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I remember first reading Peter Russell’s amazing rendition of time from the conception of earth to the present day about ten years ago. His perspective, which is clearly outlined in his book Waking Up In Time, was startling. Everything big that has ever happened, he pointed out, has happened in half the time it took for the last big thing to happen. So every time something big happens, be it cells forming or dinosaurs roaming or humans appearing, the time between major changes has been reduced by fifty percent.
Russell argues that we have now come to a point of having such a short time between major changes, that in a half-mile high building that represents everything that has ever happened, the time between the pharaohs ruling Egypt (a mere 50th of an inch from the top) to the creation of the internet (a layer almost too thin to measure), are both contained within the building’s single top coat of paint. And within the microscopic measurement that is the span of our lifetime, the time between each change is going to keep splitting.
This means that within most of our lifetimes, some kind of zero point will occur. It will be a time when we simply blink and the world as we know it changes.
And Then Changes Again
For people who are not fond of change, this is not exactly good news.
Reading this book nearly ten years ago, I wondered what it would feel like to have the world slipping out from under my feet on a regular basis. Would I be bewildered? Being a person who, in general, loves change, would the changes start to come so fast that I would begin to fear them? Would I feel like that old saying “I’m dancing as fast as I can?”
Looking back, every aspect of my life encountered big changes in the past decade. My work (in fact the entire publishing industry), has changed dramatically. My family life has taken on several forms. My spiritual life took such a radical left turns, I can hardly imagine what kept me spiritually alive in my first 35 years. Even my personal identity—a small town girl turned stay-at-home suburban housewife—changed to that of practicing shaman, political activist and world traveler. All in one decade.
The World Has Also Changed
Global warming is no longer a debate anywhere except in the media. Aids is beyond epidemic, tiny ticks bring grown men to their knees, and birds might just bring the flu that gets the best of us. One country’s curse is easily the world’s, because people travel from continent to continent nearly as casually as they switch from beer to wine at a party.
Buddhism has spread (finally, options on the spiritual path!), but so have invasive plant species like Japanese stilt grass, which are now taking over huge areas of our woodlands. We have the awesome privilege of seeing zebras in the wild, and we also have the responsibility of ages-old coral reefs bleaching from our touch. We can listen to virtually any kind of music the world creates, but our children walk around plugged at the ears, and feel completely lost should the revered iPod break. (Trust me on this—we’ve got one broken now.)
The List Goes On
Such changes could fill volumes of books in order to recount them all. And as Russell suggested, those volumes would never be complete, because they are coming faster and faster. We will not stop the change. We cannot.
Which leaves us asking big questions. How do we evolve, as all species have evolved, in order to thrive in our new reality? How do we adapt so that change is a marvelous kaleidoscope, and not a tsunami or tornado bringing chaos to everyone and everything we have come to know and love? Perhaps most important…
How Do We Find The Beauty In Change?
First, we must look at what is not beautiful. I may step on a few toes here, but bear with me. I’m going for the true gold, not the shiny slick stuff those who would sell us something want to pass off as gold.
It is not beautiful to want things that, by their use, bring destruction to the planet. It is not beautiful to want things that create such a gap between the rich and the poor that the poor suffer. It is not beautiful to spend the money we could spend on healthy food grown on a healthy planet to fill our walk-in closets with clothes we’re perpetually becoming a little too chunky to wear. It is not beautiful to buy things that promise to provide us with a faster, easier, happier life when we are well aware it will give us a lazier, more depressing and less healthy existence on planet earth. It is not beautiful to want things that others say we must have to be okay—things we don’t even really like that much ourselves—when in fact we are all perfectly flawed and we all always will be.
In short (and here go the toes), it is not beautiful to be among the wealthiest, most educated, most privileged people in the world and go around trying to manifest “abundance” just because there’s no Jaguar in our 3-car garage. That is not beauty, and it’s not the behavior of those who actually find the beauty in change. To find real beauty, we must look beyond these illusions, and stop grasping after what we really don’t want and the planet does not need.
Where Beauty Is Born
I would argue that any form of real and true beauty cannot be purchased. It can only be created, or better yet, birthed. A flower is birthed from the seed and the soil. You and I, too, were birthed in beauty, whatever our circumstances. Just ask anyone who has witnessed the birth of a baby—it is as if some magical bell tingles in the heavens and the sound reverberates in our souls, causing us to draw a deep breath, and take an inherent pause to honor the miraculous.
To be a true witness to this beauty, we must be awake, aware, and conscious of it happening. We must be present to the birth, and it is best if we have invested in the process of conception, gestation, and the dreaming that comes with all new life. It only makes sense that the gardener who is a participant in the planting, the watering, and the waiting will have a much greater experience of beauty when the flower actually blooms than the person who buys a bunch at the subway entrance while making a mad dash to catch the last train.
