Some Inspiration To Keep You Afloat When Life Feels Unsteady

It’s scary when life pushes us forward before we’ve had a chance to program our GPS. It’s unsettling to be hanging in the balance when we’re unsure where we are going to land. It often forces us to find a bravery within that we never knew existed!

That part can be empowering :) But it’s not always easy when we are in the thick of it!

How do we survive that tumultuous interlude when it feels like things are falling apart?

What can we do to hold on to our sanity while our foundation is shifting?

How can we learn to keep our faith that it’s all going to be OK?

I found this passage to be an incredibly inspiring perspective on the Magic of Transition and Transformation

TRANSFORMATION

from the Essence Book of Days by Danaan Parry

"Sometimes I feel that my life is a series of trapeze swings. I'm either hanging on to a trapeze bar swinging along or, for a few moments in my life, I'm hurling across space in between trapeze bars.

Most of the time, I spend my life hanging on for dear life to my trapeze-bar-of-the-moment. It carries me along a certain steady rate of swing and I have the feeling that I'm in control of my life. I know most of the right questions and even some of the right answers.

But once in a while, as I'm merrily (or not so merrily) swinging along,

I look ahead of me into the distance, and what do I see?

I see another trapeze bar swinging toward me.

It's empty, and I know, in that place in me that knows, that this new trapeze bar has my name on it.

In my heart-of-hearts I know that in order for me to grow, I must release my grip on the present, well-known bar to move to the new one.

Each time it happens to me, I hope (no, I pray) that I won't have to grab the new one. But in my knowing place I know that I must totally release my grasp on my old bar, and for some moment in time I must hurtle across space before I can grab onto the new bar. Each time I am filled with terror. It doesn't matter that all my previous hurtles across the void of unknowing I have always made it.

Each time I am afraid I will miss, that I will be crushed on unseen rocks in the bottomless chasm between the bars. But I do it anyway.

Perhaps that is the essence of what the mystics call the faith experience. No guarantees, no net, no insurance policy, but you do it anyway because somehow, to keep hanging onto that old bar is no longer on the list of alternatives.

And so for an eternity that can last a microsecond or a thousand lifetimes, I soar across the void of "the past is gone, the future is not yet here." It's called transition. I have come to believe that it is the only place that real change occurs. I mean real change, not the pseudo-change that only lasts until the next time that my old buttons get punched.

I have noticed that, in our culture, this transition zone is looked upon as a "no-thing" a no-place between places. Sure the old trapeze bar was real, and the new one coming towards me, I hope that is real too. But the void between? That's just a scary, confusing, disorienting "nowhere" that must be gotten through as fast and as unconsciously as possible. What a waste!

I have a sneaking suspicion that the transition zone is the only real thing, and the bars are illusions we dream up to avoid the void, where the real change, the real growth occurs for us. Whether or not my hunch is true, it remains that the transition zones in our lives are incredibly rich places. They should be honored, even savored.

Yes, with all the pain and fear and feelings of being out-of-control that can (but not necessarily) accompany transitions, they are still the most alive, most growth-filled, passionate, expansive moments in our lives.

And so, transformation of fear may have nothing to do with making fear go away, but rather with giving ourselves permission to "hang-out" in the transition between the trapeze bars.

Transforming our need to grab that new bar, any bar, is allowing ourselves to dwell in the only place where change really happens. It can be terrifying. It can also be enlightening, in the true sense of the word. Hurtling through the void, we may just learn to fly."