By repeatedly engaging in a transformative practice you cultivate insight—seeing your situation more clearly, and becoming more aware of your limits and strengths. Your sense of self becomes stronger and more authentic; at the same time it may expand and begin to move beyond self-centeredness. You may find yourself living more in the present moment and worrying less about the past or future.
Why Practice?
127 All of this requires strong intention and discipline. Each day, you must make the choice to act in alignment with your highest truth, to overcome the external and internal pressures to maintain the status quo. As Luisah Teish, Yoruba priestess, told us: “It takes courage and commitment” (2003).
However, our research over the past ten years suggests that in the transformative process, there is another, equally important requirement:
the willingness to surrender to the mystery and grace of life itself. As we’ve said, transformation isn’t always—or even typically—a linear process. As much as we may want it to, A doesn’t necessarily lead to B. In a way, this is a good thing: if we just got what we’d wanted in the beginning, we’d most likely shortchange ourselves dramatically! As past president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences Willis Harman once said: “If my life had unfolded in the ways I’d planned, it never would have been as interesting” (1994).
Transformation is at least as much about letting go and releasing effort as it is about working hard and making choices. As Zenkei Blanche Hartman told us, “Realization isn’t something we can do, it’s only something we can be ready for” (2003).
Just what is surrender? In part, surrender is a radical acceptance of our lives just as they are. Psychologist Marsha Linehan, developer of one of the only successful treatments for chronic suicidal, self-harm, and borderline personality disorders, defines radical acceptance as accepting your direct experience exactly as it is (1995). Radical acceptance is an active turning of the mind from willfulness (resisting or trying to change what is) to willingness (meeting what is or accepting life on life’s terms). This doesn’t imply becoming passive, or condoning an unacceptable situation; instead, radical acceptance is an active engagement with whatever is happening in the moment. Linehan finds that, paradoxically, radical acceptance of even the most painful or difficult feelings and thoughts can reduce their intensity and increase your tolerance of them (1995). This, Linehan says, can allow you the freedom to make decisions from the place of wise mind—the middle ground that relies equally on rationality, emotion, and intuition.
Many of the teachers in our study spoke with reverence of mystery, or the unknowable aspects of life that resist simple rational explanations.
Physician Rachel Naomi Remen spoke eloquently to us of the importance of remaining connected to the questions or mysteries of life, rather than just seeking answers:
I was trained to look for answers—the more answers you had, the more you’d be able to live well. And what I’ve learned is that it’s the questions that give you the power of living well, not the answers. We are always in the presence of mystery. Being aware of that can give you a sense of aliveness, a sense of engagement with life, a sense that something may happen that has never happened before. And not wanting to miss it … not wanting to miss it. (2003)
Transformative teacher Angeles Arrien reminded us that transforma-tion often unfolds differently from how you’ve expected —and that the practice of letting go can help prepare you to open to “mystery’s plan”:
There’s a lovely Inuit saying that there are really two plans to every day: there’s my plan and there’s the mystery’s plan. In the process of transformation I may have a whole plan about how I will transform and do my inner work. This is an egoic plan.
But there’s a deeper plan that is much stronger than any egoic plan.
This plan gets revealed in silence, with specific intention and attention. What often happens for people in silence and in nature, in prayer or affirmation, is that once they let go and really listen, something else emerges that wasn’t on the agenda. And it often reveals something greater than what was on their egoic agenda. I encourage them to pay attention to that.
I really trust the mystery. I trust what comes in silence, what comes in nature when there’s no diversion. The lack of stimulation that takes us out of our addiction to intensity allows us to hear and experience a deeper river—one that’s constant and still and vibrant and real. (2002)
While we can intentionally engage in practices to help prepare us for the transformation of our self-identity and worldview, as Wink Franklin—past president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and a man who lived with an open heart and an everlasting faith in people and the world—told us during our interview, there are some things we just can’t know or prepare for. For
Why Practice?
129 As we enter the deeper levels of awareness and reality itself, we know less
and less about cause and effect. There’s a top-down as well as a bottom-up causation. I don’t think we can know a lot about top-down causation.
That’s where the mystery and awe is—and it’s also where the trust comes in. It’s imperative that we trust that there is a deeper knowing in the universe than our own knowing.
This doesn’t mean we don’t keep trying to know. We keep trying to know that there’s a knowing and rightness about the world that we don’t understand; we have to honor and trust in the mystery and the awe. All the spiritual paths talk about the fact that you can’t describe the indescribable.
The practice then, is not only to trust the unknowing, it’s really to honor and appreciate and love that unknown, and to really embrace it as the life force that is the ultimate energy and ultimate source. (2003)
While we live in a culture that values certainty, an important aspect of transformation is finding comfort in not knowing.