"Is the fear of staying the same greater than the fear of change?" 
 

Most of us enjoy the predictability of a life with a natural rhythm.  During those times of predictability, our body's natural survival responses are not so activated and we can focus on work, kids and other things we hold dear.
 
However, we will experience many phases when life seems to conspire to help us grow and become our authentic self, which often creates growing pains.  We get called out of the rhythm of our life (THE ORDINARY WORLD in HJ language) and we begin to receive THE CALL.  Imagine that THE CALL comes because you are the President of your life and the red phone on your desk only rings when it is essential that only you answer it.
 
The Call encourages (sometimes forces) us to grow, change, adapt, take a risk or leap, begin to heal, go after our dreams, find our life purpose, be courageous or intentional or to dig deeply into our heart and soul to find what is truly important.  The call is literally trying to wake us up from our slumber! When The Ordinary World lulls us into complacency, deadens, constricts or binds us and causes us to stall on our growth process, we stop growing and we begin to die a little bit at a time. The way we rationalize the deadening may sound honorable, yet this does not have to be an either-or proposition.
 
Individuals, families, couples, businesses, communities and nations all receive calls.  As a nation we have long been getting calls about energy, oil, debt, security, health issues, health care, ethics and more. What is common for all of us at times is to let the call rollover into voice mail...sometimes for years or decades. This is often done out of denial, fear, avoidance of pain or we are not even aware the phone has been ringing off the hook.  The call can force us to find our true purpose, even as it can make us want to run away.  It can force us to take flight in a soaring sense or want to take flight in a sense of running away.  Both can lead us to a greater purpose in our lives, yet sometimes refusing the call is part of the process and become its own initiation.
 
Eagles are an example in the natural world of hearing the call. Eagles are fascinating and have long been used as examples in the spiritual journey in every tradition.   A grown bald eagle will fly headlong into an oncoming storm, using the winds and turbulence to help it soar above the storm, giving it lift it needs to literally "fly like an eagle." But a grown eagle makes this look easy, as the adult eagle has been initiated and answered its own calls in life.
 
When the eaglet is inexperienced and hears its first call, the baby does not always want to leave the safety of the nest to learn what it must in order to soar.  Eagles build huge nests, deep and wide, and line them with soft down, feathers and other items of comfort.  It's like being born into a little eagle wooby.  However, when the time comes for the chick to fly, the parents begin to intentionally ruin the comfort zone of the eaglet.  They will dismantle the nest, and sometimes intentionally push the chick to the very edge the nest, trying to force the youngster to strengthen its own muscles for flight.  In order to become authentic and "soar like an eagle," the chick must learn to fly on its own.
 
The eagle has learned to discern when to fly and when to wait.  This is the essence of the call-that it may be calling us to do one thing yet in our fear or excitement we perceive something else.  The call may force us to reassess our values and beliefs to determine if they still fit us in this new life.  When assessing and discerning during the Call, it's ok to sometimes push the hold button a minute, and wait until any fog lifts before moving forward.  There are times in life when we have to simply sit and wait, to listen deeply within to discern if our fears are simply projections, or if they are true intuition.  A common theme in the heroic journey is that we have to not only overcome our own fears and limitations, but the fears and limitations of others---family, friends, religion, community and cultural standards.   Many interracial, interreligious and intercultural marriages and friendships have had this experience and found deep growth and love, and modeled a peaceful way of being for others in their community.  Others have been ostracized yet knew they had to answer the call to move forward into a new life, a new way of being, a way of answering the call that is ours to answer-no one can take that call for us.
 
Humans have their own version of the unfeathering the nest when we find that life begins to constrict, threatening to strangle us to death.  For instance: Businesses begin to lose money because it quits being innovative, they no longer treat their employees ethically or provide services with integrity. Some organizations simply refuse to change at all, saying "this is how it has always been done" and they don't try another way to grow the group together. People begin to slip in the way their relationships support one another because other things get pushed higher on the priority list. There may be an increase in difficulty sleeping or feeling rested or a sense of aloneness or emptiness begins to appear.
 
The examples given are but a few indicators of what may occur when a call is occurring.  Typically there is some sense of disillusionment, longing, restlessness or discomfort and pain that manifests. Sometimes there is anxiety and/or depression, which are not unusual symptoms when consistently refusing to answer the call. Although anxiety or depression may be indicators of serious medical issues and must be dealt with, it is still a call - a call to heal.
 
As individuals put off living a resilient and awakened life, we often have many helpers along the way.  Mentors, allies, heralds and threshold guardians (which we covered extensively in the May newsletter and can be found in the archives) all play a part in trying to wake us up.  They provide the positive internalized messages to nourish us through the challenges or the negative messages that may act as our rocket fuel to change. Painful consequences may begin to pile up from the refusal and resistance to a call and life may feel as if it is spinning apart, that we are losing ground or becoming trapped. Like the story about the frog: if you put a frog in boiling water, he will jump to safety.  If you put a frog in tepid water and heat it slowly, the frog gets used to the heat and by the time the water begins to boil, he is so weakened by the heat, he doesn't have the ability to get out.  It is for this very reason that a good support network is essential.
 
Our innate survival responses are run by the most primitive part of our brain. Think of this primitive part as your snake brain. The snake brain does not want to be disturbed and if disturbed, it reacts. Its primary desire is for things to remain the same.  Change can be frightening because it holds a big question mark...the unknown...the big "what if?"  When we are living in the snake brain, life is lived intermittently between fear and reaction or dead neutral. When the snake brain is driving our life and decisions are made based on fear, not on reason, because reason is housed in the pre-frontal cortex, which snakes do not have.  All actions will be dependent on our "programming" and "training." So what is your "training" when fear comes up? To fight, flee or freeze?
 
  It can be a person or a situation which does so.  When children or adults do not experience the natural consequences of their unhealthy, inappropriate or ineffective behaviors, they are robbed of their HERALD. They simply don't wake up as easily, if at all.  A common example of that is drunk driving. Most alcoholics involved in fatal drunk driving accidents have had multiple opportunities to change their behaviors. However, "good" lawyers, "good connections" or enabling friends or family have bailed them out of the consequences that may have awakened to a full, healthy and resilient life.
 
Our western culture typically views pain as something bad and something to be avoided or medicated at all costs.  Rather than looking at a cause and learning and changing, we take a pill instead. I recently had headaches while using my laptop because I needed a newer pair of glasses to see, but I chose for too long to take aspirin instead. When it comes to personal or professional changes, pain can be one of the greatest gifts in the heroic journey, because the pain of staying the same is greater than the fear of change.
 
Eastern culture typically views pain and suffering from a perspective of noticing and not judging, learning from the suffering, leaning into rather than away from.  Paradoxically, we are more likely to move into a place of acceptance and peace much quicker. 
 

How A Medical Wake Up Call Woke Up

(Then) 12-Year Old Colin Wagner

Drenched in sweat, crippled in pain, I hobbled through the emergency room doors. I was taken to a hospital bed where I received dose after dose of morphine. The pain dulled, but it could not be relieved. I was only twelve years old. I had no idea that before concluding my preteen years and entering adolescence, I would go through a hellish test of mental and physical endurance that would completely reshape my perception of the world around me.