How To Meet Crisis With Grace And Wisdom
Activating The Feminine Principle Within
A global pandemic, unprecedented economic hardship, and fundamental injustice and inequality have generated feelings of fear, anger, despondency and righteous indignation in many of us. Whatever the cause may be, the resulting adrenalin rush galvanizes us into action but also exhausts us in a wave of emotion. How do we meet these challenging times with grace and navigate a course through uncharted territory?
The 6 Stages of Awareness
Life can feel unbearable at times. We’ve all been there. The stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are often referred to as the 5 Stages of Grief according to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. This framework of emotional responses to loss can be applied more broadly as it also mimics the stages of awareness. Chris Martensen coined the above five stages plus ‘fear’ as the 6 Stages of Awareness. When we examine, in the context of awareness, how we progress from denial to anger, from anger to bargaining, from bargaining to fear, from fear to depression and finally from depression to acceptance, we begin to notice a common denominator between one stage and the next — resistance.
Resistance Is The Gatekeeper To Awareness
The reason we resist is because our egos want things to remain unchanged. Our ego’s job is to do whatever it takes to ensure its own survival, that includes how we identify and see ourselves, our beliefs and attitudes. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. However long it takes for us to stay in particular stages of emotion depends on how we individually process information and experiences which is always valid. What I am pointing out is that the ego prefers the familiar because it is by nature risk averse, even if taking a risk ultimately results in our salvation. In the ego’s attempt to control we futilely search for certainty, abhorring change and the unknown. But alas, the nature of life is flow — perpetual energy in motion that is ever-changing, so what to do?
We are in fact much more than our ego.
The gift here is that when resistance shows up it’s actually an opportunity to confront our shadow — our wounds, sadness, impulses, and the parts of ourselves from which we unconsciously project, and which the ego defends.
Since our minds (and egos) cannot know what we don’t know, what lies beyond the resistance of anger and fear may very well be liberation, not annihilation.
The Healing Crisis of Humanity
Confronting our ego’s myriad layers of resistance results in varying degrees of a healing crisis. ‘Healing crisis’ is a term that describes the cleansing reaction of a body where it exhibits worsening symptoms as toxins are expelled. It can feel very unpleasant but in fact signals a true healing.
The same process happens in our psyches. A healing crisis takes place when intense emotions rise up as the flow of life meets resistance of the ego.
We confront the parts of ourselves we’ve denied and suppressed that need to surface for healing and release. Indeed, what we feel in our individual psyche is often mirrored and out-pictured externally in society. The resistance of the ego is represented by the entrenchment of patriarchy and control. When the tides of change meet resistance the opposing forces create further polarization. Emotions become heightened, feelings are intensified and they seek increasingly strong expression. This can take the shape, for example, of public protests, political upheaval, or civil disobedience.
We Are A Part Of It All
These outcries do not only belong to those who are voicing them outwardly, they are in fact the collective unconscious uproar from the depths of every one of our souls.
Yes, they even belong to those who are staunchly against the agenda of justice and equality. They just don’t realize it yet because they’re unaware. Some may simply feel strange and confused, overwhelmed by unfamiliar emotions, and some may just prefer to shut out feelings altogether and go on with their lives. It doesn’t matter which aspect of the zeitgeist you’re experiencing, whether you are conscious of it or not, we feel everything because we live in an interconnected world with other human beings in a unified energetic field.
One person’s plea for justice is a wake up call for unenlightened parts of ourselves. Another’s inability to receive life-saving medical care underscores the cracks in our personal value system. Someone’s violated dignity echoes the compromised integrity within each of us.
This is all part of the healing crisis of humanity. For any disease to heal its symptoms must first become visible, the underlying discordance heard and its incoherence expressed. Only then do we know how to address the cause.
Discovering The Value Of Our Shadow
Tumult and disruption call us to recognize our shadow so that we may move from discord to discernment towards empathy and evolution. Discomfort is natural and necessary as we confront our unexamined beliefs and fear-based attitudes. Contrary to what we are often taught this seemingly unglamorous and best-circumvented part of life is critical to our growth.
Shadow work, the process of deep self examination, is every bit as valuable as our conquering hero moments.
