CHANGE & EVOLUTION

The weekly shopping is not one of my favourite chores,

Least of all when I get home and, try as I might, cannot add everything into the freezer.

Eventually, I have to empty the whole thing out and start stacking from scratch.

Amazingly, when I've finished, there is ample space left over.

Your Life, whether you feel it's working for you or not,
Is already full to the point of choking.
Cramming in more desirable behaviours and disciplines
May gloss over the dysfunctional mess within,
But ultimately they're also adding to the chaos.

To change the metaphor,
Adding desirable or deleting undesirable characteristics

Does no more to transform life

Than do alterations, or extensions to a house.

Sometimes of course, change is enough;

But there comes a time, after years of modifications,

When the house becomes an architectural and functional nightmare

Of lean-to's, additions and work-arounds.
But we won't let go of it.
We're too emotionally attached to the dysfunctional slum we've created.  

Usually it takes a new owner --
Someone without any sentimental attachment to admit the obvious,

Bulldoze the mess to the ground,

And start over.

So it is with our own lives.

We retain sentimental attachments to parts of our life

That ceased to work for us long ago.

Transformation is called for,

Meaning that we must emotionally detach, empty out and die to old ways of being

And create completely anew.

Look at the process of Evolution.
Change is not the sole feature of evolution.

If gradual change was the only process on offer

We'd still be living in caves, but maybe better ones
Illuminated and ventilated by burrowed chimneys,

And still subsisting on raw meat and vegetables.

The evidence of Evolution solely by Gradual Change

Is too full of holes -- "missing links". 

Evolution is a game of gradual change AND a game of quantum leap-frogging --

Instant generational jumps to a new way of being

That leave the old behind

To die out.

Change is incremental and, frankly, cyclic --
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Change has a short-term place in the grand scheme of things -- and --
Transformation is the name of the game.

NOTHING TO WORK ON

I approached the transforming challenge thinking
That, rather like renovating a house,
All I'd have to do would be to whip up a to-do list
And fix my "problems" one by one -- eg. my relationships, my anger, my low self-esteem. etc. etc.
But we humans are not compartmentalised --
Human growth does not work like "fixing" the stove today, the refrigerator tomorrow, and the plumbing the day afterward:
Everything in the human condition, just like the rest of creation, is connected to everything else.
I can not work on my relationships without involving my self-esteem,
Nor deal with my anger without affecting just about every other area of my life.
When one area of life changes,
Everything changes,
In and around me.
And that's very good news --
If I had to turn my life around department-by-department,
I'd need a lot longer to do the job than my so-called "three score years and ten".

Furthermore, during transformation,  the original "problem" becomes irrelevant
In a larger and deeper process of re-creating everything.
In truth,
I've found there is nothing to "work on",
Away from embracing it all and finding a deeper balance.

Our "problems" offer us an avenue, a way in, an access point
To break into the wheel of repetitive patterns
And open the treadmill up to discovery and transformation,
Providing an exit into the wide world of Possibility.

The trick is not to focus on "the problem".
Drop it.
Your problems are not The Problem:
Focusing on anything keeps you hooked into it.
Give your attention rather to a process of inspirating, becoming aware, allowing, conspiring
And integrating "the problems"
Into a greater level of Be-ing
In an atmosphere of reverence, trust, gratitude and love.

ALL OR NOTHING


We humans are almost universally and inexplicably addicted to the entertainment of low-frequency experience.
So inured to it are we that,
Faced with the possibility and challenge of transforming the very basis of all our experience,
We may encounter an overwhelming urge to flee, deny, suppress or blow-off an opportunity for up-leveling.
Oh, we're prepared to change all right!....
But only the bits we want to change.
The rest we want to hang onto --
"Don't touch that, that's me -- that's who I am!"

Even the threat of having to give some things up feels like death.

Transformation doesn't work like that.
There's a Law of Life that goes --

When you give it all up,

You'll get it all back.

And everything is brand spanking New.

Unless everything is up for renewal,
Nothing will change.
When everything is up for change,
Life transforms.

How do you feel about that?
Hopeful, or fearful, or both?
Some changes are earth-shattering, some are subtle --
But transformation changes everything.

In transformation

There is surrender, death, gestation, and rebirth to a new form

That does not even vaguely resemble the old.
We die, to be "born again". 
And nothing changes.