Transformation is not a pretty process. In fact, it is downright ugly and messy. If you are searching for grace and elegance in the transformative process, you are barking up the wrong tree. It is not a well orchestrated duel of honor and swordsmanship; it is a street fight. We challenge transformation with the arrogance of the innocent. The request for transformation is this: change me! We beg for change and then resist the very change we want.We dare it to take us on, like children throwing rocks down the side of a snow bank. Only when the avalanche begins, do we begin to comprehend exactly what we have called forth. Physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. These are the areas of change. It is my job to provoke change, but I know that even if I do nothing, our trekkers will transform. When you put these kinds of stakes on the table, travel half-way around the world and put all of your creature comforts behind you, you are making the necessary declaration. Not everyone will like what they see; in fact, everyone will not like at least some of the feelings and issues that arise. They could not surface if they were not there to begin with, but that doesn’t encourage ownership. When we demand change the ego hears the clarion call of battle. “Change? Not on my watch!” The liar mind fights desperately to maintain its illusions. What is obvious to others is a mystery to us. This egotistical self makes us deaf, dumb and blind to anything but the reality of its own defenses. We try to maintain the oddly uncomfortable comfort zone that we have constructed, in defense of reality. Unbidden and unwanted, pictures of the buried past come up for me during this process. I assure myself that this is not the time; that I am charged with attending the growth of others, not my own. Still these old images of abuse, long acknowledged with acceptance but not peace, make their way to my conscious mind.  on our way up! The stage is certainly set for the extraordinary and the new…all routines and patterns are clearly broken (along with my tailbone!) and our resistence to change is low. We are strangers in a strange land. We have travelled as far from home as we can go without beginning to come back. Each of us is excited and terrified at the potential for change. The morning starts with “cha” or horse tea, served by the fire. Given the chilly, rain-soaked nights, we actually look forward to this suspicious brew. If any of us were served this in a cafe’ we would send it back; but for now, it tastes like warmth and safety. I have asked each person on the trip to create an intention: a goal that they hope to achieve through this journey. It can be as simple as creating more abundance in life, or as meaningful as moving past some personal history. One by one, our travellers declare themselves. “I want to be more present, more in the moment.” “I need to release this toxic anger, it isn’t me.” “I want to finally manifest the career that I’ve been trying to create.” “I want to let go of this shame that I carry with me.” We all identify with these goals. “I need to forgive a friend’s betrayal.” I step in here and there to clarify: “How long ago was this betrayal?” “Seven years ago, almost to the month.” “I want to find my passion again.” “I need to really find detachment in my life.” “I want to take my power back from everything I’ve given it away to.” One by one we supplicants offer up our requests in hope that the gods are listening. Perhaps if we word it just so, the mere request will bring its own miraculous response. We are, after all, in Tibet, the mothership for spirituality. My own request seems harmless to me on the surface: I want more patience. Little do we realize that with each request we are stirring up the logos and demons that guard these desires.
“ the perpetrator”
RATTLING THE DEVIL’S CAGE:
When we are traumatized in life or simply choose not to deal with an issue, we make a deal with the devil, so to speak. We relegate one part of the mind to manage that area in whatever way that it needs to, so that we can move on and function. We station a monster at the gate, and nothing may go in and nothing can pass through this area without that demon’s permission. A real bargain has been struck and a balance created. There is an enforced peace, but an uneasy one.
Do you know what happens when you provoke a demon? Here we sit around the campfire blithely breaking all the rules and corrupting the boundaries of every issue. The sky darkens above us as secrets are revealed and pacts are broken. In that rarified air we release ourselves from all of the old agreements and unwittingly unleash the entities surrounding each of these issues.
In the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous there is a term called going “banky”. It means that you have touched an issue that is wired into your core memory banks, and you begin to react wildly and unpredictably. Each of us on the trek has raised the stakes of our game and in so doing, has shifted the balance and summoned our deepest reactions.
The physical challenges of the trip continue to make themselves manifest: each of us has a touch of altitude sickness, and while it is not severe enough to quit anything, it certainly is a distraction. On a personal level, I am feeling the furniture moving around on a very deep level. Troublesome. I may get lucky; it may just be a touch of dysentery. My suspicion is that its origins lay elsewhere . The sensations do have that primal, sub-conscious quality that signifies deep turbulance and deeper change. Some resonance has been set in motion and to the horror and satisfaction of the trekkers, we are in the thick of it.
As we continue to get rained on daily, smiles thin. I find myself in short supply of that abundance of patience that I’ve requested. Travelling the narrowest edge of a horse-trail, through trees and brush, we hear screams and thumps. Because the trail is so narrow none of us can turn and see who might have bought the farm. Poor “B”, the sweetest of us and certainly the angriest, has taken a fall. Tibetan horses are evil and indifferent to the white devil. They try to “rub you off” on every tree, and so it’s a constant battle. ”B”s horse has succeeded. We discover later that she is black and blue from the middle of her chest through to her back and hips.
