Seeing Clearly

Evolving on Purpose (Part 4)

THE GLORIOUS LIGHTBULB

I showered yesterday morning, as I do every morning. But as sometimes happens, the flow of water over my body brought a flood of ideas. This time, my unexpected muse handed me the basic outline for the article I am writing now. If I was a cartoon character, a lightbulb would have appeared over my head. If I had been on Oprah, she and everyone in the audience would have smiled and said, “Aha moment!” But it was just me and the water, and all I could do was frantically finish up so I could grab my phone and write everything down before it washed away with the soap.

Writing is a transformational practice for me. Every project begins with a catalyst, an idea that sets me on a path of thinking, researching, and refining what I feel compelled to say. I wish these ideas arrived fully formed and ready to put into print, but they don’t. Along with every idea comes a rather significant measure of chaos. My brain spins out as it creates all sorts of connections of highly variable value. There is no structure, no beginning or end, and often not even the slightest clarity with regard to what I’m trying to communicate. But over time, as I explore the chaos and let it speak to me, there comes a moment, like the one in the shower yesterday, of clarity.

We love these moments:

The literature of creativity is full of descriptions of that magical moment when the flux of the creator’s perception shifts and the chaos begins to self-organize — moments of the aha!¹

When we enter into an intentional practice of repentance, when we do the work of transformation, or when change is thrust upon us, the chaos which follows can be challenging, exhausting, and frustrating. The self and world that we have known is gone, but the new reality has not yet appeared. It’s a liminal space, an in-between time, that can easily begin to feel endless and pointless. But if we can find the strength to endure and work with the disruption, the glorious moment will eventually arrive when we catch a glimpse of the new life that is emerging from the maelstrom. I like to think of these ‘lightbulbs’ as experiences of clarity when suddenly everything makes sense and I know where the chaos is taking me.

If chaos is the phase of clearing and breaking the ground open, plowing the soil, and preparing ourselves for new things to come to birth, clarity is when we sow seeds and nurture the emerging life that begins to grow. There is a euphoric energy that often accompanies the clarity phase of transformation. The excitement and sense of possibility is hard to resist, but there is also a danger here. Clarity is not the new reality. It is a glimpse, a first step toward what we long for. While we may be coming out of chaos, the process is not yet over. It is fragile and can still be derailed.

READY, AIM…

As James Smith so insightfully describes, human beings are hard-wired to live intentionally and to ‘aim’ our lives toward something.² Without this sense of purpose, any changes or transformations that we experienced would be nothing more than the natural processes of evolution having their way with us. But our inherent drive to direct our lives toward particular outcomes means that — consciously and instinctively — we seek out ways to grow, develop, change, and reinvent ourselves. This means that, when we go through experiences of change, we always have some kind of ‘destination’ in mind — although we may not always be aware of what destination we seek or why we seek it.

One of the most important characteristics of any religious or spiritual practice is that it seeks to make us more aware and intentional about the ends toward which we aim our lives. That’s why spirituality is often considered a journey or a path, and why Christianity was at first referred to as ‘the way’. When we explore the major spiritual traditions in the world, we cannot help but recognise that they all seek to empower us in our quest to flourish — to become our best selves living our most meaningful and fulfilling lives in the best possible world for us and others.³

In our quest to evolve into ever-better versions of ourselves, we do the work of reflection that makes us aware of what needs to change within us. This work then becomes the catalyst that leads us into the chaos of the transformational journey. The work of chaos is to enter deliberately into an in-between space where we let go of our current self and world to make room for a new reality to emerge. As Patrick McNamara notes, healthy spiritual practices provide the “protective cognitive scaffolding” that sustain us through the work of chaos and lead us to clarity.⁴

IMAGINE

Human beings have evolved some remarkable capabilities that make these transformational journeys possible and that are invaluable as we navigate through the various phases of change. One of the most powerful is what Thomas Suddendorf calls mental time travel, which is our ability to both relive past events and project ourselves into possible futures. This skill allows us to imagine the self we want to be and the world we want to inhabit, and then aim our lives toward that vision.⁵ In a very simple way, when he composed and performed his popular song Imagine, John Lennon was inviting us all to engage in a collective act of mental time travel.

