No, I want to speak of acts of actual courage, and actual potential usefulness.
Psychological resistance is what I have in mind.
I would like to submit again that for many modern Americans, some of our most potent mythic symbols are comic book characters. Certainly, that seems to be the case for me. Growing up, my four favorite superheroes were Wolverine, the Beast, the Vision, and Warlock. There are really two groups of two: one is animals, channeling aggression and “bestial” energy; and the second two are both artificial beings, above the fray in some ways.
The Wolverine particularly is the essence of resistance. No attacks go around him. Avoiding things is just not something he does. He always heads straight into the middle of everything, and it always hurts him. But his core is the hardest substance known to man, and he himself heals from everything. But not without suffering. Not without countless cuts and bruises.
As I have shared, I have had dreams of being the Wolverine, fighting everything and everyone. Wolverine is also the symbol of the wounded man, the PTSD sufferer, the lone wolf, the misanthrope, who spends all his time licking internal scars that never fully heal, even if his body does.
Last night I was the Vision. I could walk through walls, through people. Whatever anybody threw at me went right through. I could go into basements, and below basements. I could see peoples lives, their secrets hidden in places no one else could get to. I could go forbidden places fearlessly.
And it was a very different feeling. What you allow, you do not have to fight. This is the essence of integration, which is allowing things to flow. This is the essence of Kum Nye, which in important respects is about diluting the sense of self so that it blends with surrounding space, and exists not so much as a point, as a wheeling circle of energy in continuous motion, which objects to nothing and can be made to include everything.
I have not fully worked my way through all this. I am going to do a Kum Nye session now, but my dreams of the past week or so have been very interesting. Something that was dead is now in motion, after many years of effort.