Expansive Transition
We all make changes. Sometimes our changes are satisfying. Often they are not. Satisfactory changes cause us to grow, to use more of ourself, to extend our being into added dimensions. The unsatisfying changes are frauds, because we just repeat the same old life patterns in different guise. And, for all the money spent and the effort put forth, we receive the same old life outcomes.
That is why I define truly satisfying life change as "expansive transition". Expansive transition requires the release and restructure of established life patterns.
We evolve ourselves by shedding old patterns, expanding our self definition, evolving new life methods and relationships and repatterning our lives around them. Even a miracle is a repatterning. It is a special case, in our usual world view, because it requires zero time.
Through our re-patternings, and in a context of others, we grow to express ourselves in richer detail and become more integrated physical, mental and spiritual entities.
A deep, inner wisdom about that is right for us, now, is always within.
Profound guideposts to expansive change are within us at all times. Deep in our body mind, usually removed from direct conscious access, we know which outworn patterns to let go of and what new quality of being we are ready to express. Whether external life circumstances drive us to change or whether we feel inner stirrings, we have the direction we need, within ourselves.
These guideposts remain outside of our conscious access until we learn to locate them and draw them out.
Besides these current, uncouncsious guideposts, we also have life answers within us which are constructed from our past experience. Our consicous mind has direct access to this area of our body's memory system, because our concious mind has been the architect of these programs all along.
These experiential life answers are written in a body-mind system I refer to as our "Handbook."
In psychological circles, our set of high level, operational programs is called the ego. Please note that the ego is not the Handbook. The ego is a set of "egotistical" programming contained within the Handbook memory system.
Our ego is a personally constructed data bank of specific instructions for how to relate to people, how to handle anger, how to respond to an attack, how to respond to love and the rest of a large, but finite, set of life conditions we have experienced or recognize that we might one day encounter.
Since it is written into our Handbook during earlier experiences, the ego is always out of date, by definition.
When life demands something truly new from us. or we demand something new of our life, the ego cannot create it.
Limiting our range of life actions to those programmed into our ego constrains us to repetitive life patterns without true expansive change. We cannot invent new responses from within the Handbook.
A truly new pattern will require a broader perspective than our egotistical programs can provide.
As I've already suggested, an exceptional, broad and up to date perspective exists within our non-conscious body field.
Therefore, when we are no longer nourished by our present living patterns, either because the world has changed or we have outgrown our present nest, the following situation usually exists for us: Internally or externally, our world is different than our ego has been programmed to perceive it, and different than the ego predicts it should be. Our conscious mind attempts to make choices based on what it is "seeing" and what the egotistical programming is responding with. Because we normally permit our perceptions to be screened for us by the upper Handbook, our ego, they are filled with errors. Meanwhile, our body also has a contemporary, non-conscious wisdom about the situation. Because this wisdom is current, it also conflicts with ego programming.
Inner conflict between ego and guidance produces physical, emotional and perceptual symptoms of our movement into expansive transition.
Beneath the egotistical program area in the Handbook, is a vast, genetically determined bio-electro-chemical control and feedback system. It operates all the details of our instant to instant body process on its own authority and in response to orders coming from the conscious mind, the larger non-conscious field of our body and from our egotistical programming.
Since these deeper regions of the Handbook attempt to simultaneously accomplish all instructions received, we begin to experience confusing and unexpected physical, emotional and perceptual symptoms.
These are, in my view, symptoms of the need for an expansive change of Self. They signal us that what is, is not what was. These symptoms are also effective doorways to our inner wisdom.
The longer we keep these conflicts unresolved, by ignoring or removing the symptoms, the more our lives will hurt. The more we learn to locate and focus on the current guideposts and update our Handbook, the more our lives will soar.
Symptoms of expansive transition include non-ordinary things we notice each day about ourselves and our relationship with our environment.
An intrigue with a new person or project is such a symptom. A brief, unexpected down time is the same. A nightmare and a daydream and a vision are included as are the wide range of temporary physical sensations and even chronic conditions we experience. If we became aware of a change in our condition, whether we judge it for better or for worse, we are perceiving another symptom of expansive change.
Most of us, mistakenly, view these symptoms as the direct cause of our joy or frustration. Our resulting actions, based on this mistaken assumption, rarely bring the life success we seek.
For instance, if I am a busy, urban adult and a symptom appears to impede my life's activity, I will usually seek immediate symptom removal. If the symptom seems to enchance my experience, i will attempt to intensify and guarantee its recurrance at the appropriate times.
Most of us throw away our symptoms and their life saving potential.
In order to best serve this view, the major establishments we have come to rely on (medicine, psychology/psychiatry, education, law, government, media, religion and business) have evolved effective methods for symptom removal or enhancement.
They each control culturally approved methods for dissolving or enhancing symptoms. Symptoms are labelled, understood, explained and dealt with according to the establishment they are viewed within.
In some cases, the establishment's action is lifesaving and rewarding. Many times, though, in attempting the enhancement or removal of symptoms, we blind ourselves to our truest healing and life satisfaction. We throw out or enhance the symptom and in so doing we lose its message of vital, personal transition.
Symptoms of inner conflict are "Self Signals", the links to inner wisdom and creative, present living.
Whatever the sensation or notice we perceive as our symptom, we can try the assumption, early on, that our symptom signals our progress in and our inner conflict about an "expansive life transition."
From this perspective, we may proceed to very different conclusions about what our symptom is and what is to be done about it. We may well expect more expressive living and more competent use of the necessary, acute, help the various establishments offer us. We may reduce our emphasis on symptoms and increase our sense of personal integrity and inner satisfaction.
Instead of referring to symptoms from here on, I refer to "Self Signals." That way we can distinguish between acute medical issues and messages to us about appropriate expansive transition.
A whole-person strategy for creating expansive life transition.
This brings us to a fundamental strategy for recognizing and moving through an expansive change: We are healthier when we can sense the stirrings of change early on. Finding our Self Signals, we can locate our inner wisdom and, by applying it to our network of relationships, update our Handbook. This update requires constructing and writing additional upper Handbook programs. It also means clearing up limiting assumptions within the Handbook programming already in place. This process requires both inner focus and testing within our network of relationships. Such an inner and outer dialogue of ideas and experience is a perfect pace to integrate the expanded qualities of living which our inner wisdom suggests to us.
This view suggests a healthy balance between spiritual, mental, physical and social activities. Expansive transition occurs on all levels, from the farthest reaches of our Higher Mind, if you will, through our patterns of conscious mentation and emotional patterns of relationship, to the most mundane physical patterns of body movement. Expansive transition does not rely on one level more than another. It is not more spiritual than it is physical or vice versa. It is not necessarily more mental than emotional nor does it require specific relational shifts more than inner re patterning. It is all of the above, in some balance which uniquely suits Self.
Through my work with individuals in transition, I've noticed some required life skills for those who create successful and relatively distress free, expansive transitions:
They use Self symptoms as guidance for the release of established patterns and the starting place for designing new patterns.
They open a new chapter in their life dream to allow a re patterning to occur.
They revalue, forgive, heal and release past experience and learning.
They negotiate changes in their personal network of relationships to reflect and nourish the re patterning.
They establish a supportive daily discipline during the transition process.
They locate fellow travelers; one or more reasonably neutral, healthy individuals who can be 'present' with them during this expansive period.