One of the things we automatically do in chaos is take our current concepts of the world and ourselves offline. It’s not that we shut down, but that we hold what we’ve known lightly, and place our current ideas in a metaphorical “possible world box.”⁶ This then gives us the mental and emotional space to travel back in time through our memories for a model which represents what we seek to become. Religious communities offer many such models (Jesus, Mary, Krishna, Mohammed, the Buddha, the saints etc.) but our options are never limited to these figures. Sometimes our memories can present surprising and even challenging possibilities for us to consider, and we do well not to dismiss them out of hand. Mental time travel then empowers us to imagine our lives and world if we were to integrate the attractive qualities of these models into our lives.

Clarity comes in the moment when we are able to envision a new self and a new world that captures our hearts. It is an awakening to the possibilities available to us, and the kindling of the desire within us to aim at those possibilities. And then we can take these newly imagined possibilities with us as we leave the “possible world box” and move into the next phase of the change process. Michael Dowd describes this process as “recalibrating our inner GPS systems and updating our mental software.” As he affirms, “Replacing outmoded ways of thinking with inspiring new concepts, and doing the same for how we picture the world, can be transformative.”⁷

FAILED CHAOS

One of the great challenges with going through transformative experiences — whether chosen or not — is that we always run the risk of getting lost along the way. When clarity emerges, the relief and excitement about what we’re seeing can be overwhelming. But the moment of clarity can be delicate and fragile and it requires great care and mindfulness if it is not to become distorted or broken. There are at least two primary ways that we can unintentionally sabotage the road from chaos to clarity, and when we do that, we end up on a detour to confusion.

Have you ever had an idea that seemed so brilliant that you just had to make it a reality? It seemed so perfect and complete that you were convinced that it would take almost no time and energy to bring it to birth. But as you began working with it, you realised that it was far more complex and costly than you imagined. Soon, you became disillusioned, your excitement drained away, and you abandoned the idea before it had a chance to live. That’s what happens when we catch a glimpse of a new self or a new world and we immediately set off running toward it. Our impatience means that we don’t give the new reality time to reveal itself fully, we make assumptions about it, and we start trying to control and rush the process of bringing it into being. And too often, our eagerness can lead to a fatal malfunction.

You have probably heard the story of the boy who came across a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. He was so amazed at the wonder of what he was witnessing that he soon became completely absorbed by the sight. He watched as the chrysalis began to break open, and the butterfly started to emerge. But then it became completely still. He waited for the butterfly to begin wriggling again and pushing its way out of its cocoon, but nothing happened. Finally he decided that the butterfly must have become too tired and so, concerned that it might die before it had even begun to live, he pulled out his pocket knife and gently cut away the chrysalis to allow the butterfly to emerge completely. But the butterfly hardly moved. Its body was heavy and its wings remained crumpled and useless. Eventually, when the effort of trying to move became too much, the butterfly became still again and died.

What the boy hadn’t realised was that the butterfly needed to struggle to break free of the chrysalis. The process was designed to push fluid from the butterfly’s body into the veins in its wings which would then expand and become strong enough to carry the butterfly in flight. As well intentioned as he was, the boy’s impatience disrupted an important process and ended up killing the beautiful creature. When clarity comes, it is tempting to allow our impatience to drive the change process forward, but to do so only robs us of the hidden gifts that await in the not-yet-fully emerged reality.

STATES AND STAGES

The second way that we can sabotage our journey from chaos to clarity is a little more complex and difficult to navigate. We are all familiar with stages of development in various aspects of our lives, including our spiritual formation. Essentially the journey toward our best selves and lives is a journey through developmental stages of spiritual maturity and understanding. And we all know about spiritual states, different experiences we can have that impact our spiritual lives and perspectives. But we don’t always understand how spiritual stages and spiritual states interact.