“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you…

I want to start this bulletin with the acknowledgment that life can be extremely difficult, even unresolvable at times. From the personality’s perspective, our eventual annihilation is puzzling enough, but then there are day-to-day challenges that demand so much from us.

That’s not to neglect for one second the joy and beauty in life.

There is always something nearby worth our awe and full attention, but there is always a challenge around the next corner. There are simply two sides to every coin, and we all know it. Life is hard, tauntingly hard, actually. How do we transform these challenges? What are they supposed to be doing?

“…They’re supposed to help you discover who you are.”

— Bernice Johnson Reagon

Let’s next acknowledge now that life’s challenges are a puzzle that deserves our full attention. Mastering a fruitful response to them is worth every second given to the effort.

Provocation

Did you ever think that life’s challenges seem to be like a provocation or a test? It seems almost like someone is trying to get a response out of us sometimes, doesn’t it?

And if you give into the provocation and give life a reaction, whether it be raging or pleading for something to change, it feels as if you are drained by the giving of your reaction. And vice versa: if you don’t react, you feel your energy is retained.

If life’s challenges are like a provocation, I say let’s treat them that way. If life’s circumstances or any other bully in your life is trying to manipulate a response out of you consider using the Grey Rock Method.

Grey Rock Method

“Grey rocking, or the grey rock method, is a tactic some people use when dealing with abusive or manipulative behavior. It involves becoming as uninteresting and unengaged as possible so that the other person loses interest.

Some people anecdotally report that it reduces conflict and abuse.

The idea behind the technique is that abusive people enjoy [even need] getting a reaction from their victims. Refusing to give them this reaction makes interactions less rewarding. 

In general, this means giving short, straightforward answers to questions and hiding emotional reactions to the things a person says or does.”

— Zawn Villines (MedicalNewsToday)

You basically act like a grey rock when you are taunted by a challenge: no reaction to anything. But don’t worry, when we use this technique we aren’t signing up to live an emotionless life, rather we acknowledge that we control our own emotions.

If we grey rock life’s provocations we have free energy with which to deeply engage with other aspects of life.

The power is with us, and we are keeping it. When the bully energy doesn’t get fed, the tendency to bully gets weakened. The more free we are from indulging in provocations the more free we are from the oppressive bully energy and the more free we are to engage deeply in our lives on our own terms.

White Rock Method

Now imagine you take it a step further. Imagine instead of just being still outwardly and inwardly in the face of a challenge (grey rock), let’s say you added a step. Let’s say you let the provocation be a prompt to take the grey rock stillness and penetrate into the present moment very deeply. You then let yourself fill, ever so slightly at first and more later, with the power you are able to access through that penetrating.

It’s like you fill yourself with the light that comes from deep within in the present moment, a light that is born out of our own presence and is meant to be in the world. And we let that light be there in the face of that provocation while we remain still inwardly and outwardly.

This is using our own powers and activity to transform provocations into agents for the good: stimulating more light in the world.

This I’d like to call the White Rock Method. White works here in the sense that it is a combination of every hue in the visible light spectrum.