Sometimes change happens like an earthquake. When I lived in southern California for a while, I remember realizing that the two biggest bummers about the L.A. experience were a) traffic and b) earthquakes. Traffic I could sometimes avoid–by being wiley–but earthquakes… I almost tried to anticipate one, in some insane attempt to prepare myself for the horrible shakeup it would bring. As if you can prepare to be swallowed into a crevass! Or to be bounced forty feet in the air–still behind the steering wheel! Complete shakeups are rarely orchestrated, and generally happen to us–the type of change the average Western-worlder gets insurance for.

But we can’t avoid them. Death. Breakups. the Flu. They all come as earthquakes to the body and mind. The best we can do is be as present as possible for the experience, and then take the opportunity to change as much as possible while the earth is still shaking. Not just tossing life like a salad, but allowing more shifts to take place–the shifts that have been getting ready to happen.  Lying in wait.

I just went through an earthquake and I am still experiencing the aftershocks. It rocked through my being with all the forces of nature; anger, truth, compassion, shame, guilt, terror–all intermingled with a profound sense of peace each time I surrendered to the quake’s violence. The funny thing is that the epicenter was deep inside of me, and I didn’t even know it. Oh, I suppose there were some clues, but nothing that registered on my personal Richter scale. Little did I know I was a Krakatoa (okay, that’s a volcano–indulge me), waiting to erupt with change–to fling off crusty sludge to align more with myself, my truth, and with Nature.

And I’m letting this be an opportunity for more: In hypnosis, we say that someone is hypnotized when the critical part of their mind is bypassed–in other words, when their conscious thinking is arrested–and, in that moment, new suggestions can get into the subconcious mind. So, if the earthquake is the bypass of the critical mind (and boy, is it!), then the aftershocks provide opportunities for real, deep re-programming. Here’s an incomplete list of what I’ve learned from this:

I am stronger than I think.

Love is never wasted.

The truth is a force, not a concept.

There is healing in everything.

Aftershock: I’ve painted my apartment. It’s a buttery yellow and it RULES!!! Just because I don’t eat it doesn’t mean I don’t want to live in a buttery womb of lovely yellowness.

Aftershock: I’ve been actively changing my food. We all get into ruts, whether it’s that our health food store never changes its produce, or we fail to crack the recipe books, and I need to get out of my leek/mushroom/tempeh stirfry addiction. Whenever my body reaches for something familiar, I’m saying “make another choice” and pushing my envelope. By changing food, I am changing my blood, my consciousness, my everything. And the nice thing is that it’s not so earthquakey–more like a gardener’s rate of change… gentle and spectacular.

Aftershock: Falling in love with cooking again; the kitchen is a whole lot more inviting this time of year–if only as a source of heat–so I’m diving in, allowing myself to be moved like a witch with my powerful potions in my urban cauldron. Cooking hones the intuition, and the more time I spend in the kitchen, the more magical my life becomes. I’m excited to be playing with that power again.

So as you continue to explore and practice MB, put on any available seat belt you can find (haha), eat whole foods as much as you can, chewing them well. Yes, sometimes there will be an earthquake–there’s no avoiding nature’s shocking adjustments–and when they come, take good advantage. Thankfully, on most days, we can pick up our surfboards, run to the beach, and ride the ocean of life.

Change is good. Chew well.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 30th, 2007 at 12:14 pm and is filed under My Life, Photo, Spiritual Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.