Change may be constant, but to constantly change one must be constantly aware of what one is doing, how one is thinking, judging, and perceiving. To decide to change is only an idea. Real change happens in the day to day undertaking of actual change, in stopping the mind and body from falling back into the old comforts and taking steps to really change. Take the discomforts that come with change and use them to fuel the fires of change so that they do not die out. Constant attention to the details of change eventually lead to real change, but don’t stop there! Keep going and become the constantly alive and changing being you are truly capable of becoming. That is change that’s constant!
Hold peace in your heart, calmness in your mind, balance in your body, for what you hold onto within your physical self reverberates without. Keep your vibration at a low frequency, your central nervous system relaxed, and let your own power of love soothe you, for though the world without may oppose your notion of what is right and good you can still live and act and be all that is right and good within yourself and your own world. And that may be enough for now. Change, it begins and ends within you!
Crossing the river is a powerful symbol of change. To leave solid ground, to traverse a powerful current of liquid energy, to consolidate oneself on new uncharted ground, succinctly illustrates the phases of change.
So compelling is this image that the I Ching’s closing hexagram, #64, Before Completion, that marks the end and the beginning, is pictured as a fox crossing a river. In Greek mythology, securing the ferryman to cross the river Styx is the journey into Hades, land of the dead. Even the sophisticated modern texter might notice a ping in the pit of the abdomen as they prepare to drive across the bridge of a mighty river. The ping in the abdomen is the body’s archetypal recognition of the tremendum that crossing the great abyss represents.
Perhaps the great change we must face is as simple as closing our eyes and saying good night to the world. What guarantee do we have that the sun will rise or that we will open our eyes to the light of tomorrow as we drift and fall into the cliffhanger of dreams? What monsters, terrorists, sirens, and entities will we encounter in the underwater current of dream sleep? Will we safely rejuvenate and consolidate on firm ground tomorrow, or will our thoughts interrupt our smooth passage into a new day?
Perhaps our solid ground is the quiet calm of our aloneness. The sudden intrusion of a ring or a ding sparks fear in the throat, our sanctuary lost as we are thrown into the river of needs and expectations of another. Can we find our way to new ground that includes both self and other?
To leave the security of our car, wade across the parking lot, and enter the vast ocean of a store, with its sea of humanity, may evoke a furor of dissolution of self. In fact, every simple action of the day, from waking, interacting, leaving, working, eating, and returning, poses challenges for the smallness of self to navigate the bigness of everything.
In days of old, the rituals of the great religions tapped into the tried and true archetypal bridges of our deep nature to facilitate our crossings from one phase of life to another; crossings from childhood to adulthood, solitariness to relationship, life to death. These rituals literally transformed one into a new sense of self, confident to take on a new ground in life. These rituals bathed the ego in the deep wellspring of unconscious resource that reshaped the conscious self.
In our time, these rituals have largely petrified through the ascendence of rationality and the failure of religion to authentically provide a numinous crossing experience. Today, the individual must turn to the dream, which still offers the ritual crossings to new life. Conscious participation in dreaming can access those transformative crossings. Often the dream uses the river or the ocean, with all kinds of helpers and challenges, to facilitate the necessary changes to successfully effect a safe crossing.
Use of an oracle, such as the I Ching, can offer the guidance of a dream. In Hexagram #64, Before Completion, it offers the following guidance for making the crossing:
Don’t advance too rapidly just to get it over with—you may not be ready, it might not be the right time.
Be patient. Develop the necessary strength—the vehicle for the crossing. Don’t lose sight of the goal.
Sometimes it’s time to cross but you’re not ready, you lack the requisite strength. It is necessary to get help. Be humble. Ask.
You must battle the forces of inertia, regression, avoidance and doubt. Be resolved. Respect the power of the dissenters. Lay the foundation for mastery by consolidating intent.
Once the crossing has been effected, keep exuberance in proper measure. Intemperance can drown all one has worked for.
These cautions steer the ego to be in the right relation with the deeper self that then provides its transformative energies to transport the ego solidly and happily across the river to new fertile ground. Remain awake, poised, intent, patient, and calm. Know that the way will be shown. Perhaps the sea will part, perhaps the right floating log will appear. Simply know that you will cross.
