All things pass

I’ve had lots of opportunity in recent months to reflect on my relationship with instability. Our move across the country was punctuated by a robbery in Selma, CA, a car accident in Santa Rosa, NM and a severe migraine that left me five pounds lighter by the time we arrived on the East Coast. It was a transformative trip. Since then, the challenges of finding a house and the recent scare of colon cancer (that turned out to be an adenoma, not cancer) have driven home the awareness of our fragility and the temporary nature of all things.

In all of this, the background cadence of “this, too, will pass” has been a soothing drum-beat. At no time has it felt like there was a “mistake”, or an omen of a wrong turn or punishment for some things not done “right”. And, through each event, a goodness ensued. Beyond the obvious relief I felt from the pathology report being noncancerous is the joy I feel in knowing without a doubt that I am so unafraid of death. Only by staring it in the face for a few days as a real near-term possibility could I have arrived at the solidity of this knowing.

The loss of the many things on our trip across country left us even more aware of what matters to us – and grateful for what we do have. The difficulty finding a home served to both strengthen my resolve to not sell myself short under the pressure of compromise, and introduced us to a fantastic builder with whom we can actually create what we want.

I notice that any given circumstance can open to greater awareness, rather than feel like oppression that just won’t stop. Often in my professional life I have met individuals who seem to prefer maintaining their status quo, miserable though it is, over making the changes necessary to create true and lasting peace for themselves. On some level, our gut knows full well when the habits, relationships or situations we are in are hurtful. We know when we hurt. In an odd, paradoxical way, this is sometimes part of the attraction. Why is that?

There is no simple answer to this. But it may be helpful to consider a few thoughts. If we look closely, we see that there are sometimes hidden, presumed benefits from our pain and struggle. Being seen as a victim has a lot of bennies associated with it. For one, we get attention. For some this may be the only way they know to establish their worth in the world. Overcoming the victim stance requires great strength and courage because it has to be one of the most ennobled positions in the world. Victimhood is sinuously close to martyrdom, a revered state in many cultures. The trouble is, to keep getting the benefits associated with being a victim, we have to keep reinventing the drama of it – and experiencing the dastardly consequences.

There are indeed sometimes difficult circumstances in the world we must face. It is the way of this planet for all events and situations to come and go. Some are painful in their occurrence; some in their passing. How we frame these events in the matrix of our own psyche depends in large part on our acceptance of our experience as we have it. So long as we explain the passing events of our time as “our fault” or “punishment” or some other judgment–based picture, we will suffer an added blow to the original experience. Again and again, until we see it differently.

When we realize deeply that the ways of this world are in constant flux and that our experiences are potential openings to greater self-awareness, understanding, depth and acceptance, all these plays of our lives take on a different meaning. We learn to be curious about the event, and open to our experience. We learn to love ourselves in it all, and embrace ever again the possibility of deepening contact with that most precious ongoingness of life, Itself. Underneath all this is the fluid self-acceptance we can find by knowing that we, too, are temporary on this earth. We matter as we are – right now.

Noticing that all things – for better or for worse – are temporary phenomena is powerful medicine for overcoming resentment. Living in gratitude for the moments we do have – as we have them – is a payoff that beats victimhood hands down.

Change

It has become nearly common knowledge that when a caterpillar hides itself in a chrysalis to metamorph into a butterfly, it decomposes completely. From this soup of apparently random cells come progenitor cells, called imaginal cells, which find one another in such a way that a new cohesive pattern is formed. A butterfly. In the cosmos is contained the plan – the blue print – for this new form to take shape.

In like fashion, every decomposing leaf, trunk and body can be seen to be returning to the chrysalis womb of the great Mother, Earth, to be reshaped into the cellular pattern of that which is waiting to be formed from those particular cells. All matter is imaginal. Transforming yet again and again into new forms of the Cosmos’ imagining.

What is seldom mentioned in the butterfly story is that the original caterpillar cells put up a fight. There is some initial struggle when the newly christened imaginal cells reach out to find one another in that soup. Some are killed in this battle. Eventually, they do coalesce, and that which is to be does emerge, but beneath the hardened shell of that chrysalis the newly created butterfly had to ward off the efforts of the dying caterpillar to maintain itself before it could successfully find its own new form.

I imagine personal and societal change must surely follow this same pattern. If you are experiencing discord and turmoil in your life; if you know change needs to happen but you feel yourself clinging to some outmoded past, give your imaginal cells a boost.

Imagine yourself as that butterfly you are longing to be. Imagine the world as that place where you want to be. And see how you fit into that new pattern.

Then – live it. It is what you are here to do.