What Happened? I stepped away for a week’s vacation and when I returned home everything seemed different.
Transitioning back from vacation is always an adjustment, but I had the strange sense I had stepped into a shifted reality. Simply communicating with others was challenging. I felt as if my words were sailing past them. Every response seemed to miss the point. And when I tried to clarify, I would end up more confused.
Then, while I was walking my dog, I noticed that my whole neighborhood had an unfamiliar feel. The air was cooler, the autumn colors were starting to emerge, but there was more. I felt a stillness that seemed ominous, strange, mysterious…and intriguing.
Change can occur in subtle ways, such as the gentle emergence of autumn color, or not-so-subtle ways, such as forest fires burning out of control, eclipses, severe weather events, and earthquakes. All of the elements are at play: the fire of the sun, the tremendous winds and rains, the shaking of the earth. Pachamama is showing us in very dramatic ways what it takes to break free from stubborn old patterns.
One of my mentors and co-founders of the Power Path School of Shamanism, Lena Stevens, has recently spoken about this kind of energetic change in the air. She points out that we’re living in unsettled times, when everything feels unfamiliar, different, almost surrealistic.
Our choice is to either hide in fear or harness the power of disturbance to make positive changes.
Lena uses an analogy of connecting the dots. The dots can represent our homes, families, career, people, objects in nature, all of our experiences which, when connected, represent a picture of our life.
Lately, it seems as if the lines connecting the dots have dissolved. The dots are floating around and we don’t know what picture will emerge. Instead of being disturbed by this, we can infuse the “deconstructed” picture with feelings of love, joy, peace, gratitude, connection, any intention that you would like to represent your life. Even though we don’t exactly know what picture will emerge, those feelings are what truly hold the dots together to create something new.
So whether you are going through a maelstrom of change, feeling the surreal calm of the eye of the storm, or even have the sense you’ve been flung into some strange unfamiliar land, I invite you to re-ground, release what no longer serves, and make space for infinite possibilities of what can be.
