robert Wilkinson !!!

"So Our Virtues Lie in the Interpretation of the Time " William Shakespeare.

Blessings !!!

Posted by: Jorge Torres | January 07, 2011 at 02:10 AM

Again, thank you Robert.

Just yesterday I found myself feeling really negative and finally realized that positivity is a daily practice, not something that stays with you all the time without doing anything.

And now I see the point of not getting too uptight about spritual growth. Sense of humor is also a great measure for finding out how you're keeping up with your positivity :-)

Posted by: Maria | January 07, 2011 at 12:55 PM