Learning to Embrace Change
This path I have been traveling over the past 26 weeks has not been straight and broad. Rather, learning to embrace change and welcome it has taken me through the twists and turns of a forest of ingrained habits, beliefs and memories.
It has brought me to clearings where rays of light and inspiration have struck me. At other times, the path has been rocky, steep and overgrown with the rocks and twisting roots of my doubts and fears, making me stumble.
I’ve learned that giving my struggles and challenges energy, turning them over and over in my mind is not the way to solve them. The ego wants things to stay the same, to remain in the comfort zone, the familiar. It’s doing its best to help us survive.
Allowing change
Rumi says, “Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop.”
Those leaves are the thoughts and beliefs that no longer serve me. Some of these ‘hangers-on’ are still clinging to me.
Why is it so hard to let them drop?
Instead, the path to embracing change is the exact opposite – ignoring the inner voice of predictable patterns and habits to focus my thought instead on my defined main purpose and the steps I have put in practice to achieve it.
Whenever I find myself tripping over one of those “rocks or roots” in my path, I go back and re-read Haanel:
4. Growth is attained through an exchange of the old for the new, of the good for the better; it is a conditional or reciprocal action, for each of us is a complete thought entity and this completeness makes it possible for us to receive only as we give.
5. We cannot obtain what we lack if we tenaciously cling to what we have. We are able to consciously control our conditions as we come to sense the purpose of what we attract, and are able to extract from each experience only what we require for our further growth. Our ability to do this determines the degree of harmony or happiness we attain.
Internalizing this truth becomes clear in the Silence.
I remind myself of Deepak’s wisdom – “Grass doesn’t think about growing – it just grows.”
The practices of acceptance, responsibility and defenselessness have taught me to embrace change, and to savour each precious and present moment.
I have learned to ground myself by bringing my focus into the present, by looking around and truly seeing the beauty of the day as I walk along the new coastal path and smile at the aerial acrobatics of the seagulls.. I wonder at the innate intelligence of the trumpeter swans in the fields along our road – they always know when to fly north and when in fall it’s time for them to return to our valley. As I do so, I can feel my body relax. I can accept this moment with wonder and love.
Then I am able to ask myself where my fear or doubt is coming from, and recognize it is just an old story or habit of thought. I can look at what is, and realize that this moment is here to teach me, not to make me feel sad or guilty. Once it is acknowledged, I can begin to adjust how I think about it, to see the lesson it is teaching me. And from that knowledge, I can find answers and solutions.
Removing what is not necessary – those old stories I told myself subconsciously – letting them fall to the ground like autumn leaves – opens the way for new stories, the ones being written each time I silently embrace change and commune with my inner true and future self.
