When life changes occur, particularly unexpected or traumatic changes, there’s often a desire to go back to the way it was before. As change often places us in brand new territory, we can feel unsure of ourselves and at odds with just how to be in this new place. We don’t know how to relate to ourselves or to others. We yearn to bring the experience and the feelings that arise into a familiar, comfortable place as soon as possible. We want everything to be okay again. While this desire is completely understandable, it short-circuits our metamorphosis. We do a great disservice to the evolutionary process and ourselves when we attempt to go backwards instead of looking at what wants to emerge and moving forward with the momentum of our evolution.
Change is an invitation to open up and to cultivate a deeper relationship with ourselves, with others and with our spiritual life. Change provides us with opportunities, including the opportunity to heal, to grow, and to evolve. Rather than letting this opportunity, this life-change become a dead-end, we can move forward with it. We can say yes to change, yes to the opportunity, and yes to the unexpected, unknown, unlimited possibilities that lay ahead. It is in this new, unknown place that we foster our emerging, evolutionary adaptation.
To bring the process of change and transition into the everyday nuts and bolts of healing requires us to be open and inviting on a moment-by-moment basis; then we can truly see what wants to emerge. Invite the spirit, invite life, invite a friend, invite yourself, invite whatever components of your life you want more of and then; let go, stop telling life what to do, and get out of the way. Let go of your familiar, well worn habits of directing life with what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and how not to do it. Even if life responds and does as you tell it, the response will be from a place of contraction and will not express the vaster space of what is possible. In telling life what to do, the energy that is taken on is limited to only what we know and not necessarily what is fully available beyond the scope of our own experience and current capacity to imagine. This open invitation to life is essential to the healing process, and it will ultimately lead us to freedom.
Prayer is one way to express this invitation. Prayer is always- and in all ways- available. It doesn’t require someone else’s image of the holy or sacred or that you have everything just right — the candles, the crystals, the incense, and all of that. If ceremony supports you, then use it, but the experience should not be dependent upon the ceremony. What happens with the rest of your life when you can’t have it that way? Does life have to be in order before you can feel good or enter your relationship with God, or whatever you call that great Mystery?
Conscious change must be grounded from a place of respect and honor - the space that truly “sees” and doesn’t just want the convenience of a result. People often pray for something they specifically want to see happen, but there is often little fulfillment of those prayers. Why aren’t these prayers being answered? Well, it isn’t because we aren’t good enough or pure enough. It’s not about being good enough before your prayers will be answered - it’s about being open. Open to the possibilities and open to the outcome that will best serve us. In wanting to fix our life “our way,” we place a limit on the possibilities for our life and ourselves. A good example of this is the declining effectiveness of guided imagery or visualization. In the earlier days when visualization was new to the mass market, there were greater results from it then than there are now. I believe that this is because it was fresh - nobody knew what to expect and nobody knew what the limits were. Since then, it has become channeled into our cultural way of seeing things. It has become confined by our own expectations and our own limitations.
In cancer treatment, it is often suggested that we envision the white blood cells as the good guys, “nuking” the cancer cells. Now this can work, just like war can work – the good guys can win and the bad guys can lose - but that’s a very old story. It takes a great deal more courage, commitment, and creativity to find new ways to work with conflicting energies - if what you want is freedom; the freedom to explore your evolution and your relationship with the Mystery. If what you want is to win, or to have it your way, then the old story works better. So be honest with yourself. What is it you really want in your life, in your relationships, in your work, and in your spiritual union? Do you need to have it your own way or do you want freedom?
Instead of being so specific with prayer, pray about those things that really matter. I cannot answer what should matter for another being; that’s between each individual and their relationship with the vast Mystery of life. If you don’t know what really matters, what is truly important, begin by spending more time developing that relationship. As in any relationship, with time we learn to know what is vital and real.
After the car accident which was to forever change my life (see footnote), if I had held fast to the idea of making my legs be the way they were, I wouldn’t be walking today. Yes, I wanted to walk, to hike, and to dance again, and I prayed for it. But it wasn’t until I surrendered my preconceived notions of what this healing had to look like and truthfully faced this experience that I allowed life to respond, and gave my life the freedom to unfold. And it was in that open surrender that I began to palpably sense life’s reply as an inkling, a flash or a hunch surfaced, as information or understanding settled. It isn’t about being passive but about listening to life’s response, allowing it to guide you in your healing, and guide you in your gathering of resources and support.
Facing change head-on requires you to be honest and genuine. As long as what you are doing is from a place of integrity and truth, you do not have to change who you are. In fact, it is important for you to use all that you are in the healing process. But, if there are things that you are currently doing without integrity, without honesty, then yes, those behaviors will need to change. There may also be certain aspects of our being that obstruct or deny the process. Sometimes, we have to develop new disciplines and new guidelines until we can get out of the way of our own evolution. We need to open ourselves up, and accustom ourselves to the idea of new, unlimited possibilities.
Bravery is also needed by anyone engaged in an evolutionary change. Bravery has nothing to do with not feeling fear. If you don’t feel fear, you don’t have to be brave. Bravery comes with fully feeling fear, uncertainty, and confusion – feeling whatever comes, acknowledging it and moving with it. It would be arrogant and foolish, even destructive, not to feel fear for many things that are happening in one’s life. What we do with fear is what matters. Actually, it is what we do with any energy - fear just happens to be a big one. Fear is a huge energy and yet, it is simply energy.
If you feel as if the rug has been pulled out from under you, gather your resources. Use the structures that support you and help you feel some degree of safety and love. Your friendships and community can be valuable. Having another person beside us, holding up mirrors so we can see ourselves more truthfully and encouraging us when we are in a difficult place can be very helpful. It can also be very valuable to have none of that. There isn’t a right way or a set prescription for this. There are some maps and guideposts, but the truth and understanding of this experience is within you and that is where it needs to emerge from. The degree to which you tell the truth to yourself and the Mystery is the degree to which the truth will be revealed. The degree to which you are willing to be naked with all of who you are is the same degree to which life and the great Mystery will be naked to you.
I encourage you to go often to that place of an intimate relationship with the spirit of life. Go whenever you can and however you can. Going there isn’t going to separate you from what you enjoy in life. In fact, the freedom you experience there will offer you an opportunity to join life more fully.
About Mitchell May Mitchell May, Ph.D., is a healer and teacher whose gifts are recognized worldwide. Told he would never walk again, Mitchell’s own miraculous healing from a near fatal car accident 25 years ago made medical history when he regenerated nerve, bone, muscle and organ tissue and with time regained full use of his body. With the assistance of healer and UCLA parapsychology research staff member Jack Gray, Mitchell undertook an intensive and extraordinary healing journey that forever changed the meaning and focus of his life. Mitchell became Gray’s apprentice for seven years, learning the art of nontraditional and spiritual healing. Mitchell has since helped thousands of others tap into their own healing potential. His work has been documented and studied by medical researchers, and featured in documentaries and periodicals.
Today, Mitchell serves as a consultant to business and health professionals around the world. Mitchell is also the CEO of The Synergy Company™, based in Moab, Utah.
This article is an edited excerpt from Mitchell’s 6-tape audio series Healing, Living and Being, published by Hay House, Inc. No part of this article may be reproduced without the written permission of the Synergy Company TM.
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