This morning, my phone alarm went off at its regular time, 5:00 a.m. As I was making coffee, I did a double take when I saw the microwave clock. The digital read out said 4:02. The stove clock said : 4:02. For a moment, I thought I must have mistakenly set my alarm for 4 a.m.?
That’s when I realized that I had completely forgotten about the time change! With that knowledge, everything fell into place. But for a minute this morning, I was disoriented, confused, and not sure what was happening.
Though this feeling quickly passed, imagine that this disorienting experience lasts for weeks, months, or even years.
I think this can be the feeling someone has when they are in the middle of significant change, transition, or transformation. The anchors in their life have all been lifted, and they feel adrift in a vast ocean. The compass needle is spinning and the instrument is useless. The regular, known wind, that blew out of the North is dead still. All of the old markers of self-identity and life-orientation have blurred, or disappeared. This can be what the early stages of change, transition, and transformation feel like.
As Dante writes in the Divine Comedy, “In the middle of the journey of life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost.” The direct way is lost when the imagined future disappears or changes, when one loses a job, or realizes a relationship is ending, or receives a life changing diagnosis. When the direct way is lost, and the path one has known has disappeared, life can feel disorientating, uncertain, baffling, complicated, and disconcerting. It can also open up creative possibilities for new ways of being as old habits and patterns fall away.
The heart of our practice is to be with individuals in moments of change, transition, and transformation, whether those moments are large or small. We will accompany you through this messy, unknown space, trusting that a new way, filled with its own gifts and treasures, will emerge.
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