Embrace Change! Why not? You can’t prevent it. You can’t force it. You can’t stop it or make it happen. It just does what it will; life changes with every breath. But embrace it? I don’t know, it is a little difficult to hug something that is morphing. Change is changing.
Embracing something implies that you can hold on to it. Can’t do it with change. I experience growth and that alters the way I see things, feel them, understand them and respond to them. I used to jump out of m skin to have my heart in my throat, to flush with shame when I was corrected, or when I received suggestions from someone. Now that seldom happens. I have changed. This has allowed me to hear others more clearly. Rather than holding onto my own ideas so firmly, I can now listen, evaluate and make a choice. I don’t hold on so tightly to what I had done, and move more fluidly with my options. Change.
If the only constant in life is change, perhaps it is best if I embrace constancy rather than change! Right now I am close to several people who are grievously ill or in a space of deep emotional distress. Knowing the depth of their suffering is a constant energy in my day. It influences my gratitude, it influences my prayers, it influences my thoughts in each day. These are constants. Their lives are changing, I am witness to this change and I stay constant in my intentions for their stability in face of these challenges. Their conditions will change and with those changes I will stay stalwart in my love and concern for them.
I use the Serenity Prayer to guide me in how I interact with change. I accept the things I cannot change, and I take action where I can and must. I also stand back, when I can, and allow time to inform me about what I need to do. Sometimes it is nothing. My intention is to be a constant force for stability inside and out, in the face of change.
This is my story of change. One month ago I had a painful interchange with a dear person in my life. It rocked me to my core. I was in terrible psychic pain. I had to close communication with this person because I no longer knew how to relate to her. I had undergone a psychic shift and a profound change. Holding on to the past was not an option. Holding onto the pain was severely limiting. Trying to actively change the future was false and uninformed. I needed to be open to the shifting ground within me, to be ready to accept the change, to learn from the artifacts left by the past and to accept the alterations in this relationship that could evolve in the future. Trust and faith and remaining open were the only requirements. I could not hold on to any step, and feature of the process that was evolving over the next few weeks, the month that passed. And then it came – the settling, the knowing, the new way. By remaining constant with the process the change occurred. I could not embrace it but more like usher it in.
My new out look is NOT to embrace change but be a hostess to it.
Kyczy Hawk E-RYT200, RYT500 is the author of “Yoga and the Twelve Step Path“, “LIfe in Bite Sized Morsels” and a leader of Y12SR classes. She is the creator of SOAR(tm) (Success Over Addiction and Relapse) a teacher certification training. Recovery infused yoga classes are available on Studio Live TV. Find out more about her, her classes and the training at www.yogarecovery.com
