11. Human Conditions - Change, Growth and Letting Go
We must not harden our hearts to change, but accept our responsibilities towards it.
This final chapter of Part II: Spirit explores the broader metaphysical conditions that not only present daily challenges and opportunities for spiritual development, but also make the experience of human life one of the most challenging, curious, and mysterious of all Earthly species. These include: Change, Growth and Letting Go, Time, Creativity, Discipline and Willpower, and Guiding and Being Guided. Individual and collective awareness of these conditions set the stage for our spiritual engagement with the world, while our subjective willingness and ability to embrace them become avenues for this engagement to be shaped by our design.
Change, Growth and Letting Go
Coping with and accepting change is one of the most difficult aspects of the human condition. Many wise and mystical people throughout history have demonstrated that change is the only constant of life; prophetic science fiction author Octavia Butler famously identified God as change, and tasked humans with the responsibility to help shape it. In this way, change is the all-powerful force to which we humans must submit; we cannot resist or overcome it, as it is the ocean upon which the tiny boats of our lives float, and the tides cannot be stopped. Thus, to be most effective and of service to ourselves and our communities, we must not harden our hearts to change, but accept our responsibilities towards it, no matter how arduous the journey.
Surprise and spontaneity are facets of change that can be light and fun, or shocking and disturbing - change can come without warning, although the intuitive amongst us may have premonitions of what is to come. Change can also happen gradually, incrementally, over time; yet this reduced pace does not necessarily mean that it is any easier to adjust to a new normal. Change can bring immense fear of the future, of threats to one’s safety, the loss of current happiness, or the intensification of pain. If we allow these seeds of fear to grow, the giant, rambling beanstalks they produce will choke out the flowers in the garden. As philosopher Alan Watts teaches, “Whether we like it or not, change comes, and the greater the resistance, the greater the pain” (1995/2003: 76). Transience is certain: not only do the conditions in the outer world change, but also, one changes internally, which must be reflected in the way one lives.
If we accept that change is coming, it is logical to begin preparing for it. But it is near impossible to completely prepare for change. Only very few have the long-ranging tools and talents of divination that help us to see down the road and recognise the contours of where we are headed, let alone predict what we will need to support us when we arrive. Because change processes have emotional, practical and metaphysical dimensions that require simultaneous attention, in periods of great change we may need to slow down, in order to get the measure of the changes that are taking place.
Do not be ashamed of this slowdown, nor of the potential feeling that you are walking through treacle and perhaps not getting very far. Keep focused on what you wish to develop and gradually you will see your life shift in that direction; years later you will look back and realise how far you have come. However, if urgent decision making is necessary, skills like the OODA loop may be useful, as explored by activists and facilitators adrienne maree and Autumn Brown.
We have a tendency to attach ourselves emotionally to our current conditions, whatever their pros and cons. This pattern shows itself in our further tendency to perpetuate or replicate such conditions, even if they are sources of pain for us. Watts uses the Sanskrit word ‘trishna’, or the ‘craving to resist change’, describing it as a refusal to accept this fundamental condition, and ultimately an illusion we must reject (1995/2003: 76). Stripping oneself of such illusion requires enormous inner strength and focus. Accepting the inevitability of change and the truth of impermanence means willingly reshaping the way one relates to the world - in other words, learning to let go.
In this process of letting go, grief becomes a most important teacher. Its clarifying wisdom comes gradually, through senses sharpened through pain and heightened by sorrow. Paradoxically, grief may make you feel distant from others, yet in order to be a source of healing, it needs to be witnessed. In bringing traditional Burkina Faso grief practice to the West, Dagara elders Malidoma and Sobonfu Somé taught that collective grief ritual was a human necessity; Francis Weller amplifies and extends these teachings, emphasising that the dissonance and loneliness we may feel as grievers is the result of a society that is profoundly sick and sickening in its individualistic orientation. Processing grief by making space and time to acknowledge its presence in the bodymind, to feel it and move it through in concert with community, is essential to letting go and accepting the fundamental nature of change.
In light of the fact that change will happen, adaptation is necessary – but it need not only be reactive. Developing an intentional response to change is the heart of the philosophy author and movement facilitator adrienne maree brown develops in her groundbreaking book Emergent Strategy. Through what she calls intentional adaptation, she emphasises the potential for us to introduce ‘movement and orientation towards life, towards longing’ (2017: 70) into the way we cope with change.
In the intentional adaptation approach, brown challenges us to seek and find clarity about our vision, our dream destinations, and commit to them, which will then inform our intentions. This useful framework grounds our intentions by forcing us to introduce a notion of our end goals into our daily practices; we can more easily make it to our intended destinations if we have an idea of where we are going. brown further advises us that to develop our capacities for intentional adaptation, we must do the emotional work needed to transform, if needed, unhelpful default reactions to change, those that obscure from us opportunity, possibility, and movement towards our visions of ‘growth, relationship and regeneration’ (2017: 71).
In order to transform our default reactions, we must first identify what they are, where they came from, and let them go. We can use the practices introduced thus far to help us do this: body work, ritual, and spells can all help us to strengthen our ability to adapt intentionally to the change that is sure to come. Once we develop a clear picture of the vision we have for the future, through utilising a range of tools that we have and which we design as the need emerges, we can craft a way of responding to change that aligns with our visions.
The other side of change is acceptance of what is. This does not mean that we must be content with the world as it is; on the contrary, as activists, healers and mystics, we recognise our role in the world is to do what we can to leave it better than when we found it. But it does mean that in order for us to find a place of peace from which we can do this work, there is an imperative to be content in the present. Based on the Zen Buddhist truism that there is no other reality than the now, and that true happiness lies in finding peace from moment to moment, we can embrace the notion that the process of intentional adaptation to change includes both learning from and letting go of what was, embracing what is, and holding fast to our visions of what could be.
References and Further Reading
brown, a.m. (2017) Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. Chico: AK Press.
Butler, O. E (1993). Parable of the Sower. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows.
Somé, M. P. (1997). Ritual: Power, Healing and Community. Penguin.
Watts, A. (1995/2003). Become What You Are. Boulder: Shambhala.
Weller, F. (2015). The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief. North Atlantic Books.