We established our own campfire, away from the guides. This would be our territory, our “clear zone”. We had survived the physical challenges of the trip, the emotional burden of weaving through the quake zone and living on this meager diet, (What’s for breakfast? Same as lunch, same as dinner: rice and vegetables!). We managed to adjust to the twelve hour time change where night literally changes to day, and our new daily habit of spending half of our day on a reluctant beast; now we need a “safe”space to show up in.
All of the incredible breakthroughs and heart-opening changes showed up in that space. Sitting together, telling truth and fighting for clarity around the campfire was the opening for all of the tranformation that we had requested. Each of us, one by one, went through the fire and hell of our issues, and each of us came out stronger on the other side of those issues. Each of us, one at a time met our demons. These devils are unique enough to show up in all of us, but in dramatically different ways. Some of us would be angry, some withdrawn. Others would show up distracted or disinterested, or eager for a change, any change. It was always the same primal devils, even if a different dance. In a way, we could have been anywhere, but we fought these battles on top of the world.
next: what I can say about transformation…
 "Our Campsite" Amidst the foothills of the Himalayas in Tibet, I find myself mid-air between the horse and the mountain, having just been unceremoniously thrown eight feet in the air; oddly, my main concern is that people understand that this isn’t my fault. I’m a much better rider than this…It’s amazing what goes through your head as you are flying through the air! I start to reflect on the beginning of this trip… Tibet is turning out to be a series of incredible challenges. To even get to the mountains we have to pick our way through the devastation of an 8.0 magnitude earthquake in Szechwan provence that has left 4 million homeless. We had forgotten the astonishing seismic event that these people had endured last year. The Chinese government admitted to 70,000 dead and over 300,000 injured, though the numbers may be much higher. As we drove through the province, the full impact of the damage became apparent. Whole towns and villages were swept away. Landslides had destroyed much of the road and infrastructure along the way. The stakes were immediately raised on our journey. We were now in a land where life and death were the daily issue at hand. Our van snaked its way through town after town on what was left of the highway system. More often than not, we were driving on dirt paths or no road at all. We began to notice that, even though these people had major devastation to deal with, they actually went about rebuilding cheerfully. We were humbled by their good nature and attitude as they went about reclaiming their lives from the rubble. Clearly, we were being given a new perspective to work with. Our lessons had already begun. This was the enormously challenging beginning to what became, for all of us, a transformative trip. Each of us was being asked to put some real stakes on the table in our personal bids for growth and power. The trip already demanded that we give up comfort and security. To say that our routines and patterns were disrupted is an understatement, but Tibet would continue to demand more of us. Were we able, as a group and as individuals, to rise to a level of challenge and sacrifice that would yield the transformation that we sought? Back to horses. I did land, eventually, flat on my back. My pride was hurt, but not much else. I dusted myself off and looked around. All of our belongings are piled on top of these horses, and we are piled on top of the belongings. Like Pashas atop our elephants, we sit high up on these tough Tibetan mules, and we sway with every step. It is hard to imagine that these horses can negotiate the angle of the mountain. It can only be described as “straight up”. We climb for over an hour, navigating treacherously narrow paths. From behind me I hear “Don’t look down!” and I think, “That’s the right advice.” We don’t die. An emerald green lake greets us at the top of the mountain, and we are near the site where we will make camp. Our guides have not stopped singing from the moment we climbed atop the horses, and they show no signs of letting up now. As we dismount, dazed, disoriented and a little buzzed from the altitude, they erect first the cooking tent and then the two sleep tents that we will occupy. Everything is taking on a surreal texture. The air is different at 14,000 feet. The light is unusual, as though we are a little too close to the sky. It is hard to grasp that we are here! And now that we are here, what exactly is it that we are going to do? next entry: the beginnings of transformation Come join us for an experience of a life time in Tibet! Click Here to find out more. We are going to be out of our daily lives and daily routine. This immediately breaks all of our patterns because we find ourselves in a different environment which puts you in a different position, allowing you to be much more accessible to you. You won’t have all this daily distraction that you fill your eyes with day in and day out. You will be out of your routine! You will be with a group of like minded people which exponentially increases your ability to grow and work on your growth using The Paradox Process. It’s more than an individual experience, it’s a group experience and when everybody is on the same page and meditating on the same page it’s enriching. We are up to creating a new clarity for ourselves and a new base of operations with in our own minds, a new state to go to. What made me want to bring people to Tibet was that I experienced a clarity there that I hadn’t experienced before. |
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