¶HOW WE CHANGE AMIDST CONFUSION
Group question: The question this afternoon deals with the concept of change and transformation and the confusion, the anger, the frustration that comes when we don’t feel that we are changing in the way that we wish to change. Is there some necessity for change, in order for it to be seated in our being, to become a tumultuous sort of experience? How can we accomplish change in the most efficient manner as seekers of truth? Would attention to diet, dream-recall, or any other kind of exercises help this process?
(Q’uo, July 12, 1992)
We are those of Q’uo. Greetings and blessings to each in the love and in the light of the One Infinite Creator. We wish you the peace of heart and mind that seekers have, yet often know not that they have, and would offer our thoughts in reaction to your query upon the ways of dealing with confusion when the changes in life feel as though they were coming too quickly to understand or guide. As we offer our thoughts, we remind each that our opinions are fallible and, if any thought disturbs any of you or feels misplaced, simply omit it from your memory as we would not offer even more confusion of an unhelpful kind.
We imply that change can be helpful, confusion can be helpful, and do so on purpose. There is a difference between discomfort and injury. The confusion of incarnate life in general is massive and was meant to be so in order to challenge and successfully baffle the intellectual mind, which thinks in black and white, yes and no. The point of this baffling effect is to coax the seeker into opening the heart to the processes of thinking, evaluating, and decision-making. Those with unawakened hearts may reason perfectly yet come to inappropriate or inefficient decisions and conclusions relative to their own deeper desires. The spiritual journey is many things, but it is not linear or logical.
Earlier this day, this instrument was thinking of a story within its holy work. It is an apt tale to share at this time. It concerns a traveler who was robbed, beaten, and left upon the road. He was passed by a very well-placed gentleman who had an appointment. The man left the traveler on the road, as did another wealthy man. But there was a stranger who found the man and, although he was not from this particular region, the stranger took up the robbed and beaten man, carried him to a place of safety and succor, and made sure the beaten traveler had what he needed to recover.
In the context of the Holy Bible’s story, this was an answer to a question concerning who one’s neighbor is. The answer indicated that all were neighbors, not simply those clustered geographically around one. In the context of the query concerning confusion in a time of change, the story may be seen to be an inward representation of a frequent circumstance which occurs when the seeker attempts to monitor, review, analyze, and interrupt the process of change in order to make it more like the picture the seeker has in the mind.
When a seeker becomes an actor-not only of desire, but of grasping the life as it is being lived and attempting to help the process of change along-the seeker is standing athwart what may loosely be called “desire-driven destiny.” The resulting crosstides of confusion are a mechanically created artifact of this stance. Yet each seeker wishes to so live the life and so cleanly make each choice that it is in charge of the life experience and gives it up to the Infinite One as a beautiful gift.
Of course seekers wish to help along the process of transformation. But if the seeker can pull the point of view back far enough to gaze upon the conscious self living through the confusion of change, which has been put in motion because of purified desire, this seeker may see that once the desire is honed and tempered then there comes the time of faithful patience. The intellectual mind may rush ahead and seem to predict accurately outcomes which are not actual outcomes, thus creating confusion on top of the necessary initial confusion which accompanies any change.
How much better to respect the work in consciousness which has been done and then to see the self as the first neighbor, the nearest one to the observing portion of the self. The conscious seeker moving through the frustration, pain, and anger of not-yet-understood changes is a weary, broken, tired and needy traveler. Yet, there is a portion of the self which may remember to forget the rush towards the next appointment, to let go of the control of happenstance because there is a neighbor, a self-which happens to be the self, rather than an other-which needs aid and comfort in his travail.
The seeker is so eager to go through the process of transformation. Yet it is a long, subtle process. The implications of any one decision seem, on the surface, limited. But when one is transforming the being, the seemingly limited ripples of effect give way to a much more complex field of interwoven options or varieties of tone and color in the, may we call it, “sub-programs” within the mind, which are in fact effected by seemingly simple changes in the way of being.
To change an action is relatively simple in its effect upon the essential core metaprogram of beingness. It often does not touch any deep programming to change a behavior. But you are asking about changing a beingness, changing the way of perceiving and experiencing one’s own essence and this is endlessly subtle work.
You can, and may well, take the uncomfortable self and visualize the giving of healing and love to this self. You would do just such for another. You also may do this for the self. When the self is somewhat comforted, the gaze again may be turned to the observation and watching of the working out of the destiny requested by the purified desire already spent. Faithfully and trustingly place the deeper observational self, with eyes clear and alert, at the right hand of all that occurs; but ask for the patience and the faith to remain an observer while a process seems to be working itself out.
All your work, as an entity of spirit, is groundwork laid in before confusion overtakes one. Once the cloud of confusion is there, the realization simply may be maintained, and remembered that this was asked for, this is occurring, and this is a time-bound phenomenon. In this way, you are able to affirm your own desires, to comfort your own discomfort, and to position the heart open and lovingly addressing the confusion in tones of faith in the process and trust in the kindly nature of the Creator, which allowed you as co-creator to create this vortex of transformation and to go through it powered by desire.
You ask, what can be done to aid the process of change, to ameliorate the discomfort of the confusion? Firstly, we do not recommend attempts to become comfortable. If change is comfortable, it is likely not to be effectual. One wishing change is dealing with power which is moving in one direction. This power and all its ramifications are being asked to alter their vectors. In any study of movement of things with weight, one can see clearly the mechanics of turning to be those of the braking, the balancing, the changes in the steering, and so forth. A good deal of dynamic work is done when there is momentum to overcome and a new direction to be taken and then to be accelerated in the new direction.
