Arising from the Ashes

You can negotiate, reorient, delay the inevitable or even use your favorite feel good strategy and it won’t make a difference. You may even pull out your favorite books by your most beloved authors and won’t find succor or respite. At the end of the day the only thing that gets you through these challenging experiences is mastering your inner game.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ~Victor Frankl

In hindsight, you come to realize that these moments are the proverbial ‘fork in the road.’ These are the experiences that transform you. They may seem to shatter you irrevocably, like Humpty Dumpty, and it’s true you are never able to put yourself back together again. What arises after these transformative experiences is a new being, a new creation. You are the phoenix arising from the ashes.

It is these very same turning points that create the deeper grooves in your sensing, the clarity of vision, and the fortitude of character. As this new you cools off from the smoldering cauldron of chaos, myriad possibilities become available. Here are some tools to explore the inner game:

1. Breathe fully into your body, especially the places that feel particularly fractured. It’s just the coming apart of the old and the re-engineering of YOU. Take comfort in the constancy of the in-flow and out-flow of breath. This rhythm is as timeless as the stars.

2. Feel yourself cradled in the arms of the Cosmic Mother. Allow yourself to be warmly wrapped in her embrace. Seek her solace, shed your tears, and relinquish your yearnings. Find yourself in the secure sensation of nurturing sustenance from the giver of all life. You are worthy of her caring concern. Surrender yourself into her loving essence.

3. Trust your experience to a wisdom keeper. You know who these beings are. They may be in the physical or the non-physical realms. It may be an ascended master or teacher. It may be an ancestor or an angel. The sheer act of being heard by them changes the energy of your experience. Their words are a balm to your spirit. Their essence soothes the solitude. Existential aloneness vanishes and you once again find yourself a vibrant thread in the weave of life.

Transformative experiences are made painful by resistance. In and of themselves, they are the new seeking your engagement. All life is a come and a go. The one constant is change. Opening to life awakens your essence and leads you to movement that makes you anew. And a new you gives rise to a new world.