Transformaion and Easter

Transformation is a sticky topic no mater what realm you happen to be dealing with - leadership, personal growth or spiritual. By its very nature and definition, transformation engages one at an entirely different and deeper level. But more important than that, transformation involves the most elemental of living processes - the death/rebirth cycle. The old way of being, when it no longer works to handle the newer challenges, must die to make room for the new/next way of understanding. It is as basic a process as spring and conception. Just as the seed dies to give birth to the shoot, so must a part of our being die to give birth to the next level of our functioning.

But that means pain, sometimes real, intense pain - not just your run of the mill old headache - gut-wrenching, breast-beating, up-chucking pain. And that is a problem for many of the people I deal with in my day job. I might be so bold as to say that is a problem with our culture. The general popular reaction to pain is to ask, "Isn't there a pill I can take for that?" "Ask your doctor if Xantac, or Prozac or (fill in the blank) is right for you." Since the advent of the information age, we have cultivated a culture wherein patients can research symptoms and drugs and go in to their doctor's office deeply informed (unfortunately about what they think they see or need) and "suggest" a recommended treatment. But often that course of action is not to listen to the pain - let your body speak its wisdom - it involves ignoring or squashing the feeling.

Transferring that same discussion to the experience of transformation, we get requests regularly from both companies and their employees and leaders to speed up the transition. "Instant Karma gonna get you, gonna hit you in the face, better get yourself together darlin', join the human race." (O Johnny-boy I miss you!) I can't say that I ever heard someone request a coach who would lead them into and through their pain point! Life isn't that way! But transformation is. Transformation is like an Easter experience.

Prior to Good Friday/Easter things were looking good. Hey, hanging out with the Messiah must have been great! Sure there was the danger of arousing suspicion from the centurions or the government officials, but this guy seemed to have some special charm. And then, WHAM, the whole thing came tumbling down, and in rapid fashion, too. And what is worse, the charmed one was executed - killed! Dead! Gone! I cannot imagine the fear and pain his followers must have felt. But in that darkest hour, the transformation of their beliefs began. It's like that!

Transformation does not happen without death and pain and aloneness. The old MUST die in order to make way for the new. The problem for us seekers however is that we don't go around seeking those painful experiences. Rather, we seem to want to know more about that which we already know. It is a rare person who walks down the street thinking "what is it that I don't know, that if I was aware of would make me pass blood through my pores, that I need to take on?" Transformation does not come from the inside. It comes upon us like the tsunami, like an earthquake, without prediction, without warning and often in the middle of the night. I don' think for a moment that Peter really thought that Jesus was talking about anything real (it must have been metaphor) when he said "you will deny me, three times."

But transformation has a nasty habit of being more than real - to be stark and harsh. It is in our faces. Like the crucifixion. Like the feedback I recently got about my win rate in coaching "bake-off's" (oh did I mention that the numbers suck?) So isn't it just perfect that in this season of transformation I am faced with a bit of pain that just might be the impetus for my next transformation. I must, I will stick my face into it.

I will feel the pain. And let it speak to me. I will...

say tuned, this might not be pretty

Another one bites the bust

The other night I met with my men's group and the obvious topic was Mr Spitzer's fall from favor. But the discussion quickly veered away from prostitution (as well it should have) since prostitution was not the issue! Prostitution is as old as sex itself and like alcohol, its prohibition only serves to drive up prices and proliferate its use. No. Prostitution is a symptom of a societal and human ill, and Elliott Spitzer is only a symbolic representation of how we want to pretend this disease is someone else's problem. If I/we can focus on him (as he apparently focused on others) and the speck of dust in his eye, then perhaps wee can somehow ignore the log lodged in our own.

But what is the problem? is it simply the greed of wanting more than the other guy has? Or is it the deep spiritual vacuum we have created in "modernizing" our life that allows us to live under the pretense that an Afghan or Iraqi or Mestizo or a woman or a gay are not as human as ourselves. It appears as though we would believe that others are just so much livestock inhabiting the planet without which we all would somehow be much better off.

Nonsense. When I talked with the border crossers, whose drive to feed their children was so deeply rooted that they had no other choice, when I saw the fear in the eyes of the border guard telling us of having to go into situations without "backup", when I played with the kid on the other side of the wall, I felt their humanity - no, read that more like I felt their souls.

What allows a Spitzer to lie to his wife and his constituents? Not his lack of soul but his denial of theirs. What makes us think that putting up a wall or banning a practice will alter the inequities already present in every fiber of the fabric of society; it's our thought that we can legislate problems away because we don't see the souls and faces of the people involved.

Years ago I dreamed of starting a business practice and calling it the Rehumanization Project. I am more convinced today that that is what we need. We (and I do not exclude myself from the masses) have lost our humanity, we have lost our souls, and we need desperately to find them again. Perhaps we should thank Mr Spitzer for the stark reminder that we are all suffering this disease.