"You know, people will give up anything - their jobs, their
money, their families, their health - to get it, anything
except the one and only thing you have to give up in order to
get it: the conviction that you haven't got it."
"It was great ... at first" she said, a
graduate
for quite a few years now, sipping her iced coffee. "When I participated
in
the training,
I couldn't believe how powerful it was. There was so
much insight, so much joy, so many new perspective-altering (no,
life-altering) ways of looking at things, so many new, fresh
possibilities. I couldn't wait to return to
the training room
again the next morning. And Wow! I had no need to
sleep
at the end of each day (no, I couldn'tsleep).
I was so
lit up.".
Her "... at first" was ominous, and I wasn't going to step
over it, or let it slide. So I asked "And then?What happened?",
curiously.
"It just ... well ... faded" she said, "It delivered a lot
of energy in the beginning, and then it just faded. Like many things I
suppose, it has a limited shelf-life. It just passed its expiration
date, I guess. It just ran out. The effect faded" (uh oh, I
mused ... here we go!).
"No, I don't think so" I pressed. "What do you mean?" she asked,
quizzically, confronted. I continued: "It didn't fade. It was powerful
in the beginning because you generated it powerfully in the beginning.
It didn't fade - not until you
stopped
generating it. That's
what happened:
you
stopped
generating it. So? Then it faded!".
To conceptualize transformation as something to apply to
your life, to hold it that a prolonged exposure to transformation will
result in an improved life, is to miss it entirely. We're
thrown to
fix
ourselves. We're certain that something added to our lives (or changed)
will make the difference. We're sure that practicing getting better,
will result in us getting better. But there's an element to being
transformed that doesn't jive with applying it to our lives, or with
a practice which will make our lives better. That element is:
transformation is
created
ie it's always generated.
Create
it / generate it, and you're transformed. Don't
create
it / don't generate it, and you're not. Simple. Nothing you could add
to your life / practice long enough, will ever make that difference. A
master
generates it. That's what makes a
master
a
master.
One of the ways we prevent ourselves from confronting our
responsibility for generating transformation, is we convince ourselves
such things "take time". It's a belief that keeps our putting it off,
justified. But the evidence is: the longer we wait, the longer we
wait (oh no!) and the longer we don't get it. That's all. The
longer we take to generate it, the more we justify it by saying it
"takes time". The belief / insistence that it takes time, dulls us into
being OK with not getting it, and shields us from being responsible for
creating
/ generating transformation now. We invest so much in our beliefs that
it costs us the very experience for which we've invested.
And that accounts for its temporal nature: generate it, and you got it;
stop
generating it, and you don't got it any more. It does not last
forever
- which is to say left alone, it doesn't last
forever.
Generate it
forever,
and you got it
forever.
Listen:
this isn't
business as usual.
It's transformational. Paradoxically, being transformed is only
partially what it takes to be transformed (say whut?). Taking
responsibility for generating transformation, and then generating it
ongoingly, is what it takes to be transformed. It won't come from
anything else. It's not gotten by virtue of an ongoing belief system or
even from a devoutly practiced discipline. You can't apply it.
Then she said something that silenced /
moved
me: "You're right" she admitted softly, contemplatively, "I did
stop.
The program did pivot on generating it for myself. I forgot that. In
all my excitement I forgot about it.". "And isn't getting it again, the
possibility of being transformed?" I asked delightedly, when I got my
voice back.