`The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.´
Albert Einstein
`Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.´
Leo Tolstoy
`There is nothing permanent except change.´
Heraclitus
Our relationship with change is a key factor in how our lives unfold. We all have those stories of class mates; those from primary school who went on to become teachers in that exact same school, and those who today live thousands of miles away in cultures very different to the one in which we grew up. What leads some to embrace continuity while others welcome, indeed need, the new and the exotic?
Then there are those of us who find, often in mid-life, that we have painted our selves into an existential corner. Having reached this dead end, change becomes unavoidable, if we are to recover our zest for life and thrive once again. The alternative is darkness and death.
Those of us in this category often discover, in hindsight, that we not only have an aversion to change on our part, but that we have engaged in the surrogate habit of trying to change others; people and circumstances, even attempting to defy universal laws, both pratically and mentally.
Why this fear of change? In my case, early life experiences overwhelmed me and my response was an effort to `freeze frame’ states and circumstances in which I felt safe and comfortable. Over time this creation of the illusion of control became habitual and even believable, as long as I could draw upon my capacity for denial. When looked at through the eyes of a five year old boy, I can fully understand why this was the path chosen. In the final analysis it is a dynamic of trust and control. Since I could or would not trust, I was prepared to settle for control, even though deep down, I sensed that it was only an illusion. When the chips were down I would settle for that, kicking the can of reality down the road, consoling my self that that was `another day’s work´.
This mirage of magic thinking can only carry me so far, as I discovered in my early forties. It was then that the house of cards came crashing down. A life, an inner life, subject to freeze frame is in and of itself an oxymoron. For life IS change!
Everywhere we look, we can see creation in flux. We cannot grab hold of our favourite season and keep it going forever. For the butterfly to develop, the caterpillar must cease in its present form, and undergo transmutation in the darkness of the pupae. The trees in my part of the world will soon begin shedding their leaves; billions of tonnes of them will fall to the ground and enrich the soil with the nutrients required for the next cycle of growth, leaving the sylvan skeletal forms beautifully bare until the coming spring. Change, change, change; it is the drumbeat of life.
The first step towards successful change is the recognition and acceptance that change is necessary. This happened in my life only when all other options had finally run out. I had been trying to uphold the illusion of control in every area of my life; my inner world, my family relationships, my work, and yes, even in my relationship to the Great Spirit.
Up to then, I had thought of my self as a spiritual being but, one day, had been exposed in my own reflections as one who was prepared to work with the higher energies only if they allowed me to span them before the cart of my ego. I would have been happy to employ God as Head of Department somewhere in my vast enterprise, in the service of manipulating life to suit my ends. That really shocked me! I felt the emptiness and anxiety of spiritual bankruptcy.
I then did something novel by admitting defeat and asking for help. This went against the grain of my default programme which had been running silently in the background since early childhood. I had always believed that I could manage everything myself, without help. Now I realised that behind that lay a deeper belief; that I had no other option. No-one and nothing could be trusted.
Now out of desperation, before getting clearance from the politburo between my ears, I had bucked the system by asking for help. And the effect was encouraging. Those to whom I had turned welcomed me with open arms, reassuring me that they knew my plight and had found a solution. The key thing was the practical demonstration of my willingness to change, by taking the step to ask for help, despite my self.
The next step was opening my being to the possibility that there were life-affirming, loving energies of which I could avail in my efforts to repent, in the 14th century sense of `turning from sin and dedicating oneself to the amendment of one’s life.´ My American friends gave me a very practical gift at this juncture, in telling me that: `It is enough to accept that there is a Higher Power, and that you are not it!´ That was sufficient to get me started and enabled me to set aside the prejudice with respect to the concept of `God´ that had taken root in the formative years of my Irish Catholic upbringing.
At this point my friends explained to me that: `You cannot think your way into a new way of acting; you can only act your way into a new way of thinking´. That appealed to my intuition. In the meantime, neuroscientists have been able to measure and demonstrate this phenomenon, showing how the synapses in our brain related to old, discontinued behaviours wither and die, to be replaced by new neurological pathways in conjunction with the new behaviours we have begun to practice. The same, of course, is true of what we believe. Neuroplasticity is the good news of our times for people who would in the past have been considered `hopeless cases´.
The first two steps are followed by a decision to turn my will (thinking) and my life (action) over to the care of the Great Spirit, representative of how I understood these higher energies. In doing so, I make room in my perception, my ‚Weltanschauung‘, for energies beyond those of the ego. These higher energies of infinite Spirit are sometimes referred to as `the Self´, in contrast to those of the finite ego, which are labelled `the self´.
The next innovation was to actually execute this decision. In my old life, I had made many decisions which I never got around to putting into practice. The Twelve Step programme gives us a very clear and specific blueprint as to how to execute this decision. This involves inventory – a fact finding and fact facing exercise -, the sharing of that inventory, and the subsequent identification of my shortcomings and the formation of my willingness to have these removed.
You see, the innovative aspect of the inventory was going beyond listing my miseries and who I blamed for them and/or feared as a result of them, but also asking, for the first time in my life, what my contribution was and had been. This is the liberating key, since it has now become clear that, while I have no control over others, I do have the ability to work with the higher energies towards growing and changing into a person capable of more loving and caring behaviours.
Once these energies have been engaged in this effort, I turn towards `clearing away the wreckage of my past´, a process which involves identifying where I have caused harm and making direct amends for them. I need to keep to my side of the street. This is about the harms caused by my actions; those caused by my interlocutors are not my business. I have no business or leverage on their side of the street.
The weight of shame, guilt, and regret begins to lift from my shoulders. I begin to breathe deeper and savour the gifts which already abound in my life. The simple things like a warm bed, a roof over my head, loving relationships and days free from obsession, drama and self-loathing.
That decision to turn over my will and my life, made some time ago, needs execution on a daily basis, as much as my conscious contact with that which I identify as the Higher Power requires cultivation. In my case this entails sitting in silence each morning, cultivating the sense of awe and wonder as I go though each day and counting my blessings before turning in at night.
By now, changes are already manifest, even though I have not been aiming for specific outcomes. The `stinking thinking´ between my ears, once a twenty-four-seven phenomenon, has now quietened. I no longer believe I am in bondage to my random, imposed thinking, but recognise that it is me who creates my reality, a reality which can be changed though cultivating the mind. As Wayne Dyer once put it: `Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change´. Now I get it!
Then comes perhaps the most important change of all, described in the paradox: `If you want to keep it, you’ve got to give it away.´ Life gets turned on its head. I go out each day, no longer to get – to quench this endless thirst for whatever is wanting in me, but to give – to share with others who need and want it, the message of recovery, and how it can be applied one day at a time. This brings me full circle. I have ceased fighting everyone and everything. I have a purpose, an infinite source of life-affirming energy, and life is good.
