Crisis unfolds our lives. Comfort and stasis do not promote growth and it is only through these internal and external tensions that we must overcome by our own efforts that we progress. I have watched as the changes that have come into my life have removed many of the people, places and things that have given me comfort. I do not feel that I was complacent and yet my Soul guides my life, and the removal of these things were obviously necessary to my growth. Their absence makes room for the things that will inevitably replace them in the fabric of my life, and this is true for every one of us.
In my personal experience this has been very painful and now, though I am not immune to pain or the effects of loss, I am detached in a greater way from them. I feel the absence of these things in a different way than before and this is growth. It is not a numbness or immunity but more like an empathy we can feel for a friend in pain. This is the attitude of the observer, focused on the life of the personality from an objective point. This is not outside the self but certainly could be seen as outside of the personality.
I have recently had the experience of a door is opening which was quite frightening as it first began to reveal itself as an opportunity. I went from feeling for years like I was in a holding pattern waiting for the first positive step toward something rather than simply shedding the non-essentials, to wondering how to slow down a runaway train that would have brought me to a new job, and life, in Seattle. It was becoming exciting as I adjusted to the coming changes and I thought this would be an important growth experience for me.
The things I thought I was headed for were refusing to materialize in my life. I thought I would be working from home and buying a small house or cabin in the woods. I wanted a peaceful existence in my “writer’s nook” on a mountainside. I would come into town when needed but have the peace that eluded me in the last few years. Barrier after barrier obstructed my way. My business has struggled. Being self-employed makes it difficult to buy a home, etc. Now out of nowhere an opportunity which represents the complete opposite of those goals had presented itself to me in a way that I could not refuse. Alas, it was not meant to be. Another opportunity has taken it’s place that will keep me here in Colorado and provide the circumstances I was originally looking for. I was ready to do whatever was necessary and that is the key.
Humanity is undergoing a transformation from the Piscean age to that of Aquarius. This is a similar transition from what we want as a group and the mental polarization, focus and training which is our necessary next step. We must progress from the warm fuzzy feeling of comfort in and adolescent (at best) understanding of our relation to deity, to a realization of ourselves as divine. This requires mental orientation and the progress from belief in, to knowledge of, the divine nature and unity of “being.” What we collectively think we want will be superseded by what is really the next step in our awakening as we are collectively guided to a new understanding which we must collectively embrace.
This will not come easily, as the changes in my personal life have not come easily. The old ways, habits, tendencies, and attachments will not be shed without a commensurate amount of struggle and pain. Like an addiction, they will struggle to re-assert themselves in our lives, for these supposedly inanimate things are thought forms imbued with our desires and will be fighting for their “lives.” Ella Wheeler Wilcox said “thoughts are things, endowed with form and wings.”
These thoughts will not “go gentle into that good night.” (Dylan Thomas) What I see today, rather than a smooth transition into a clear understanding brotherhood within the unity of the divine thought, is a raging against that good transition. The forces of desire, emotional devotion and blind belief are tearing the world apart. This may be the only way the transition can be accomplished, just as the attachments in my life had to be ripped from my grasping hands before I was able to assert my will and move into the next stage of my being; something I believe is just beginning. I liked the way things were and thought I was happy. Not all of the time but overall I felt the life I had built was a good one, worth fighting to keep. I needed to fight to keep those things in a way because I not only thought they were of value, I could not let them go without a fight to assert that value. The fight was proof that those things were worthy and worth fighting for.
There is always the specter of what looms ahead as well. Uncertainty is not comfortable for any of us. There is an old saying which asserts “better the devil you know” because you have already made the necessary adaptations and adjustments to cope with the current situation. Change is difficult but it is the nature of everything in the universe to change and evolve. We fight this change at our own peril and cost because it is inevitable, but it seems that this fight is as inevitable as the change it seeks to forestall.
The religious devotees of the world are in the fight for their lives, or so they think. The Christian right wing conservatives in this country are fighting for their very existence against the progress of humanity into a more mature understanding of ourselves which will preclude their notion of the old man on a cloud, which demands worship and exacts vengeance. This is no different than the extremist Muslims who are trying to rule the world through a Caliphate forcing its own version of that self-same old man on a cloud onto the rest of the world at the end of a gun. In both cases I see it as the belief itself fighting for its life like an addiction that cannot find expression in the worlds of human endeavor without the addict’s body to use as a vehicle.
The answer, the teachings tell us, is in the assertion of the will. There comes a time in the life of the disciple where all of the study and accumulation of knowledge must be put to use to create change. Desire as a force for change must evolve and transform into spiritual will; the will to good. The recognition of our unity, like any acquired understanding must be applied in the real world. We often see or hear the term “stand” used in the teachings and in meditation seed thoughts. We must stand in the light. This is an assertion of the will, for it is not enough to see the light. We must stand for something. It is a statement of strength in the face of adversity. In alcoholics anonymous they say that the addict must hit “rock bottom” before he can find the strength of a deep abiding disgust with things as they are. It is because we are so reluctant and fearful of change, but change we must and change we will. If we can accept this without losing all, we may not need to lose it. It is not what we possess that impedes our growth, but what possesses us.
The crisis of adjustment is one recognition, as are all growth experiences. It is a recognition of what is real and permanent. When things are removed from our lives it teaches us what is real, permanent and true. It shows us our identity and the reality of our being.
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