I have always believed people can and do change. Sometimes it’s not for the better, but in most people I know who have undergone a metamorphosis, it is. The phenomenon of changing one’s psyche was always an intriguing mystery to me, until I have undertaken making major changes this past year within myself.
Most of the time people change as a result of going through an extremely difficult time. When going through it, we have two choices. We can work and learn from it and discard some old values we lived by and figure out and adopt a whole new set of values and morph into a whole new person. Or, we can hang on to things we should let go of and continue to let them drag us down deeper in our misery.
In the first very dark months of my journey there were certain things I discovered and grasped onto to keep from going over the edge. These things, within the next few months, emerged as my whole new set of values that I live by now. I blogged them in April and still can repeat all five from rote memory, and in weak moments, latch right onto them. They were then, and still are now:
1. Be a vehicle for the spirit (“lean not unto thine own understanding” – because I don’t understand a damned thing – only God knows all) – step back, drop my hands by my side, and quiet myself
2. Give gratitude – all day, for every little thing
3. Be custodial with all God has given me – appreciate and take good care of hearts and things alike
4. Practice deference – keep some things to myself so as not to deplete the energy
5. My primary relationship is with God. All others spill from there. All my energy begins with Him.
Now, in the ninth month of my journey, I have learned one more value on my trek to the shoreline on the downside of the beach path. I have learned I must trust the process. God has set a process that I must go through and the time I must trust it is when I don’t understand it at all. in yoga we are taught to come everyday – even when we’re tired or not feeling up to it. Those are the days we most need to go. We need to come with no expectations and trust the process of the yoga working in our bodies – even though we feel awful.
So it is with going through a difficult situation. In Melody Beattie’s words:
“It can be difficult when the storm hits, to remember that the journey is a benevolent and holy one, a process that is working with us to help us learn something new.”
I loved the words “a holy and benevolent one”. Looking back at the torturous months, when the knife was cutting deeply, I can now dub “a holy and benevolent” time. Not back then, but now I can see how I had to just hang on and trust the process. That was where my very first value of “being a vehicle for the spirit” was born. That moment when the kicking and screaming stops. When the handcuffs that bound me, necessary to get me to stop acting like was acting, were finally taken off and I could drop my hands to my sides and quiet myself all on my own.
This value, by far has been the most valuable one in helping me live a different, calmer, better life today. As a result, I have changed. Deeply and profoundly. Amazingly. God gave me the tools – the yoga, the people, the writing, the art, this blog – and then He let me go at it. I now thoroughly understand “how” people change. One affirmation in yoga this week was: “There is freedom and change in the air; time to discard old ideas”. Here I go again.
And so, as another day goes by, we learn by doing, and…I have written.
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