Shadow work involves confronting our ego. It is absolutely necessary if we wish to experience more peace and love. The impulse to avoid it speaks to how we’ve been programmed to dishonor this profound and valuable part of ourselves. The shadow is simply one side of the polarity that defines our dualistic world where we experience dark and light, up and down, left and right.
Without the shadow, it would be impossible to become ‘enlightened’ from darkness and ignorance.
Activating The Feminine Principle
The journey inward into our shadow — the void from which birth and renewal spring, activates the feminine principle within each of us.
We must go inward to gain understanding, insight and wisdom if we are to achieve a different result or manifest a higher outcome. This is what I mean by activating the feminine principle.
This inward journey is a feminine process of involution and introspection.
Instead of resisting we take in and receive — feel the pain, accept the fear, experience the doubt without fighting it.
We let go into the present moment completely.
As in breathing, we surrender our breath in the exhale in order to inhale the next breath and renew our cells. We don’t need to hold our breath or resist what comes next.
Instead of frantic doing, we trust in being, just as we trust that there will be air when it comes time to inhale again. We are no longer petrified by fear but are able to center, ground and shift into stillness. It’s safe to suspend our constant mental nagging of “what’s next?” because we remember that our talent for accomplishing tasks remains intact. All we’re doing is moving the spotlight of our attention a little even if it’s tentatively at first, so it illuminates something else — our inner compass, our deep knowing.
The currency for this knowing is trust.
Reorienting Through Our Heart Center
Initially, trusting in our current circumstances feels like an uneasy impasse, we feel naked but don’t yet realize we are in a new terrain of possibility. If we are willing to stay here a while and make friends with our vulnerability something else happens. There is a directional shift from an outward “no” to an inward “yes”. The earlier frenetic energy of doing is transmuted into the receiving of grace.
Acceptance of the present moment calms our mind and the quiet stillness of this new landscape allows us to hear the inner guidance of our soul. We are once again able to connect to our heart intelligence.
In this state we literally cohere the vibrational frequency of our mind and body with our heart and soul and expand our capacity for clarity and perception. Coherence is a measurable frequency which is expressed in healthy cells and organs. If we continue to reside here, we suddenly find we’re able to orient ourselves again.
We’ve merged the masculine analytical mind with the feminine inner compass so that we can proceed to take action in the right direction, solve conundrums, and dissolve conflict.
Solutions appear where before there were only dead ends. We find common ground in the most acrimonious relationships. We discover a new direction to take a business facing bankruptcy. We are able to listen and can pivot as required to meet life’s challenges.
To understand the dynamics of the feminine and masculine principles is to perceive with greater clarity the wholeness of the processes at work in our lives.
When we see this we become more capable in accessing the unity that resides within us without disassociating from what we think are the undesirable and disagreeable bits.
The Place Beyond ‘Acceptance’
Said in another way, we have merged our being into oneness through love, because we can embrace fear and trust in the unfoldment of life.
The feminine encompasses not only the journey into our shadow and the orientation through our heart, it is the oneness itself — the place beyond acceptance which we arrive at after the many stages of denial, anger, bargaining, fear and depression. This inexplicable place lies beyond planning and doing, and cannot be arrived at through control, but surrender — an open space that is sacred and home.
It’s where you can finally release into an “aaahh”, the way you feel when you are with your closest loved one, except that loved one is you.
This is the sacred relationship we have with ourselves, creation and the universe. This is where we begin to perceive the beauty of life no matter what crises we face. We learn gradually that we can in fact trust everything that happens, because all circumstances and events ultimately conspire for our growth and evolution. We are finally able to let go of excess importance, relax into the rhythm of our existence, and ultimately, flow in the lightness of being.
Retelling Our Story
Easier said than done? Yes. Perhaps. However, what you will find on the other side of resistance will always be surprising, because you have no way of knowing in advance until you get there.
If we can be okay with the unknowable then life doesn’t need to be a busy succession of doing and coping, but a journey worth experiencing.
Because everything that happens in between fleeting moments of certainty is actually the story of our life, and as we know, the flow of life doesn’t stop for us to like it or loathe it, so it might just suit us to embrace it all the same. If we do this with presence of mind and heart, embodying the wholeness of our being, in an attitude of surrender and trust, then we would be able to navigate uncharted waters with our full resource and capacity. We would be able to give life’s journey meaning other than anguish and suffering, and experience more love, compassion and expansion. Not a bad alternative at all.