In my last few posts, I’ve been exploring different causes of stress and how these effect those of us who are conscious healers, sacred activists, creatives and change-makers. Some of these stresses are inherent in the transformational process and are not commonly acknowledged or talked about. My theme today is the stress that can arise as our identities change through the transformational process.
In any lifetime we experience many different identities. For example, some of the most obvious lifestyle transitions occur as we transition from identifying as a student to becoming a working woman or man, from being single to being in partnership, from being a fertile woman to being menopausal, from having an active career to retirement.
Then there are life choices that lead us into new avenues of exploration, skill and endeavour. I’m reading Ervin Laszlo’s autobiography, My Journey, A Life in Quest of the Purpose of Life, in which he describes how he began his life as a child prodigy musician and concert pianist and then suddenly changed direction to become an academic, researching, writing and lecturing on systems theory, science and philosophy. And then, just as suddenly he became an activist as he answered the call, not only to solve problems intellectually, but to make a difference in the world. He founded the Club of Budapest, an international organisation that stands for planetary consciousness and the mission to be a catalyst for the transformation to a sustainable world. He said, “I have been, and remain to this day, ‘driven’ by the urgency to find effective solutions – solutions that accord with the evolutionary impetus that drives development in the universe”. Through what he calls his incarnations and re-incarnations, and his dedicated quest to discovering the purpose of life, he has earned the accolade of being one of the greatest scientists and philosophers of our time. He has enabled a quantum leap in the understanding of consciousness and the birth of a new scientific paradigm in which the boundaries between science and spirituality dissolve.
Ervin Laszlo is hailed as a genius and for him the transitions between life chapters and identities appears to have been straightforward. But for most of us, while some transitions are easy and joyful, others call us into deeper transformations, in which it seems identity is being taken apart so that it can be put together again in a new and more expansive way. When we are in the midst of such a process it can give rise to deep self-questioning and doubt which can be very stressful.
I explored the development of what I call Soul Chapters in my book, A Story of Transformation. Here is a little of what I wrote.
Submit to Being Stripped to the Bone
There comes a point in the transformational process when the personality that has carried us this far is too small to hold the energy of the growing self. Think of the growing self as a plant that needs repotting. When roots begin to poke through the bottom of the pot and the leaves wilt it’s time to lift the plant out of its old home and give it a new, more spacious container. The same is true for the growing self; at a certain point it’s necessary to risk the vulnerability of letting go of the old, limited identity so that we can expand into a new, more integrated self. This may include letting go, at least temporarily, of aspects of the self that we are very attached to. For me, writing, teaching, visioning and innovating have long been my transformational tools and part of the consciousness practice that keeps me motivated. Creativity has been the magical ingredient I could always rely on to get me through tough times and find sense in them. I forged an identity around my creativity believing this is who I am. When I am in the flow of inspiration, I feel expanded, energised and clear about of my direction in life, and sure of what I am here to do. But, as a conscious healer committed to transforming consciousness, I’ve come to know that transforming consciousness is not always about feeling expanded and inspired. At times it is necessary to submit to a slow and steady peeling away of the layers of the personality – who I think I am – in order that I can discover who I truly am in my next manifestation as an embodied soul. It is necessary at times to submit to being stripped to the bone, and then from ground zero, to grow in authenticity, beyond ego and the desires of the personality, into service to something bigger.
Over several decades on my path, so much had already been peeled away, I had been expecting and dreading for years the apparent ending of my creative liveliness. I’d had an uneasy feeling it was inevitable that at some point my creative gifts would be eclipsed and I didn’t know how I would find meaning and purpose without them. Now, at a time when I was deepening into the labour of grief, sure enough, the wellspring of inspiration dried up and I was incapable of writing anything at all. Without my creative focus, I had no choice but to sit with the dying of the self that had carried me this far. I understood then, with a deeper knowing than before, that the healing and evolution of humanity starts with my own conscious healing, and with the embodiment of authentic truth, and that letting go of the outgrown identity is essential to this process.
To sit with death is to take a direction diametrically opposed to that of our culture, like a salmon swimming upstream to the deathing-birthing place. In that sense, it is radically counter-cultural. The psyche that drives mainstream Western culture has been fashioned by the engine of commerce and the consumer society to be goal-oriented and encourages a state of restlessness, desire, wanting, a sense of lack, cultivation of image, distraction, striving and accumulation, and is keeping alive the old paradigm that is killing life
To sit with death is to encounter stillness, silence, emptiness, absence of desire. The evolutionary impulse is a universal power much bigger than the self, in the face of which one has no choice but to suffer the falling away of everything that no longer serves life. Rather like a tree in autumn, the life force is withdrawn from the stems and the old leaves are destined to fall and make space for the new season’s growth to come. And yet, in the falling of the leaves, there is no consoling thought of a future spring. There is, maybe, a distant memory of renewal but otherwise the future is unimaginable. There is only this present moment, this emptiness.
Being human isn’t easy and being a conscious healer is a path that challenges us to the core. We cant expect the old paradigm, with all its life destroying tendencies, to dissolve unless we are willing to dissolve it within our own psyche. And this requires us at time to look life and death fully in the face without illusion, and then to move beyond judgment into unconditional love.
Sitting with death is a kind of detox process, a fasting from the pleasures and distractions of the world. We are in autumn, the time when leaves fall, and life energy goes underground for rest and renewal, in readiness for putting out new life next spring. Our psyches are not always synchronized with the seasons, but lately I’ve been aware how many people I’m connected with who have been feeling deeply weary or unwell. Maybe this is a good time to be in stillness and silence, even if only for 15 minutes a day, to empty the mind of stress and relax the body.
I’ll write more about how to navigate identity shifts next week.
References
My Journey, A Life in Quest of the Purpose of Life, Ervin Laszlo, Select Books, 2021
A Story of Transformation, The Gifts of Healing and Our Power to Renew the World, Rose Diamond, Balboa Press, 2024, available here.
