The Personal Virtues (Part Two)
Resilience and sovereignty are the practices setting the conditions for mastery.
In the first installment of the Personal Virtues series, we explored centeredness and courage, the root and wellspring of all other practices.
Our second couplet is resilience and sovereignty.
If the first couplet makes practice possible, the second couplet sets the conditions for mastery. With resilience and sovereignty, we accept the challenges and expand in individual imperialism. Such is not expansion gained by stepping on the necks of the innocent, but the practices of the effortful and influential who leave their world better than they found it.
Practitioners empower the weak, enrich the poor, edify the ignorant, and build civilizations.
Resilience: The Strength of Scars
Life greets us with walls, whips, and thorns. From such episodes, we cultivate resilience—the virtue of enduring, healing, and rising anew. Resilience is not the avoidance of pain, but the formation of scars—living symbols of our survival.
Resilience is our capacity to accept suffering without being consumed by it.
It is the artisan who rebuilds after a fire or the mourner who finds joy again after a significant loss. Pain is contiguous with obstructed flow, yet it is a stern teacher. Resilience transforms despair into determination, wounds into wisdom.
It is the alchemy of agony.
To cultivate resilience, start by rejecting victimhood. Gather the will as an emetic or purgative for any narratives of weakness. To adorn ourselves with scars, we must pay the cost. Let the memory of our trials affirm: we have endured, and we will again.
In resilience, we shall find a thousand rebirths.
Sovereignty: The Throne of the Self
Sovereignty is the virtue of self-rule. It is the relentless drive to expand in mastery. One’s soul is his first domain, but the sovereign expands outward in concentric circles to generate, protect, and provide. To govern oneself well is to live with purpose and potency.
The sovereign individual bows neither to fate nor foes, but loves his fate and battles his foes—even if he is a practitioner of non-violence.
Radiative self-sovereignty requires cultivating the self. But the radiant self is disciplined. Others can sense our practice of virtue or acquiescence to vice, even if such sensing is subliminal. We are thus responsible for what we exude, whether that energy is creative or destructive.
Will you summon Ahura Mazda or Angra Mainyu? asks Zarathustra.
Will you emit asha or druj?
Sovereignty means pursuing truth through doubt. She is the visionary who builds cities out of dreams. Sovereignty is not dominion over others, but over oneself, in expanding efficacy.
It is the power to choose, act, or create, radiating outward from the center as pond ripples or sunrays.
Because sovereignty is a throne earned through endeavor and humility, it is no practice for Pillar Saints, Boy Pharaohs, or Cynical Nihilists. To embody sovereignty, set your aim, however modest, and commit your will to the task. Learn from your setbacks, for they will become progress’s compass.
Wisdom accretes around the scars and the throne.
