There’s an inherent tension that exists between craving security and stability, while also feeling called to evolve beyond the familiar into new territories of growth. Our human spirit has an innate need for both rootedness and continual expansion. At certain points, most of us reach instants where we can feel ourselves outgrowing previously comfortable circumstances, perspectives or Self-definitions. Or we find ourselves in unplanned periods of transition where upheaval thrusts us into unforeseen territories, ready or not. In these pivotal moments, there can be an urge to stubbornly resist the currents of change in hopes of preserving what we’ve known. To cling to the status quo or force environments, relationships and situations to remain stagnant out of fear of the unknown. Yet that opposition to metamorphosis poses its own perils – it denies the fundamental truth that everything in existence, flows and continually transforms over time. It risks stifling authenticity and natural growth. Essentially, it’s struggling against the unstoppable tides instead of learning to mindfully ride them.
Profound personal and spiritual growth happens when we befriend the uncertain cycles of birth, death and rebirth inherent in all life chapters. When we flow with transition instead of fighting it, that’s where catharsis, liberation and the greatest expansions of awareness take place. Of course, navigating transformational gateways is rarely easy. In those tender, in-between spaces of not knowing what’s next, there can be enormously vulnerable sensations of being unrooted, unraveled and identityless for a time. Enormous grieving may need to happen to shed former ways of being. Self-doubt narratives around feeling “lost” can cause enormous inner turbulence. Yet it’s important to recognize those spiritually destabilizing experiences as necessary, primordial periods of metamorphosis – akin to a caterpillar’s chrysalis stage before it eventually emerges reborn. We have to allow channels of growth to collapse, deconstruct and dissipate at times so new ones can come awake at a higher plane.
Paradoxically, the more we can learn to surrender with grace to the uncertain currents, the more seamlessly they can carry us somewhere vastly more aligned, expansive and purposeful. Fighting against growth only sows more suffering. Though change can initially cause vertigo at an identity level, if we breathe into the continuously unfolding nature of existence, and release attachment to incessantly trying to control it, it becomes exciting instead of scary. Each ending is a newly pregnant beginning. Every dissolution is a revved creative genesis. The invitation is to open to the process. Get comfortable with the uncomfortable. Flow with the contractions of growth instead of swimming against the surges. And know that after each cycle of dissolution, some vital emergence of your most authentic, thriving Self will be rebirthed on the shores ahead. Embrace the heroic journey.