By Lorrie Kazan
Once you’re out of your comfort zone, you face the world in a new way.
The classic example is the alcoholic who finally hits bottom and has to find out how to live in sobriety. “Being sober was the last thing I wanted!” that person might say.
“I can’t live without the bottle, or this person, or an idea I designed my life around.” And yet, now you must.
When we’re thrown off the ship of the old way of being, we feel we have to do something, even if it it’s only treading water. The old life is gone, or the pain of it too great…a clear sign that it’s time to change.
“Why, Why, Why?” we want to know. Why can’t we have our cake and eat it too, or have our loved ones restored to us, or be able to drink all night and function the next day? Why can’t we have what we believe we need?
Maybe this is a divine appointment arranged by the soul; a process that nudges us to grow into whom we’re meant to be?
Does it have to be so abrupt? Jungians would say no. Their way is to create a context in which to live consciously, pondering insights and allowing them to deepen.
If you are doing inner work, exploring your dreams, looking at your behavior, working toward consciousness, you’re less likely to be jarred awake. Classically, what you don’t deal with from within, you encounter as fate.
6 Suggestions You Can You Do Now:
1. Explore your dreams. Write about them, live them, draw them, dance them, take time to reflect.
2. Take responsibility for everything, even choices that didn’t seem like choice at all.
3. Live with powerful questions. Nobel Prize Winner, Elie Wiesel, now in his 80s, has become more interested in questions than answers. What questions do you ponder?
Some powerful questions: How can I use this situation to grow? Where is the gift? What do I need to see that I’m missing? What is my part in it? What am I making it mean about me? Is it (whatever proposed action or comment) kind?
Sometimes, our part is not listening to an inner voice that says, “stop.”
4. H.A.L.T...Never get too hungry, angry, lonely or tired. It can help to take simple actions and not try to force results. Also, notice if you’re in reaction, you’ll want to force results, have the answer NOW…make the other person see…
5. Psychic readings, with the proviso that you seek out someone talented and stay open for wisdom. We’re all succors for wanting certainty about what will happen next, ie: When will I get what I want, find true love, why isn’t this guy behaving as he should, etc?
But readings offer something greater than fortunetelling. They offer you a way to see your life through 3-D glasses. Then you can access what’s possible and not just what you’re likely to get.
6. Therapy and Transformational Work
What’s possible might fall behind your current blind spot, but if you pray to stay open and you work with someone skilled, the blindness may begin to lift, new seeds planted that let you grow in ways you may not have known existed.
Ancient wisdom tells us that the world is always in a process of becoming. And of course, so are we.
It’s a mystery, this life we lead. Filled with incredible beauty and at times paralyzing fear. You don’t have to go it alone. While I’ve just touched the surface here, in the words of Oprah Winfrey: “No matter what happens, you’re always, always going to be okay.”
art by Sam Carlo
