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.