Arnold
Beisser’s “paradoxial theory of change” is based on an extremely simple
premise; we do what we do, until we don’t.
It’s
as simple as that…we literally keep getting the same results until we decide
to give up on our habitual ways of doing “life” and do it differently.
We
have to decide to change in order to change and until we choose to wake up and
smell the coffee and take responsibility for our own suffering, things will
remain as they are.
Therefore
no matter how much we look for a change agency outside ourselves by praying to
a deity, doing ritual, going on courses, learning cool spiritual tools, or even
seeing a therapist/healer, we will not actually change the curent situation
until we choose to look towards our own self as change agent and own our innate
power to take back control of our lives through our choices and habits.
Yet
here’s the rub; we’ve been conditioned to completely avoid the one thing
capable of change -ourselves – our culture is so loaded against us being
present and embodying our own senses, breath and moment to moment choices and
taking full command of them through facing the patterns and choices we’d not
usually see as ours to make or reclaim.
This
SIMPLE notion is the last thing our ego wants to face up to. A life of social
and religious / new age conditioning which may stem back many past lives and
generations is hard to turn round on a six pence, especially where trauma
haunts our past.
Usually
it’s not until unbearable pain, illness, disaster or ruin strike that we
are willing to face the harsh reality of our own making and give up on the
external hoopla and focus instead on our own choices and become more conscious
of the patterns that are hardwired into and run us.
For
many people, it takes getting sick beyond redemption of their present
circumstances to pull themselves out of this trance.
Once
they’ve reached this saturation point – they are ready to commit to facing
themselves and dig beneath the hypnosis of their conditioning and see just how
they have been giving away their sovereignty to outside forces and
people.
It
is only then that they are able to make changes to their lives for the better
by identifying their beliefs, attitudes and behaviours….and even digging into
the transpersonal ie the past lives and family heritage that may have led to
the subtlety of self deceit and influenced their choices.
When
we hit this point of being sick to death of our own shit and stop looking
outside ourselves to blame or seek changes…we are finally ready.
As
we start making changes from this more integrated place of ownership, a sweet
irony tends to come into play.
The
change that governs our redemption starts to take on a dimension we had only
read about in new age books!! The force of our own higher self enters our lives
and becomes activated, because we’ve finally chosen to meet the deepest
force that lives within us – TRUTH and to learn to abide by it unconditionally.
By
taking full responsibility to live with what is true and only true we coopt the
power of Grace. The process can not be forced or manipulated.
Although
it may feel as if our lives are going to shit, a sense of relief and
empowerment may accompany these shifts in spite of the discomfort we have to
endure.
This
is part of the bottoming out and cleansing process necessary to pave the way
for the fresh and the good to come in.
It
may feel as though we are not in control of our lives any more but the impulse
to do our bit and meet whatever force for change is happening, requires us to
keep embodying, breathing, taking responsibility and walking those agonising
first steps….towards what we know is TRUE beyond our accustomed choices and
conditioning.
This phenomena is beautifully portrayed in the film The Matrix where Neo’s fight with Agent Smith, reflects how change can not happen when we are playing out a child like, victimised, disempowered place of suffering…but it begins when we start to believe in ourselves, that we are the only one who can save ourselves and instigate a whole new world of exciting possibilities.
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1- Failures hurt, but they are the soil for your learning, redemption and upliftment. Let your grief, anger, frustrations, negative beliefs, low self esteem and pain burn in the flames of your self-awareness, so that all negative experiences become the fertile soil from which your vibrant inner garden may grow.
2- Your hopes contain tender seeds. Do not cast them away or feed them to swine. They need fertile soil (experiences) water (tears), darkness (owning and mastering your shadow emotions), warmth (self acceptance), protection (good boundaries) from the frost (criticism or unconsciousness of others), and the powerful call of the moon (attuning to your body as well as mother nature and her rhthyms) to make them rise.
3- Pain can be a call from your unconscious innocent self, seeking your loving attention and parenting. Befriend your pain, as if a hurting animal and it will become your best and most loyal companion.
4- No-one is going to believe in you until you do. Look inside and activate this partnership within yourself before seeking it outside. You will be consistently disappointed until you grasp this awesome truth. Your self-approval is the only approval that will ultimately satiate the cravings of your deepest insecurities.
5- Emotional Mastery = get O.F.E.N.D.E.D!
Owning, Feeling, Expressing, Naming, Dealing with, Exhaling and Dignifying your Emotions is essential to your wellbeing. This is especially true of your darker more shadowy emotions which you can tell are alive and active in you if you get triggered, blame or attack others, ruminate over things or lose your peace over something with someone. If you don’t learn to control your emotions, then someone else will.
So get O.F.E.N.D.E.D. as often as possible! PS spiritual or emotional bypassing with love and light or modalities that keep you at a safe intellectual perspective, won’t resolve the deeper issues. They may have their uses, but are ultimately papering over your shadows. You will only add more work for yourself down the line using methods which don’t address, resolve and dissolve your core issues if you don’t get O.F.E.N.D.ED. from time to time.
