Real change, lasting transformation, is something human beings long for, deep in their hearts. It’s the reason we go to workshops, look for teachers, take courses, repeat affirmations. And it’s something that doesn’t come easy.

I remember many years ago, watching a woman on T.V. who was facing the death sentence in America. She and her boyfriend had been on a drug spree when they were much younger, and had killed someone. During the ensuing years in prison, she had undergone a radical transformation. She described it as opening up to God, discovering who she really was.  When I saw her speak I recognized her as one of the most radiant beings I had ever seen. She wanted so much to live and be able to share the deep love and joy in her heart. They executed her a short time later, and I was very sad about it.

What is it about us humans that makes real transformation such a rare and precious thing? Why do our efforts at self-improvement and moving forward so often come back to where we started? Why is the road to hell paved with good intentions?

We need to understand what it is that stands between us and real change. It is our beliefs, fixed attitudes and self-images, our deepest sense of who we are and what life is. These beliefs and attitudes are so fundamental to who we are that we are usually unconscious of them. They are like the air we breathe, the ground we stand upon. They motivate our actions, give rise to our emotions, and create our lives. And the reason they are so hard to see through is that they make up our survival system. We picked them up at a very early age in order to survive the challenges of our early life. Our deep and visceral need to survive can express itself as the need for security, the need for approval and the need for control. The one who has these needs is experiencing him/herself as a conditioned being, separate and alone, trying to get by in an unfriendly universe.

Most of the efforts we make to change ourselves are based on these original beliefs: I am lacking in some way and need to improve. When we base our efforts on such a belief, everything we do only reinforces that belief. This is why, even though we try so hard, our life experience often seems stuck in repetitive patterns. There is movement and change, but the changes go round and round in the same circles.

True change arises from a totally different place. It is not motivated by feelings of lack, the sense that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. Real change is a response to something deep in our being, a movement towards that which deeply calls us, that which we love, that which really matters to us.  We don’t care about it because of what we are going to get out of it, we don’t love it because it’s going to solve our problems- we love it because we love it. That which really matters to us calls to us in a way we cannot ignore! There are no ulterior motives. This kind of innocence and genuine passion bubbles up from our true nature, from our authentic presence. It often happens when everything else we have tried for so long has failed. We realize, as Albert Einstein put it, that “you can’t solve the problem with the mind that created it.”

There is a kind of surrender that often happens here, a deep recognition of what has not been working. This can be very painful, but it is one of those things Adya Shanti calls the ‘blessing/curse.’ We have finally suffered enough to be open to something different, to discover a different kind of motivation. It begins to dawn on us that perhaps there is another way to live, to move, to be. This possibility begins to reveal itself, like a negative that is developing in the dark room, slowly.

We do not know what this new way is. It is unknown to us. And our human conditioning does not like this. It wants security, control, safety. Luckily, at this point we are clear that our conditioned responses have not worked. Somehow we find a way to open up to that which we do not know. This does not make sense to our mind. But our inner being, our true nature, actually thrives on this movement into the unknown. Everything we knew until this moment is only a memory. We notice how alive we are when we live in this place of mystery. Our life is dynamic, and we begin to feel a motivation which is very different from the impulse to fix and improve.

What is this motivation? It’s the natural dynamism of our true nature, the evolutionary movement towards wholeness. And as we open to that we realize that our true nature is something vast, universal.  Everything is moving towards this wide open place of freedom and wholeness. Our efforts to fix, clean up and improve ourselves are what get in the way.

This sounds like such good news, and our separate self can’t relate to it at all. How would we know our self without our struggles and problems? It can often happen, as we begin to let go of our old ways, that our survival system rears its head and tries to reassert itself with great force. It can be so tempting to sink back into that which is comfortable, familiar and safe.

This is a critical juncture for any human being. The power to keep moving, to let go of what we know and feel easy with, can come when we experience a fundamental choice. This is a choice that seems to happen- it’s not usually something we can plan. We can’t force it. This choice asks us to be true to the deepest part of our being, to discover what really matters to us, and stay aligned with that. Once this choice has been made for real, our life re-organizes itself around it. The choice has a magnetic pull, and all our scattered desires and impulses start to align with it.

The power of our being, of our essence, is what creates this fundamental choice. We can’t will it with our mind, but we can allow ourselves to be open to it. We can invite that fundamental choice right into our lives and leave all the doors and windows open. At this point we are really connecting to the infinite field of possibility. Who knows what could fly in through those wide open doors and windows?

with love
Shayla