Strength comes through undergoing painful circumstances, preferably with relative equanimity.
Painful circumstances when resisted become suffering. It is very difficult to not resist painful circumstances while as yet unenlightened. Once enlightened, painful circumstances continue to emerge but the same are no longer resisted psychologically, even if sometimes resisted physiologically.
Strength can be developed through the masculine way and the feminine way.
In the masculine way, strength comes through containment. Containment is to contain within oneself one’s negative reactions to painful circumstances. Containment is to live with the reaction to pain without spilling it out of yourself. Containment is to strengthen the pain-bearing muscle. Containment is to not allow the energy within pain to fritter away without harnessing it. Containment makes a lion out of man.
Containment requires one to refrain from expression of negative emotion and to refrain from seeking of sympathy. Such self-restraint ripens the maturing soul. If on undergoing pain agony is expressed, the same also leaks the energy potential implicit in the agony which can be harnessed through containment.
In the feminine way, one does the exact opposite. One lets go. One breaks with pain as if one is not different from pain. What happens in this process is that the suffering ego enters the pain instead of trying to resist it. Without the ego, the pain is not felt as suffering. Also, it allows the pain to complete its natural energy cycle and circle back to health. It is akin to grass bending with the storm and rising again when the storm passes in contrast to the tree that stands stubborn in the face of storm and gets uprooted.
In our normal life, we neither adopt the masculine approach of containment, nor the feminine approach of let go. We are busy having a problem with the pain from within the ego. That leads to suffering and depletion rather than forbearance, freedom and rejuvenation.
