When I create something, miraculously there it is.
When I really create something, when I bring it forth
from nothing, joy comes with my creation.
I'm human. Just like you. After a while, the joy which comes with my
creation may fade. Sometimes the joy which comes with my creation may
even devolve into
business as usual.
That's not because it's somehow doomed to diminish over
time. Rather it's because it wasn't about my creation in
the first place. It's because the joy which comes with my creation
comes from the creative process itself, from the act of
creativity itself. The further into the past the creative process
occurred, the further I get from the act of creativity itself, the more
the joy which comes with my creation is likely to fade. Then it's back
to
business as usual.
Like that, the joy which comes with creating transformation is likely
to fade over time. This isn't a loss for me. Instead I see
it as an opportunity to re‑experience creating transformation. I
see it as an opportunity to re‑experience the joy of creating
transformation again and again and again, over and over and over, time
after time after time.
When I say "transformation starts, transformation ends", I realize the
languaging of it needs to be more
rigorous
for it to convey what's so, for it to communicate what's
real. So, spoken again, this time with
rigor:
Transformation starts, transformation may seem to
end.
You know
"This is IT!"
immediately when you experience transformation for the first time.
"This is IT!"
goeswith experiencing transformation (as
Alan Watts
may have said). There's no doubt about it. I have no doubt
"This is IT!"
not because I think positively, nor because I'm an
optimist, nor because I have faith, nor because I
believe in
God,
nor even because I voted for the good guys. Even if some or all
of these qualities are indeed present in my life, none of them are the
source of there's no doubt
"This is IT!".
There's no doubt
"This is IT!"
because transformation doesn't show up in the realm of doubt / no
doubt in the first place. Rather, transformation shows up as
who I really am.
I put it in a
silver box
and made a great memory out of it. I didn't realize I'd started living
with the memory of it, with the concept of it. Not
surprisingly, it went away.
Then one day, I looked around, and there it was: back again
close up, face to face,
larger than life, and twice as natural.
It came back, and if I look and tell the truth about it, I'll
say when it came back it was richer and
fuller than it was before it went away. Furthermore, if I
look and tell the truth about it, I don't really know why
it went away, and I don't really know what made it come
back. In fact, if I look and tell the truth about it, when it went away
I thought it was gone forever, I thought the bubble had
burst, I thought it was over.
Until it came back again. Until it started again.
Transformation
starts
ends
Transformation
starts
ends
Transformation
starts
ends
It wasn't merely fortuitous that it started again. When it came back
I let it in. I allowed it to come in again. And even if I had
no clue how or why it came back, when it came back I
uttered a sigh of relief. Having tasted it once before, I already knew
life without transformation isn't worth living. When it ended, I was
back there, stuck in a life not worth living. That much I recognized.
When transformation started again, to say I was relieved
is an understatement. I wondered if or when it would end again. It
surely did. In fact, from then on it ended ... over and over and over.
From then on I noticed it always seems to end after it
starts ... over and over and over.
And then I noticed something else: transformation always starts
again after it seems to end ... over and over and over.
It was the latter observation which got me, which grabbed
me and gripped me and eventually won me completely over.
Collect Your Self And Punt
It's certainly possible to explain why transformation
seems to end. But it's not necessary to explain why
transformation seems to end. Even if I do explain why transformation
seems to end, whatever explanation I come up with is just the
explanation I come up with - it's not "the truth".
Let's pick an explanation - that is to say, let's make one up.
One good explanation, one good reason why transformation
seems to end is this: the clarity afforded by transformation allows all
the hidden agendae to be uncovered, to come forth, to
see the light of day (so to speak) for the first time. Now
there's all this stuff to deal with, all these things to
complete, all these communications and conversations to put in place.
It sounds like hard work. This work sounds like it's not the
ease and freedom which caricatures a transformed life ...
and yet this work is exactly what the clarity of
transformation calls for.
Here's the
paradox
of the ease and freedom of transformation: the ease and freedom of
transformation is the casualty of the ease and freedom of
transformation. At least it seems to be. At least sometimes. At least
temporarily.
I can deal with, one way or another, whatever comes up in the space of
transformation to deal with. Indeed, whatever comes up in the space of
transformation to deal with is always unerringly what's
there to deal with next in life. It's not likely it'll ever come up in
a clearer context. If I bypass the opportunity to deal with it when it
comes up, it'll just go back to where it was before: below the surface,
shaping my thoughts yet always out of reach, skewing my life yet never
known, never tangible.
There are any number of brilliant processes, tools, and techniques to
handle whatever comes up to deal with in the space of transformation.
All of these processes, tools, and techniques aren't for
this conversation. To be sure, they're there to be looked
at but in another conversation on another occasion. Rather,
this conversation simply looks at, in the face of
transformation seeming to end, the now
certainty it'll be back.
When transformation seems to end, because I get it'll be back, I
can collect myself (ie my Self) and punt, knowing I'm
punting, so to speak, from one moment of transformation, across a
moment of seemingly no transformation, into another new
moment of transformation.
I can count on it. Like a rock. That's not blind faith. It's
simply
what's so.
Transformation Never Ends
In actuality, transformation never ends although there are times when
it seems to end. There's a special poignancy for me in those times when
it seems like transformation has ended. In hindsight, these are the
times when transformation is working most powerfully through me, so
powerfully that no one, not even I, knows anything is going on. During
these times, anything and everything I have going on incompatible with
transformation is inevitably, willy nilly becoming
dislodged and uprooted, clearing up and disappearing just in the
process of life itself.
Transformation
starts
starts
To consider transformation is over when it seems to end is
as naïve as considering the sun is over at night.
The process only seems to start and end, start and end,
start and end. In actuality it never ends. In actuality it's always
starting - moment to moment, hour by hour, day by day,
year after year, forever and ever and ever.
In those moments of what seems to be the imminent end of
transformation, collect your Self and punt. Just punt. Your punt
starts in transformation started. It ends in
transformation started. That's the secret (if, indeed, there's any
secret to this at all): just before the seemingly imminent end of
transformation, punt from transformation started
to transformation started. You can count on transformation
started being there like a possibility - in both the
from and the to.
Once started, although it seems otherwise from time to time,
transformation never ends.