The brief discomfort of real change

In each moment, even though the circumstances seem the same as well as the people in our life seem already known to us, nothing is actually similar to the moment before. Each new moment and each new experience, each piece of information and each experience of our self inevitably changes us, as it does others, even though our educated mind wants to spot the familiar and likes to sit comfortably in its “knowing”.

Our surface, mechanical ego comes online (as long as we permit it to) assuming it knows, by examining and judging the past, what the present and future moment will look like. It gives us ready, formed, reactive responses; it hypothesizes and alters reality to suit its perception. This leads to repeated reactions, until we manage to detach from the ego and silence the inner chatter of ego mind.

Everything changes and the future presents itself with infinite possibilities as we dare our conscious response to the present moment. At first, this seems like an inaccessible opportunity that is alien to our usual definitions of interaction.

For a moment – a very long moment that seems like eternity – you “lay your weapons down, you feel totally defeated and ready to abandon the battlefield. All emotions surface at once; frustration, anger, fear, self-doubt and accusation of the perceived enemy. They are all over-whelming and totally over-powering.  You feel diminished and exposed at the same time, left alone and unguarded by the usual fighting power and urge of the ego. Stranded and confused, in that long minute of emptiness (no more tools to fight with but no real power to flee), you die in the moment.

Then, something “snaps” inside; the ego’s pride and self-importance. You feel stranded. You suddenly have nothing to offer to the present moment. You know nothing. You have no suggestions. All theories disappear, they are useless, vanish into thin air.

You find yourself in absolute silence. A very long moment that seems to go on forever, in which you find that you cannot clear a thought or utter a word.

Out of nowhere, something happens. You are given a sentence. Somewhere to begin – anew – nothing else. You don’t know what the next sentence will be or where this is leading to. Perhaps nowhere, but you are unable and unwilling to control. You have absolutely no expectations and no agenda.

But something changes in the others too. They pick up that first sentence and they give you their full attention.

One sentence leads to the next until you bypass the left brain completely and reach for the right brain, through symbols, images and visual archetypes. Both energies change, of the other and yourself. You center once again.