Emotional Durability

Time for a Saturday Conversation about What Lies Before Us

It's Friday, August 2nd 2024

Aho' Rajanaka,

We’ve taken a few weeks away from our steady flow of conversation.  Summertime here in the north country is short, there’s work and even some play to be had.  But the world doesn’t stop being the world.  We all want reprieve from the chaos that depletes us but it’d be wise to open into resources that we’ll need.  When we go looking for those better angels, we’re going to need to know how to summon them, how to become more capable of dealing with what lies before us.

Householder yoga contends with philosophies of introversion and renunciation as well as with liberation theories that promise either to remove us from painful worldly matters or invite divine relief.  Few in fact emphasize how to make our way with the world, through its expected anxieties along with the unrest, the anguish that comes with being human.

To celebrate life itself is to engage its conditions and terms---some cause us to revel and rejoice, others just as deciding perhaps even intractable will call for tolerance, persistence, and acceptance.  We’ll be plunged into oceanic feeling, and the emotional repository so vital to our abilities to engage will be deeply challenged.  We need the emotional durability that supports the body, engages the mind, deals honestly to redress the heart’s afflictions.

Let’s talk about engaging our emotional durability, how to create more effective strategies and practices for what lies ahead---and we all know it’s going to create uneven feelings that test our mettle.  We’ll focus on a few key resources that describe the durability to make our way forward.  We’ll look carefully at a few key terms, tell a good story, keep good company.

Time for a Saturday Conversation.  Tomorrow, August 3^rd, 5pm Eastern, here’s the Zoom (same as all Saturdays since ever): https://rochester.zoom.us/j/95057662268

See you then, if you can.  saprema, Douglas.  ​​​​​​​

p.s. this isn’t the current weather but it’s never a bad idea to know what’s coming…

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