No matter where you are and what you're doing, it's possible to change. The question is, do you have the tools to support your time in transition?

Chances are, since you were young, you've been assigned a role in your family, group, or community based on what others have decided you're adept at, or that meets the needs of the group dynamic. 50% of the time, this is great. You feel like you belong, you know who you are in relationship to others. You know where you stand.

But then something happens - you begin to change. Perhaps it happens externally at first; the circumstances and conditions of your life create a shock to the system and you're required to find a new answer, a new way of being in the world. This can happen both through tragedy, or farce. Maybe it happens internally. You wake up one morning, and you feel different in the world around you. The old answers don't soothe or validate - the change begins from the inside out. But either way, something is happening.

Maybe in your life you've been given more material for self-creativity than most people. Perhaps those around you don't expect much of you - you've been through so much, you should take it easy, you should relax, you should just accept the hand you've been dealt. Go with the flow. But once you've rested and gotten your energy back, you realize that like Dorothy in the Poppy Field - there's farther to go in your life experience.

A quote attributed to the Budda is, “We should use the teaching like a raft to bring us across the river. And then when we've crossed the river, we can leave the raft there for someone else to use.”

Any good spiritual practice and teaching is a raft to cross the river of change or the dark night of the soul, meant to get you through times of transition when one is most vulnerable. You don't learn a spiritual practice during the change, you learn tools to prepare for the journey ahead, so when you encounter that which you think you can't handle, you find you can rise to the occasion.

Don't wait for a crisis to learn how to manage growth and change. Learn while you have the space and energy to focus and integrate. The change will come; it does for us all. Will you be ready?

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