6- You do things until you don’t. Habits formed over a life time or indeed life times or handed down to you through your ancestor’s choices can be incredibly stubborn to shift. Change is actually a continuous choice…but our ability to keep choosing when our unconscious blinkers of habitual blindness kick in is limited. Things rarely change until you develop the discipline to keep choosing consciously, saying no to what you no longer desire and making a space for what you do want.
Creating new habits is like forging a sword in the fires of your soul. Once cast, you can wield your will through the self discipline you have accrued, cutting through illusions and addictions to make those healthy choices that nurture and empower you.
7- Breakdowns and dark nights of the soul are nothing to be ashamed of. They are a natural part of rebirth and growth. Welcome them. You sometimes have to let life penetrate you so completely and so deeply that your defences break down and you re-enter a state of confusion, fragility and vulnerability. When you let go of any false self that has formed, it can feel worse than death, as you get closer and closer to your natural state of beingness. These ego masks will seek to cling on and fight for their life, such is the nature of the painbody which has sustained itself on your life cycles and emotional patterns. As you pull the plug on certain habits and ways of being, you will encounter a grand tussle that attempts to draw you back into familiar, cosy and old habits that seemingly soothe you. If you persist and push through these temptations by maintaining your embodiment and connection to your presence and breath you will start to shed these layers and come back to more and more wholeness. You will know you are connecting with Pure Source because you will feel an ease and a sense of wholeness from just being with yourself here and now in this moment in this body that feels like nothing on earth.
8- Unlearning to externalise and detaching from seeking fulfilment outside of yourself is one of the most significant things you will ever learn to do. Learning to Source a sense of completion and wellbeing first from within by being present in your body in this moment, will gift you with the keys to joy, wholeness and abundance.
9- As you strengthen your inner connection to Pure Source, this allows the dark fertile places within you to become your primary nourishment. Self love & empowerment begin to fill you from the inside out. You will start to see that taking control of your connection to yourself in this moment and filling up on Pure Source empowers you above and beyond any other external thing, rank or role, Guru, deity, God or Goddess, spiritual dogma or belief system that promises you salvation.
10- The roots of all healing can be traced back to constantly returning to this Present Moment. Through deep and mindful embodiment, breathing and ownership of your feelings, you can literally move mountains, going beyond your limiting patterns and entering the ‘spaces’ in between thoughts or what you habitually notice. You can practice this at any time, in any place & in any circumstance to empower yourself and activate your healing potential no matter what the challenge or circumstance.
11- Your body and auric field is a like a genetic library that holds all records to your personal, karmic and ancestral collective experience. Healing any residual imbalance, is not too dissimilar to paying the fine on an overdue book. In returning the legacies of your past to Source, you can wipe the slate clean through the currency of your embodied presence.
That moment, like the lion with the thorn in its paw, when you pull an aspect of ‘Self’ out, that has besieged you since time immemorial, and you finally confront the bottom line truth contained within this bleeding wound…
In so doing, you experience those ancient and repressed feelings that accompanied the original trauma, which had never been possible to fully feel until now, in order to lessen the disintegration that would have occured had you done so…
As you face up to the destructiveness of these experiences, allowing past feelings to be ‘felt’, but not ‘blamed’, as you have sufficiciently healed and processed your victim around it, it’s as if a loving presence larger than you simply removes this thorn…drawing out all the repercussions, distortions and layers that developed and rode along with that thorny aspect of your existence which you came to know as YOU.
Both the good and the bad, have to go. These investments of ‘selfhood’ dissolving in the process, are painful and feel like DEATH.
In their wake, they leave, space, depth of presence, vulnerability and a clear and pristine sense of where you start and another begins…and your responsibility in this dance as you move forwards….and into wholeness…
As that sense of what was false that ‘ran’ you slides away…that felt like ‘home’ until before this transition, there comes a void period of not being sure what just happened.
As this wholeness sets in, it can feel very different to any type of prior disassembling. This is because it’s not based on any sort of identity or learning, more an unlearning, leading to a sense of embodied presence and aliveness that can’t be understood by the cognitive ego centric mind…YES THAT. Lions, paws and thorns. THAT IS ALL.
As the smithy’s fire burns bright
Impurities rise up in the red hewn light
The fierce flames of the furnace await
The inert coppery rock’s final fate
Hiss, pop, sizzle, crackle
There’s no element this fire can’t tackle
The unforgiving hunger of the heat beckons
As the slurry separates out in seconds
Plunged without mercy into the freezing water
Metal takes on form from out of the slaughter
Bang bash wallop boom
The hammer reigns down under the full moon
A weapon cast from the dirt of these lands
Formed in the roughness of the blacksmith’s hands
Fire, water, air, earth come together
Alongside millions of years of crushed vegetation and inclement weather
Beads of sweat form on the smithy’s brow
The free flowing nectar of his ancestral knowhow
A gladiatorial blade fashioned out of primordial might
The shining blade glimmers ~ a harbinger of light
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