Transformation

There are times in life when we feel transformed - we come back from a workshop or finish reading a book, we have an enlightening conversation or watch an eye opening documentary or just are in a situation which opens our soul connection and changes our perspective. We come out feeling new, more alive, freer than before and we just know that we have changed. A lot of times we tell ourselves and our dear ones that we can’t recognize the person we were before. And then suddenly we begin talking in terms of the “old” me and the “new” me.

We go “back” into life excited and elated about living our changed lives while at the same time tentative about how we are going to “adjust” and whether this change is going to last. We believe that we are new people who are going back into the same old existence and that we need to learn to balance that old life as a new person. We have new eyes but we continue to look through our old glasses. We are also fearful at some level about whether these changes are going to lead to our losing what was once dear to us. As a result we try to merge the new and the old, thinking that it would help us achieve a seamless transition, instead of just accepting the changed version of ourselves. So we build resistance to just flowing the way we are.

Some of us fall ill, end relationships, break habits and lose friends. Some of us spend money on changing wardrobes and giving ourselves a make-over. Or we just give up, think the changes were a temporary fun phase and go back to the way we were. These and so many other ways we find to “handle” the change, to deal with the “resistance” to leading our “new” lives. And we repeat this cycle over and over again – whenever we go through an episode of transformation. We make change so difficult and then wonder why change management is the new fad!

What if we were to look at it from a different perspective – what if we realized that this was just a growth process and celebrated the growth like we do our birthdays? What if we accepted that all that these transformations bring about in us is a movement ahead on our path of enlightenment that cannot be turned back unless we wish to stay attached to the way we were? What if we realized that these transformations are not change, they are growth. There isn’t a “new” me and an “old” me any longer but just the same me who is more enlightened and aware. We are no longer two different people – we are just one person who has more knowledge and chooses to live life differently. What if we just had faith in the process and let go of the resistance believing that this transformation can be as beautiful as we hope since we are the creators of our existence.

We would then also realize that every circumstance that we have had in the past, were just stepping stones to get us where we are. They were each individual bricks which when put together made the building what it is now. We would also realize that the difference in our behavior and reactions come from the combined energy of all of these bricks put together rather than a few of these new bricks. We would honor ourselves so much more as the sum of these parts rather than as a different result of some new parts. This would make our space one of so much more acceptance – no longer would we be worrying about the parts of the “old” me that we hope will not surface again. We would be able to retain our experiences but shed our conditioning that came with these experiences making us perfect for the unique role each one of us is to perform.