Sept. 22, 2019
For you, right now, this is the beginning of the rest of your life. What will you do with it?
All the wisdom traditions say that to arrive at fulfillment, transformation is essential, and all present stories of transformation as part of their central teachings.
They also say that transformation is possible during whatever time remains in for you, no matter how old you are or what you have done, good or bad, up to this point. What if the full meaning of your life is yet to be determined? If you assume this to be the case, how will you spend the remaining time and energy of your life?
There are only a handful of things most of us make the center of our lives:
Avoiding pain and discomfort
Having a good time, maximizing enjoyable experiences
Creating, supporting, and nurturing a nuclear or extended family or a community
Seeking power, prestige, success – trying to “be somebody”
Being Creative – in art, science, business, technology, writing, crafts, etc.
Helping others – a few people, one’s group, or by tackling a societal issue
Finding spiritual fulfillment
Every one of us has pursued some combination of these goals up to this moment, and each of us has had successes and failures. The question is, What Now?
Learning from the past
For most of us, there is a tendency to unconsciously follow the rut we have worn for ourselves through past actions and decisions, but this is not the best way to proceed toward fulfillment. The past is vitally important, but not as a straitjacket made of habits that imprison us until death.
No, the past is a school from which each of us can learn valuable lessons: our strengths and weaknesses; what is truly important versus the things we need to leave behind; the habits that are serving us now versus those we need to change; images of the times we were the person we would like to be and moments we were not; the practices that are most likely to carry us toward our chosen intentions.
If you do not use your past wisely, if you do not learn the lessons you need to learn, there will be no progress in your life and you will keep making the same mistakes over and over. You will remain stuck in your old stories and caught by old wounds. Take a moment, then, and reflect on the main lessons you would like to learn from your past. In fact, take several moments over the next few days. It will be worthwhile.
Intentions for the future
The way you will live your life from this moment forward depends dramatically on your intentions. Your life will unfold in relation to your intentions for the future. Your intentions will determine:
How you will spend your time
Who you will spend time your time with
What you will focus on
The practices you will undertake
The values you will live by
The kind of person you will attempt to become
Through our intentions, each of us is continually transforming ourselves from who we have been to who we are becoming. For many, this process is mostly unconscious, happening out of the habits and ways of thinking we were enculturated into when young. But we each have the opportunity to make this process more conscious, to take an active role in transforming ourselves into the person we choose to be. The stakes are high. As best-selling author and Jungian analyst Robert Johnson put it:
Consciously or unconsciously, voluntarily or involuntarily, the inner world will claim us and exact its dues. If we go to that realm consciously, it is by our inner work: our prayers, meditations, dream work, ceremonies, and Active Imagination. If we try to ignore the inner world, as most of us do, the unconscious will find its way into our lives through pathology: our psychosomatic symptoms, compulsions, depressions, and neuroses.
Guidance from stories of transformation
A useful starting point for examining one’s life is to look at the most famous examples of transformation in history and the teachings to which they gave rise. Jesus was completely unknown in his wider culture until, at the age of 30, he went to John the Baptist for baptism, following which he went alone to the wilderness and underwent temptations and trials for forty days. When he emerged from his wilderness experience he was transformed to such an extent that, in only 3 years’ time, he gave rise to the largest religion on earth today. His message? That we should transform ourselves, undergo “metanoia” – too often translated into English as repentance but which more accurately means “to change one’s mind” or “change one’s consciousness,” “to think differently after an experience or insight,” “to step into a larger frame of mind.” The result will be “sōtēría,” often translated as salvation, but which means, as Jesus seems to have used it, “to be healed, made sound, made whole.”
The Buddha’s story is also one of dramatic transformation. As a 29-year-old prince he had everything most people seek: wealth, power, prestige, good health, good looks, a good mind, a wife and son he loved, and a father who was protecting him from the vicissitudes of life. Yet, having everything for which most people spend their lives striving, he left it all and spent 6 hard years as a wandering mendicant, sleeping on the ground, begging for what little food he ate – until his final transformation under the Bodhi tree. During that time of radical transformation, he became a person who felt himself to be fully awake to the true nature of reality. His message to each of us? The goal of life is to transform ourselves by waking up to what is really real in the same way as did he.
Confucius was transformed slowly into a sage as he dealt with many years of frustration, trying and failing over and over to become a leader in the political world of his time. He used his failures to develop wisdom, and he counselled that the goal of life is to transform oneself into a person exemplifying “jen,” benevolence or humaneness, a person who “knows himself or herself thoroughly,” “has understood what is right and wrong,” “is calm and peaceful, thinks for oneself, sides with what is right, and is always courteous and respectful toward others.”
