Transformations

While I was offline on my technology hiatus the SuperWomen over at The Green Phone Booth gave up some linky love for the post I wrote a few weeks back exploring the idea that our difficult or ‘ugly’ emotions can be beautiful. I was face to face with my own emotional junk and it was tough, in that moment, to find beauty in the process. The trick turned out to be shifting into a place of appreciation and then help arrived in form of friends, rejuvenating sleep, flower essences and most importantly self-acceptance and love. Arriving back to my computer and being reminded of that space has had me thinking all day: The beauty in the breakdown is actually the process of transformation–it’s just that in the midst of the breakdown the promise of transformation is elusive.

Standing still in challenging times is ugly and painful and taut: the self-hate, emotional wounds, overriding guilt–choose your poison. Transforming those emotions into something powerful and uplifting, and strengthening your life experience is how we grow and evolve. It’s standing here, on the other side, looking back at my past hurts with full compassion and acknowledging all the ways I’ve grown, changed and embraced a new and better way of interacting with myself and the world that I can appreciate the full spectrum experience of transformation. Finding beauty in those moments helped me shift and now I can feel that the transformation complete (although my journey infinite); a human initiation of sorts.

We all have our challenges and the circumstances may differ, but the most cheerful person can tell you about a moment when sorrow brought them to their knees. I used to call my areas of personal struggle my weaknesses but it felt dis-empowering to do so and I now try to lovingly refer to them as my ‘soft spots’. When your baby was brand new they had that sacred opening, their soft spot, on top of their head which allowed their skull to shift so that they could pass safely into the physical realm. You protect and acknowledge that spot. You take special care to be gentle and remind others to be mindful around it. You gently touch it, feeling the pulse of this living miracle and let yourself wonder in the mystery and magic of it all; how this tiny person could be so perfectly formed that they have a soft spot in the most vulnerable of places.

What we do not do is roughly poke the soft spot or hurt it. We don’t blame it and we don’t judge it. We allow it to transform into a strong protective barrier and just like the soft spot on a newborn baby, our emotional soft spots want to transform into something strong and functional; we just need to allow the process to take place without judgment or resistance. Our soft spots are powerful opportunities– these are the places where we choose to dig deep, question our elemental beliefs and redesign our world view that includes a wider vision of health and wellness.

These are the places we are being asked to go right now, when the world can seem, at times, to be uncertain and even crumbling. When the news overwhelms and the coffee talk induces fear, it’s time to go within and explore those places where we are most afraid. It is time for a mass transformation and ironically the only way to transform as a global community is to go within, innocently and with honesty, and ask ourselves if we like what we see; ask ourselves if we are aligned with our highest self; ask ourselves how we would look in perfection, all the while acknowledging that perfection includes all our beautiful little imperfections. It is this journey that creates change. It’s happening everywhere and as we share our journeys, like we do here on our blogs amongst our friends, we support each other to each make the inner changes needed to come out on the other side beautiful, radiant and empowered individually and as a global species.

(Remember these beans? We were delighted to find this surprise when re-potting.)