The Bridge of Crisis

Fierce storms have been pelting my abode. Outside the the wind is howling in its might. Trees not strongly rooted, dragged from the earth, branches snapped. In this cold wet wild dark night I open my eyes. I run my finger tips gently over the length of my sword, feeling its keenness. Is it time for the sword of discrimination to cut through the web of my life?

Has there ever been a life lived that had not experienced crisis? A Crisis, whether of short or of long duration, you face not knowing what will be the outcome, yet you have no choice but to face it if you intend to live, for life is change.

“Crisis is an attempt of nature, of the natural, cosmic lawfulness of the universe, to effect change ... It tears down and breaks up, which is momentarily painful, but transformation is unthinkable without it.” - Eva Pierrakos

“On this journey we move from being wounded to being healed of our wounds. For a long time we behave in the ways our wounds tell us to behave, and since our wounds have messed us up inside, we create one mess after another in our lives.

For a time we're allowed to get away with our wounded behaviour. We either experience minor consequences from it or we ignore the serious consequences. The familiarity of our behaviour is comforting in its own way; we feel right at home in our patterns. Then a time comes when it becomes hard or impossible to continue in that behaviour. That time is usually signalled by a big mess we make in our lives, a chaotic disaster, a crisis. But a crisis is really God's way of saying it's time to move on from our wounded patterns. The consequences of our behaviour becomes so serious that we finally feel impelled to change. Now the universe is saying to you, “Look , pal, you can continue to do things the old way, if you want, but if you do, you're going to pay the price.”

Visualize in your mind the two words “crisis” and “crossing.” They look alike and are alike, because a crisis is really a crossing from an old way of being to a new way of being. To make a crossing, one needs a bridge. The crisis is the bridge you walk across to get over to the new way of operating.” - The Transformative power of Crisis – Robert M. Alter & Jane Alter

So we seem to totter on the edge of chaos before we can move forward. Just as periods of chaotic activity can throw a system out beyond its ordinary grooves, affording it an opportunity to come down in a different path, a new attractor, so we experience crisis, the turbulence which so often accompanies periods of personal transformation, lest we stagnate.

“When the end of a Period arrives, one must know how to abandon that which sets its characteristic boundaries, so as to give free access to the Light of the new Period; one must know and hand over to destruction that which is corrupt, so that only what is indestructible should subsist.” Isha Schwalle de Lubicz

I have come to realise through personal experience that there is a calm center within me, around which the personal "I" swirls. In times of intense crisis that demands immediate action, I naturally enter the calm center and know what to do. Within any crisis resides a jewel of understanding, an opportunity for growth, the very substance of a life.

"I surrender to the irrepressible flow of life."

tags: suffering  flow  crisis  spiritual