In the western Greek tradition, all the great sages during the 800-year span from Pythagoras to Plotinus taught the necessity of conscious transformation. This was certainly the message of Socrates, who chose to die rather than betray his message of the importance of transforming through becoming more conscious. He taught that you must come to “Know Thyself” – and then make good choices out of that greater conscious knowing.
The Tree of Life of the Kabbalah in Judaism is a path toward transformation, as is the system of the Eight Limbs of Yoga (which goes back thousands of years but was given its most famous written form by Patanjali around 2000 years ago). Both are systems for transformation, of moving toward one’s highest potential, just as are the practices taught in the Sufi tradition of Islam.
For those of us who feel we have made too many mistakes to be transformed, a valuable story is that of Milarepa, who as a young man was a sorcerer and murderer but who underwent many years of intense practices (and suffering) until he finally emerged as a man reborn, and became a key figure in the development of Tibetan Buddhism. Then there is King David, with his story of lust, murder, repentance, and then gradual transformation into a lover of God as expressed in the poetry of the Psalms.
For those who do not believe they have what it takes, there is the story of Moses, who spent many years in exile, was called to lead his people, but who did not believe he had the ability to do what was asked of him. After a series of dramatic events, however, he was transformed and led the people of Israel out of Egypt and into their new land. (If you think you are too old for transformation, consider that Moses seems to have been 80 years old when he received his call.) Mohammed also did not believe he was up to the task asked of him, but after a series of visions at the age of 40, and the committed support of his wife, he finally accepted the mission he felt called to fulfill.
This list could of course be expanded to thousands upon thousands of men and women in every wisdom tradition, each of whom went through trials and tribulations, often for many years, as they were gradually transformed into exemplars of the traditions they embraced. In this vein fall the stories of countless Hindu saints and sages – Ramakrishna, Anandamayi Ma, Vivekananda, Ramani Maharshi, Mira Bai, Yogananda, and on and on – which make that tradition come alive, stories that have provided (along with similar stories from older times and the mythic stories in the Bhagavad Gita and Ramayana) the central models for Hindu seekers for thousands of years.
And what would Christianity be without the stories of transformation of Paul, Peter, Mary, Mary Magdalene, Teresa of Avila, Thérèse of Lisieux, Mother Theresa, and on and on. These stories are what people study and try to emulate as they undertake their own journeys of transformation. Such stories are the bedrock of the wisdom traditions. It is the same with political and social history: the stories of the lives of heroes and heroines such as Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Joan of Arc, Thoreau, Dorothy Day, Florence Nightingale, and many, many more inspire each new generation.
Wherever you turn, you find stories of transformation. Such stories have been guiding human beings for thousands of years in the form of fairy tales, myths, plays, and novels. Most of the great novels are about transformation (War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, The Scarlet Letter, Les Miserables, Huckleberry Finn, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and on and on). The other primary approach of the great stories is to teach by painting pictures of characters who failed to transform, thus highlighting through images of failure (and the causes of that failure) lessons for healthy transformation through life.
What is transformation?
Transformation for me has come to mean a process of growth and change during an individual lifetime, a process that requires intention, effort, making choices, discipline, and sometimes sacrificing one thing in order to have another. (I can’t eat all the ice cream I want and have good health, I can’t be a loving, considerate person without sacrificing some of my id and ego desires, and I have to undertake practices I don’t always feel like doing if I am to change.)
Positive transformation is not a natural process that occurs on its own but requires conscious decisions and choices. As we age, we all undergo transformation, but it is not always positive. Just getting older does not guarantee positive transformation. In fact, a significant number of people regress as their years accumulate, they become ever more entrapped by old fears, anxieties, and other neuroses.
In this framework, my interest is how we can each live in the best way to transform ourselves into the most healthy, wise, loving, and fulfilled human beings we can possibly be. Transformation in this context is one of the most crucial issues of human existence and has been at the heart of the teachings of the wisest people who have ever lived. In these essays, then, we will focus on positive transformation: What it is. Why it is important. And how you might accomplish it.
Reflection: In the next few days, spend a few moments getting in touch with past times of transformation in your life. Looking back, consider what you learned from those experiences at that time, then ask yourself what you might learn from them today in light of the wisdom you have acquired since then. What new lessons might those moments provide?
Be well,
David