So, too, when doing work in consciousness, you have a certain amount of spiritual mass which has a certain amount of momentum. When change is desired, prayed and asked for, visualized and preparations made, then there is a very graceful moment available when the realization may come that the spiritual visualization preceding change has been completed and now the spirit, along with the conscious self in incarnation, must hang on for a bumpy ride, for there will be the braking to overcome momentum, the proper shift in direction which takes several adjustments, and then the process of gradual addition of power to the direction so that the pace is accelerated once again. The one who attempts to wrest change too quickly is doing work against the self and subverting his own spiritual, purified desires.
The various helps mentioned as possibilities, such as working with dreams, changes in diet, and so forth, are valuable individually insofar as they offer to a seeker a comfort. What is most uncomfortable about confusion? It is the disorder. It is the feeling that one is out of control. Those who seek tend to see this feeling, which is natural, and say “I should not be feeling off-balance; I should be clear.” But “should” is not an helpful word. The way one should be is the way one is. We do not mean to split hairs, but to take one word out of the language would be perhaps rewarding to those moving through change, and this word is “should.” The heart has a wisdom concerning time which the mind lacks. Thusly, it is well to let the heart choose what form of comfort it may appropriately and skillfully take to bolster the endurance while going through transformation.
Such things as the cleansing of the diet may well give one a feeling of more control. The keeping of the dream notebook is a way of glimpsing the material which the deeper mind is discovering, recovering, and restructuring, and this may give one a deeper sense of some control in understanding the process. But intrinsic to the process are two things: the willingness to endure through discomfort, and the faith that invokes unlimited patience for the time of change is, in spiritual terms, timeless. Yet that instant which in time/space exists for so long, being fully potentiated to come into manifestation in space/time, occupies a variable amount of space/time in the experience of one in incarnation. Thusly, there is not a standard waiting period and patience needs to be given without limit.
One thing we do recommend for all who experience confusion is a very well-encouraged sense of humor. The most helpful point of view for a changing spiritual seeker is light-hearted irreverence. Play with that which is occurring. Be playful. Allow the vision to relax, the eyesight to become less than entirely single-mindedly keen when the pressure mounts and the anxiety builds, when frustration and anger begin to accumulate. Lighten your own load with laughter. And if you can laugh with another, the strength of this joy is doubled. Part of the service spiritual seekers may be to each other is to exhort and encourage each other to take it easier with the situation and the self.
Many are the times when a serious seeker feels very inadequate to that which he wishes to accomplish. The earnestness begins to become more tight and urgent. The seriousness is taken further and further until this beau geste consumes one. To a point, this intensity is helpful. Beyond that point, it always needs to be remembered that the most serious things in a life experience are made more clear and understandable by the enhancement of turning the spotlight off the seriousness of the situation and onto the beauty, the praiseworthy beauty, of the overall plan.
In this group, there is not the holding of the fear to the self for which we would need to request correction; there is only the judgment of the self by the self as the self sees that it has fear. May we say that, in our opinion, fear is a normal and healthy reaction to pain. When you were small you recoiled from the touch to the oven. This was wise. Now you put yourself to more subtle testing of the boundaries and nature of your journey. You will frequently touch something very hot and have the healthy fear which allows you to recoil and remove the self from spiritual or mental pain. Allow yourself to move naturally and vulnerably through the unknown. Accept and love the fear, the frustration, the anger. Note them. Honor them. Comfort the self experiencing them, but do not deny them their appropriateness.
Why should you not feel the difficult process happening? Why should the changes not cause many bumps, stops and starts and discomforts, which express themselves in manifestations of fear, anger, and frustration? When the unknown has been penetrated by desire, the new country cannot even be seen. A transforming individual is mapping, for the first of many times, the new and changing territory of its road. The way is mazed and muddled and, in many ways, the sensing self is blinded by so much incoming data concerning a novel situation. The computer mind of the physical body gives many, many alarms when receiving this kind of data from the metaprogram. The resulting fear, anger, or frustration is completely understandable and acceptable, at least to us.
We hope we have enabled you to have compassion upon yourselves. You have asked a question which can only be asked by those who are consciously working within themselves and who have accomplished the purifying of the desire and begun to co-create a life in faith. We speak to experienced wayfarers and we say to you: When did you expect to be perfect, comfortable, or settled if you wish to be a pilgrim on this particular road to infinity? You know well you expected none of those things. Comfort yourself, therefore, through the frustration. Love yourself through the anger. And cherish yourself through the depression and the grieving at the loss of the old familiar ways. Above all, release the spirit pilgrim from the strictures of perceived time and know with every fiber of the being, that the Creator’s time will become your time at the absolute moment of manifestation of transformation. Watch, wait, pray, praise, and give thanks. Always give thanks. And this thanks and praise will inform to a great degree the attitude that must lighten the load of negative emotion. Then, filled with this buoyancy of spirit, gaze again and again with compassion on the weary, weary traveler that is your outer, conscious self.
¶NOTES TO OUR READERS
This issue of LIGHT/LINES is late in coming out because donations for the last three months have not been sufficient to cover our normal operating expenses and get the newsletter out at the regular time. The global recession seems to especially be affecting small businesses, but we are hopeful that we will continue to be able to be of service to those who seek this information.
Tape #2 in our Sunday Meditation series has been delayed at the recording studio but should be available within the next month.
Since the next newsletter would be coming out just about Christmastime we are offering our tape, JENNY, now as a possible Christmas gift. The words and music tell the story of an angel who came to Earth to be of service by becoming a Christmas tree angel. It’s designed to combat the “bah, humbug blues.” Words and music by Carla and Tommy Rueckert, respectively.