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Food #5: Transformation- When You Come to Turning Points in Your Life

Another Fork Stuck in the Road

"I feel that my life is a series of trapeze swings. I'm either hanging onto a trapeze bar swinging along, or (for a few moments in my life) I'm hurtling across space in-between trapeze bars.

I spend my life hanging on for dear life to my trapeze bar of the moment. It carries me along at a steady rate of swing, and I have the feeling that I'm in control of life. I know most of the right questions and even some of the answers.

But every once in a while as I'm merrily (or even not so merrily) swinging along, I look out ahead of me into the distance, and what do I see? I see another trapeze bar swinging toward me. It's empty, and I know, in that place in me that knows, that this new trapeze bar has my name on it.

It is my next step, my growth, my aliveness coming to get me. In my heart of hearts I know that for me to grow, I must release my grip on this present, well-known bar and move to the new one.

Each time it happens to me, I hope (no, I pray) that I won't have to let go of my old bar completely before I grab the new one. But in my knowing place, I know that I must totally release my grasp on my old bar, and for some moment in time, I must hurtle across space before I can grab on to the new bar.

Each time 'I am filled with terror. It doesn't matter that in all my previous hurtles across the void of unknowing I have always made it I am each time afraid that I will miss, that I will be crushed on unseen rocks in the bottomless chasm between bars. But I do it anyway.

Perhaps this is the essence of what the mystics call the faith experience. No guarantees, no net, no insurance policy, but you do it anyway ... because somehow to keep hanging on that old bar is no longer on the list of alternatives.

And so for an eternity that can last a microsecond or a thousand lifetimes, I soar across the dark void of ..."the past is gone, the future is not yet here." It's called transition. I have come to believe that it is the only place that real change occurs.

I mean real change ... not the pseudo-change that only lasts until the next time my old buttons get punched. I have noticed that, in our culture, this transition zone is looked upon as "no-thing" - a place between places.

Sure, the old trapeze bar was real, and that new one coming toward me, I hope that's real too. But the void in-between? That's just a scary, confusing disorienting nowhere that must be gotten through as fast and as unconsciously as possible.

What a waste! I have a sneaking suspicion that the transition is the only real thing, and the bars are illusions we dream up to avoid the void, where the real change, the real growth occurs for us. The transition zones in our lives are incredibly rich places. They should be honored, savored. Yet, with all the pain, fear and feelings of being out of control that can (but not necessarily) accompany transitions, they are the most alive, most growth-filled, passionate, expansive moments in our lives.

So, transformation of fear may have nothing to do with making fear go away, but rather with giving ourselves permission to "hang out" in the transition between trapezes. Transforming our need to grab that new bar is allowing ourselves to dwell in the only place where change really happens. It can be terrifying. It can also be enlightening, in the true sense of the word, hurtling through the void...

WE JUST MAY LEARN HOW TO FLY!"

Credits: from "Fear Of Transformation" by Danaan Parry.