What is real change? It may feel good to escape the heat of an uncomfortable situation, but that hardly guarantees we won’t be triggered again or that we won’t repeat the same fateful drama with a new cast of characters. The ego might try, with all of its cognitive might, to identify and rationally put to rest its fears and anxieties, but despite all its heroic intentions it might still find itself blindsided and seized by a passionate emotion of anger, terror, or attraction, or be swallowed up in a pool of sadness.
That white light of illumination… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
The simple truth is that the ego fortress alone, despite all its mighty defenses, is unlikely to permanently change or transform the deeper issues of the psyche housed in the depths of the unconscious and triggered by the outer circumstances of everyday life.
Permanent change is very simple to recognize: the person or situation that once triggered us, as measured by a strong activation of the central nervous system in powerful emotion, is now experienced as neutral; no activation of the central nervous system, no powerful emotion.
Energetically, we can say that the inner electrical charge of the triggering object has been completely depleted of its electrical charge. Psychically, we could say that the energy of the unconscious content behind the trigger has been transferred from the unconscious to the ego in the form of deep understanding, acceptance, and resolution. The ego becomes stronger, not in its defenses but more in its reduced need for defenses, the energy formerly spent in defenses now available for a more fulfilling experience of life.
The symbol that often emerges to represent this enlightened state of consciousness is white light, or whiteness in some form. This form of illuminated whiteness in spiritual terms is awareness that transcends maya, the veil of illusion that entraps us in the triggered situation, projected onto everyday life.
The bright light of whiteness lays bare all the truths, like the bright sun at its midday zenith. But this transformation also requires that the ego withstand the intense heat of both the blinding light of truth and the full heat of emotions that are sure to arise during any encounter with truth.
Rather than discharge that emotion in defensive spurts of blame and rage, the ego contains this cauldron of volatile emotion without action. As the truth is laid bare, the ego pours its deep well of tears into the cauldron as well, allowing both the heat of the fire and the dissolution of water to break down its intense attachment to the illusion it has held onto in an attempt to medicate itself from the full impact of the truth.
Finally, the fire of contained passion, the solution of sadness and depression, and the consciousness of the full reality of what is, eventuates in a genuine transformation. We are released into freedom from a formerly binding attachment. We can then stare into the truth of our lives with the detachment of reading a benign history book, no triggers, only genuine transformation.
Holding steady in the fire within… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
In her new book, to be published later this year, Jan offers an account of an experience of this cauldron of transformation, of bright white light followed by an intensity of emotions. She was at a family gathering, usually an emotionally triggering situation: “I feel myself move slightly, not my body, for my physical body remains stationary, but something inside me shifts and suddenly I see everything differently. One second I am my usual self, thinking my thoughts, and in the next second everything goes quiet. I go quiet too, utterly calm and still, and I see that everything and everyone is highlighted in white light. Crystal clear and luminous energy flows from everyone and everything. I am almost afraid to blink; I don’t want to disturb the beautiful, numinous vision. Then, just as suddenly, I am flooded with emotions. Feelings of sadness and loneliness envelop me…”
And that is followed by this: “…and then I know that it’s all true, that everything is true, that this experience in this moment is true and all I have recapitulated is true too.”
In the end, Jan states: “I was able to maintain a sense of continuity in the midst of the shift,” underscoring that the ego was ready to encounter what was being proposed as the means to transformation. Now that is real change!
I said to Jan on Sunday that it felt like the first day of spring—yes, January 31st! Temperatures in the low 50s, people out walking, time elongated to the point where by 8 PM it felt like 11PM, certainly time for bed!
The world is changing rapidly now. There is no going back. Though we ground ourselves in the familiarity and constant contact of social media, pervasive and lasting change is swooping in all around us.
I was delighted, on our timeless Sunday, to find and watch a documentary on Marion Woodman, renowned Jungian analyst, whose personal life and transformation speak eloquently to the coming death and rebirth of the world we live in as we undergo deep transformation. Her sharing of the rise of the feminine as the missing healing factor in our growth process is positive and quite hopeful. I couldn’t have said it better.
