Give Me Strength

In times of crisis, we tend to latch onto whatever strength we can find. Here's how to tap into your most reliable support.

By Sally Kempton

Once, when I was feeling particularly vulnerable, my teacher suggested I contemplate a question: "Where does your strength come from?" It's a contemplation I've found useful in many crises, and I often suggest it to others when they are going through difficult times. Hard times are often hard precisely because the support you normally count on has fallen away. That's when you need to find your deepest source of strength.

I found myself remembering this recently when a student called to talk about her difficult divorce.

"Amy" had been married for 10 years to a man she'd always considered her closest friend. But the year before, her husband had met someone else, remarried, and persuaded a judge to give him custody of their son.

Amy adored her son and was determined to raise him. Moreover, as a person committed to inner growth, she wanted to get through this crisis with a degree of equanimity. But when she contemplated fighting to regain custody, she found herself cycling through a tumult of feelings—from anger and anxiety to sadness and impotence. The question she asked me was "How can I find the strength to go through this?" I first suggested she ponder the question "What is the source of my strength at this moment?"

Know your strengths
Amy was able to identify three kinds of strength. By far the most intense was one that came from her anger and sense of injustice. It fueled her determination to win the court battle, and propelled her out on her daily run and to yoga class. But that power and determination came at a price. When anger woke her in the middle of the night and left her wrung out and burning from the rush of cortisol and adrenaline it sent through her system, she knew it was wearing her down.

At such times, she would fall into despair. She'd give up hope, surrender to the "reality" of a life that wasn't the way she wanted it to be. Just the way her anger gave her stamina, that despairing endurance was, in a strange way, supportive. But its price was a feeling of dull passivity.

Fortunately, she could also touch a deeper strength, a thread of confidence that came from her center. "Every now and then," she told me, "I notice there's a part of me that just watches all this, a witness, and seems to be very steady. It's a definite presence, and it feels loving. It's the part of me that wants everything to work out for the best for all of us, and somehow knows that it will."

Listening to Amy talk about these different levels of strength, I suddenly realized that there was a universal pattern behind her experience. Her shifting feelings were mirroring a cycle that the yoga tradition calls the play of the three gunas, or qualities of nature, usually described as passion, inertia, and peace. It occurred to me that if she could look at this pattern, it might help her understand and discover the source of her real power.

Energy sources
The gunas are three basic energetic qualities that run through everything in the natural world—including us. They have a powerful effect on your moods, your feelings, and your actions.

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