Change Is No Different
If we have been a partner in the process of change, if we have been attuned enough to have caught a whiff of the winds of change even before it arrives, if we have been dreaming and planning and making ourselves ready, and if we are aligned with the Tao that is moving within the seemingly chaotic wind that change comes on, the beauty in that change is ours for the beholding. We are not blindsided, we are a co-creator with a front-row seat.
To make matters better, as an insider, we know when to hold still, and when to move. When to take cover, and when it is safe to come out again. We are not lost and tossed about when the storms inevitably come by. We are intuitively strategic, gleaning the very best moments that arise while others who had expected only sunshine are running in circles, damp with fear.
But How?
Most of the time, we see ourselves as fixed. My name is Robin. I am a writer. I live in Annapolis, Maryland. I drive a gold Saturn four-door. I live with my partner Brian. My mother and father in-law are good friends. I eat mostly organic food. I can’t run anymore due to bad knees. This is my life.
This is what the folks in the Harry Potter books would call the Muggle view of life. Yet we are not fixed. Like Harry, there is more to us. More than even we know. And when we take on the role of mother/artist in relationship to the changes that move around and through us—especially the ones that seem forced upon us from an outside event—that “more” is our god-send.
Doing The Two-Step
So, the first step in this new dance is to accept that we must become more than we thought we were, which includes letting go of more than we thought we could as well as offering more than we thought we had. In doing so, we draw on the inherent magic within for the creation of our true intentions to come forth. We step out of the role of victim, and determine ourselves to play with whatever materials we are presented with. With such an attitude, we can replicate the Taj Mahal with soda caps and Popsicle sticks.
Then comes the even more courageous step two. If you are going to find the beauty in being a creator in this life, and the mother of anything, you must accept that not only will you die, but what you create will die as well. (All of it will be reborn of course. That is just another layer in the larger creative chaos-to-harmony and harmony-to-chaos merry-go-round that is our existence.) The flower, the child, the businesses, the books, the marriages (even the ones that last until death), the name you carry, the car you drive—all of it is going to go.
Even That Miraculous Something More
Yes, even that which creates the “more” in you will move in and out of your direct experience. That is the nature of the creative beast, and you can be assured you’ve done nothing wrong when this happens. As the saying goes, sometimes you are the windshield, sometimes you are the bug.
Yet with death held respectfully in one hand, we have immediate access to how precious and beautiful all of life is. What is changing will never be again—so our only option is to enjoy it in all its stages. If the finished product is ultimately dust in the wind, then the process becomes what makes up our moments, our days, our months and our years.
Accessing the “More” In Change
I can almost hear you now—“Yes, but what about that ‘more’ you spoke of. How do I find that?” And you are right on the money to ask. Shapeshifting to become the kind of person who can allow the “more” to come through us, but not from us, is the name of the game. The beauty is there—just as the world is filled with outrageous wild flowers. Becoming the one who sees it is the trick.
To do so, we must decide right now that the wind of change is our dance partner, not our tormenting destroyer. We must decide to be the mother of change in our own lives, whenever possible, before it comes to get us. (You know the old saying, Spirit knocks twice, then kicks down the door.) We do not drag our feet, hope that what we know to be true is just our imagination. We face up squarely and do what needs to be done, because that is what mothers do.
Putting ourselves in line with what is, with the changes we know are coming, not flinching even though our gut is rolling with uncertainty, we then ask the that something more to show up. And we let go of exactly how that is going to happen.
When Lightning Strikes
When being the pre-emptive mother of change is not possible, when we are left to work with what we did not ask for but were given, we must assume the role of artist if we wish to experience the beauty of change.
We asses reality as it now is, and we begin to turn lemons into lemonade. We turn an unwanted divorce into a new marriage of the various parts within ourselves. We transform the terrible loss of a beloved child into a compassionate activist’s work. We learn to play basketball in a wheelchair. We smile at the wrinkles in the mirror and ask ourselves, playfully, “So, you old bat, what are you going to do with your life now that you are no longer out to win a beauty contest?”
As the artist, even the shadows have their place, creating their own kind of beauty. We learn, working with the darker colors, that we are not so afraid as we thought we were, and not nearly as limited in our options. We craft and create, we mould and mangle, twist and heat, smooth and step back, then go at it again, until the beauty is ours to behold once again.
This Month’s ShapeShift
Imagine yourself a person completely at ease with change. Put on your artist’s smock, and become the painter who moves from painting to painting, loving each one, and letting each one go. Imagine yourself in the garden of your life, enjoying each season, even the coldest months when the seeds are frozen deep within. Imagine yourself the kind of person who expects her relationships to change, her face and body to change, her work and home to change. She knows the land she lives on is living and breathing, and marvels at its ways of change. She learns from each of her processes, and each process around her. Beauty is everywhere, even in death. Imagine yourself standing at your own gravesite, looking back on your life, realizing it really is true, what they say: “It’s all good.”
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