Change through Chaos
A few decades ago, during my work as an organizational consultant, I started many a presentation with the notion that the Chinese character for change included both crisis and opportunity. I worked people through processes of planned change, I taught skills to manage change, and I led visioning and futuring workshops. Then, through my growing spiritual focus, I learned and passed on the idea of emergence: I learned to open space and allow change to appear. Change that came from a Higher place and was for my Higher Good. Now, we are experiencing change as CHAOS. All the past insights, skills and strategies are still needed for fractals of experience, but we need to learn new ways to cope with and simply “be” as we go through the chaos on all levels of existence and all places on the planet.
The Ancient Ones accepted chaos as part of life. They did not try to manage it; they lived in the paradox and mystery of the world around them. Scholars may say that we really do not know how the early Celts viewed life. Certainly, much is speculation. I also own that I may romanticize their world. We do know that the early versions of their gods and goddesses, their stories and the monuments they built, celebrate a Oneness, a cyclical sense of time, and a cosmology that embraced the dark as well as the light, the storm as well as the calm seas. All four of the elements have constructive and destructive forces within them. Forests need to burn in order to grow, just as rain and wind cleanse as well as nurture. Culture , governments, communities and individuals likewise have to reset and find new balance periodically in order to thrive, in order to grow. (and today 11.2.2020 is an angel number that shouts balance. See earlier blog 1/20/20 on angel numbers.)
When we resist change, when we try to control change, and when we modify Nature to suit our earthly comforts or create a false economy, we upset the flow and the rhythms of life. Think of the Celtic spiral, especially the triple spiral engraved on stone at Newgrange over 3000 B.C.. This is the cosmology and the belief systems of the Ancient Ones that inspires me and gives me not only hope but a model for living my live.
So friends, we are indeed on a roller coaster that feels like it may come off the rails. We face chaos at every level of society. But, seeing chaos as part of Life, not solely as disruption is a key to riding through it. As always, we have a choice. As Marianne Williamson writes so beautifully from her work with The Course of Miracles, we can choose Love over Fear. (Read Return to Love, if you find it hard to accept and live from this belief.)
If the Ancient Ones had roller coasters, this is a Celtic Blessing they might have offered:
May you ride the waves of this storm as you would a roller coaster.
May you accept the ups and downs as part of the journey.
May you hold on tight at times, but also relax into the joy of the ride.
May you trust that all will be well knowing that you will arrive home to firmer ground.