FOR GROWTH

Making That Change - A Recipe for Growth

Change is not always something that can be easily entered upon. Habits are deep rooted expressions of our relationship to our world. They are often automatic, taking and needing little or no thought. Trite as it may appear, these habits are a function of our every day life.  They add meaning to what we perceive as purpose and totality. I do not claim to present a formula but merely a perspective on an approach to change and an effective adaptation to it, after we have made the effort.

To begin, we realize that we may need to begin or end a pattern of behavior. We are given a step by step procedure for change that represents a recipe of sorts. Often well wishers will give us in brief a formula, twelve steps, ten steps, three ways and the like. After reading/hearing such a formula we are left with the awesome task of application. We need skills. The skills of rationalization and patience. We need the ability to process and absorb what has been placed before us. In essence, we need the common sense stuff that makes what we were just told, shown or directed to do make sense. We need the ability to read. Inherently reading is not always done through the absorption of words on a page. We also need to read the unseen and feel the intangibles that affect and permeate that page of life that holds this formula for change.


Next, we need the ingredients. These ingredients represent our inner wherewithal and resources. The stuff we are made of. The main ingredient is a willingness to change coupled with an inherent awareness of its need. We need availability and access to these ingredients that come from the innermost depths of our soul..

Next, we need the utensils or tools, those external resources that are tempered by our sheer will to do what we need to do at all costs. Here we are talking about physical strength and courage. The ability to do what we must do to make these changes. Once the intellect has made this choice towards change the physical and emotive forces of the being must be mobilized to move ahead. If we are overwhelmed, depressed or exhausted we are weakened and thus unable to move forward. We may find ourselves day dreaming about what we wish to do, yet never doing it.

"Growth is the expansion of birth, and the birthing process."
- Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories

Now that we have done our reading, pooled our resources and accessed our skills we have in essence developed/created the batter, that matter that makes or represents change. We need only to internalize it. We place our mixed and formulated ingredients into the oven or dark recesses of our being where it goes through a chemical change. This change is not physically apparent and is spiritually invisible to the naked eye. The signs of change present themselves as we smell/ feel the inner workings of what is to be manifested. There is a stirring or movement of the unknown.



At this crucial moment we may succumb to self doubt or sabotage the process by opening the oven door too soon. Opening the door we allow altercations or opposing ideas or threats to hinder, alter or destroy our product. Often fear of the outcome would have us to interfere, abort or deter ourselves from our goal or simply abandon the process altogether. We may engage this process several times in an attempt to change the exact same expression of ourselves. Feeling an urgency we may become redundant and repetitive in our attempts. If we surpass all of these challenges we may become ridden distrustful of how this new expression of the self will be perceived by the outside world, colleagues, friends, loved ones, etc. This point is critical because we do wish to be accepted as we offer our newly evolved self to our outside world.

We may even peep in ever so often to check on our own progress and make a report to any who would listen. We need reassurance that we have done the right thing. But nature has its own way of assisting the creative process. Even what we may anticipate as the final product may barely smack of what we have expected. We then become uncertain of our own ability to handle our new and changed selves, our finished product.

But who is the final judge? Who is the omniscient power source that determines the success or failure of our movement towards change? Who gives the license and the decree that all is well? If we align ourselves with our own creative process accepting our own creative choices and expressions, our own contradictions, then we in fact fear no judge but merely allow ourselves the ultimate joy of exhilarating revolution. We are free to mingle and delight in our own design of ourselves and remain at peace. Constructed in the sense of our own image we cater to our own inner pattern and demonstrate our own power. We are changed, altered, released and enjoined to continue on our own trek of spatial freedom and wisdom. We emerge fully contrived and redeemed. We are another expression of our selves never faulted or denied. We are tempered and secure in that which we have patterned for our own behavior. We are manifesting our own creative process for change and evolution. We are total and yet unloaded. Encouraged we move forward toward our next enhancement of the self. - Nana Akosua Baakan Agyiriwah  April 3, 2014

Lisa Niemi , widow of actor Patrick Swayze