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Resilience is the ability to thrive and grow through adversity. In this time of turbulence and confusion, we all need to raise resilience of all kinds: emotional, physical, and also spiritual.
I share the belief that there’s a spiritual crisis at the heart of the climate crisis and related issues. Our lives are under threat, and this calls us to look for some higher meaning and purpose which serves the greater good, and goes beyond personal desires.
A sense of meaning and purpose is one of the most basic human needs for wellbeing and even survival (for example, see Victor Frankl’s story). Belief in material progress, technology, benign government, are looking hollow these days, so what could replace them?
I’m aware that the word spiritual alarms some people, perhaps because they think it means organised religion. For me, the spiritual dimension is what unites all forms of life on Earth with each other, and with non-material dimensions (which could be called angelic, fairy, devic…) within divine unity. And soul is the spark of divine unity within each living being.
So what is divine unity? You could call it love, prana, life force, yin and yang. You could call it Great Mother, Great Spirit, or Allah, God, Yahweh: but here we meet the distortions that patriarchal religions have imposed on original teachings which were egalitarian. There’s a spiritual energy, a soul, in all forms of life which connects us and transcends personal wants.
Exploring life from my soul, not my ego, helps me find steadiness and purpose amid confusion, helps me see and align with the bigger picture, and feel my fellowship with all of life.
On this website, you’ll find info about a new project, the Searching Spirit Centre, resources and blogs to help you, events for shared exploration, and the book I’m researching. I’d welcome the chance to share our journeys, so feel free to contact me.
What is Soul Resilience?
Resilience is the ability to meet challenges constructively, and maintain wellbeing by learning from them and growing through them. The soul is a piece of eternal divine essence in all humans and other life forms. Soul resilience invites us to explore our challenges to see why our soul chose to be in this life, facing this challenge, and to find soul guidance on how to respond, how to contribute positively, and what our soul can learn from the experience. Soul resilience is an invitation to nourish ourselves, and to embody love, joy and creativity to support ourselves and all around us. Being here on Earth in the climate crisis is pretty alarming, but trust that your soul chose this, and you’re here for a good reason!
Soul resilience in communities
The circumstances we all live in are getting rapidly more unstable: they will exceed the capacity of individuals and nuclear households to cope with them. I share the view of Gail Bradbrook, Rob Hopkins, Rupert Read, Jem Bendell, and many others, that local communities will be crucial in the future we’re facing.
Local communities will be vital for mutual emotional support, as well as sharing scarce physical resources. And they will be even stronger if they share a sense of spiritual purpose. This quality already exists implicitly in many networks and movements, for example people campaigning and demonstrating for radical responses to climate change, habitat loss, social injustice and lots more.
I’m not advocating for mass adoption of some spiritual creed, but if individuals and small groups deepen their spiritual exploration, and can name hopes and goals for the higher good that many can share, this will strengthen our collective capacity to adapt and grow through the crisis of our times.
The Searching Spirit Centre
In essence, our vision is to create a small spiritual community, probably in rural Mid Wales, which welcomes spiritual searchers as working guests for a week to six months. The Searching Spirit Centre would grow much of its own food, and guests would join in the daily rhythms of the place: helping with food growing, cooking, and other tasks.
Within the grounded setting of living and working as a community, the focus of the Centre is spiritual exploration. We’d like to share with guests an experience of the teachings and practices of various faith traditions, including Christian prayer, Buddhist meditation, pagan Nature contact, and Sufi chanting. Spiritual ecology, shared silence and celebrating the Celtic festivals on the land are potential unifying threads. There would also be space for individual contemplation and study.
A third thread is living as a community, including singing together, hanging out together, finding how to deepen connections and grow through any tensions. This thread weaves with the land, as we’ll celebrate the Celtic seasonal festivals.
For more details of the vision, who’s involved, next steps, and how to join us, see here.
Events
Groups can play a vital role in developing soul resilience. As daily life gets more bumpy, we need a deeper sense of fellowship and support, and a group can help everyone in it to find deeper insights, creative ideas, fresh understanding. Whilst in-person groups can go deeper, online groups are more accessible and can go a long way, so both are possibilities. To see what’s on offer, click here.
Resources
This section shares some of the teachings and processes I have found helpful during many years of exploring resilience and the soul’s journey. To go to this section, click here.
Blogs
I share insights from workshops, books, and life generally by writing short blogs. You can see a relevant selection here.
Soul Resilience: The Book
Back in 1999 when I started writing my first book, my friend William Bloom told me, “If you’re thinking seriously of writing a book, you’ll find you’ve been subconsciously researching it for years.” That is certainly true of this one, which draws on my experiences and explorations from over thirty years.
To see an outline contents for Soul Resilience, click here. If you’d like to offer any ideas for content, feel free to contact me.
Alan’s other websites
You may find some helpful resources here:
Natural Happiness: cultivate your wellbeing with analogies from organic gardens and farming.
Seeding our Future: how individuals and communities can raise resilience and face climate change.
Alan Heeks: for Alan’s books and resources on creative ageing.
Living Organically: sharing wisdom from various sources, especially Alan’s Sahara retreats.