The Gift of Chaos

Evolving on Purpose (Part 3)

THE NECESSARY BREAKING

My parents loved renovating houses. Most of my childhood was spent in one home, which, over many years, had been transformed into a comfortable and spacious sanctuary for my family. But when my siblings and I finally flew the nest, my parents began a season of buying, renovating, and selling houses. I don’t think they had intended to become serial home owners, but it did seem to bring them a lot of joy. And every house they touched was transformed into a place of exquisite beauty and class.

But before the transformation could happen, every home was broken down. In one case, without realising what they were doing, my parents ended up leaving only one of the original walls standing, with the roof mostly supported on scaffolding! Watching them break down and rebuild their homes taught me an important life lesson: every creative or transformative experience will include some kind of necessary breaking and a time of chaos before the new reality comes into being. Now, whenever I watch home makeover shows, I am as fascinated by ‘Demo Day’ when the house gets demolished in some way as I am by the great reveal at the end. And I am always intrigued to see what gets broken and how so that recreation and renewal can happen.

Transforming ourselves is not unlike doing a home renovation. We all have idealised versions of ourselves that we long to become, and when we get serious about doing the work to change ourselves, we inevitably enter a time of chaos and disarray as we start to let go of the self we have known and begin exploring how to be the self we long to be. The same is true with all the inevitable changes that life brings to us; we go through periods of breaking and chaos in our relationships, our work lives, our learning, and in the natural process of developing and aging as human beings. What is strange is not that chaos happens, but that we are always so surprised when it does. We know that once a change catalyst has touched us, the process is unstoppable. What we struggle to grasp and prepare for, is that the very next stage of all processes of change, transformation, or evolution is chaos—which we might prefer to think of as deconstruction or necessary breaking. As Richard Rohr writes:

The word change, normally refers to new beginnings. But transformation, the mystery we’re examining, more often happens not when something new begins but when something old falls apart.¹

MAKING FRIENDS WITH CHAOS

This chaos phase of transformative processes is recognised in many spiritual teachings across the world, and is often deliberately incorporated into rites of passage in many of the world’s indigenous and earth-based cultures. In Rohr’s Wisdom Pattern it is the stage of disorder. In Walter Brueggemann’s categorisation of the Psalms, it is disorientation. In the psychology of Kazimierz Dabrowksi, it is an essential part of his theory of positive disintegration.² And in Deidre Combs’ theory of conflict resolution, it is—as I refer to it here—the phase of chaos.³

Generally we do not respond well to chaos. As Richard Rohr notes, human beings are experts at planning—including planning change. We know how to control the process and we believe that successful change requires minimum levels of unpredictability and chaos.⁴ But the truth is that there is a significant proportion of our lives that we cannot plan or regulate, and authentic transformation always requires us to release our obsession with being in control. We know this instinctively, which is why we so often resist the changes that are most important and that make the most positive differences in our lives. Eckhart Tolle accurately notes that “Most human beings would rather be in pain than take a leap into the unknown and risk losing the familiar, but unhappy self.”⁵

I often think of the chaos stage of transformative processes as the we-want-to-go-back-to-Egypt phase. After being liberated from slavery, the Israelites were led into the wilderness by Moses. Here they faced various forms of disorientation: they lacked food and water, they experienced disease and exhaustion, and they took decades to complete a journey that should have been done in just a few weeks. And through the entire time, they kept complaining and wishing they could return to their slavery.

When we enter chaos, even if it is the result of our choice to embark on a transformative journey, we often have second thoughts and long to go back to the world and life we have known. But that reality no longer exists. It is impossible to return, and any time and energy wasted on wishing we could turn back the clock only makes the chaos more painful. We do far better if, instead of fighting the disorder, we learn to cooperate with it, release our need for control, and, like a sailor tacking into the wind, navigate it as mindfully and skilfully as we can. We can never predict how long the chaos will last, but if we try to rush through, regulate, or avoid it, it will certainly take longer than if we befriend it. And embracing the disorientation phase always leads to a better outcome than trying to reject it.

In Chaos Theory, the science of change, these periods of disorientation are described in terms of intermittency. Intermittency refers to the common phenomenon of bursts of chaos occurring in the midst of order and outbreaks of order in the midst of chaos.⁶ It is helpful, when we are going through the disorder stage of transformation, that the chaos is a normal and expected part of the process. This may not make it any easier, but it does help us to realise that it is a necessary and even beneficial part of the process. As David Peat and John Briggs explain:

Too much stress makes people ill, but researchers have discovered that a little of life’s chaos is necessary for the immune system to function efficiently.⁷

One of the reasons we struggle with chaos is that it feels destructive. But chaos is the birthplace of creativity. It is where new ideas are born, new perspectives are discovered, and new ways of being are developed. It is in chaos that we are forced to release old patterns of thinking, habits, and attitudes—and this is an essential part of moving through deconstruction to a new and better reality. To quote Richard Rohr again:

Most of us would never go to new places in any other way. The mystics use many words to describe this chaos: fire, darkness, death, emptiness, abandonment, trial, the Evil One. Whatever it is, it does not feel good and it does not feel like God. You will do anything to keep the old thing from falling apart. This is when you need patience and guidance, and the freedom to let go instead of tightening your controls and certitudes.⁸

CHAOS AND EVOLUTIONARY SPIRITUALITY

When it comes to spirituality, chaos becomes both more difficult and more important. It is more difficult because so many of us turn to spirituality as a way to avoid unpredictability and chaos, so when spirituality becomes a path into disorder it can feel absurd and threatening. But this is also why chaos is more important when we enter the realm of spirituality. If we are serious about allowing our spirituality to transform us, to empower us to evolve consciously, we need to be taught how to relate to disorientation and disruption. We need to understand and accept that chaos will be a necessary, constant, and life-giving facet of our lives and relationships. And we need to develop habitual practices that lead us into the creative chaos that will bring about the transformation we seek.

When we recognise that Chaos Theory is the name for the science of change, we realise that chaos is an inherent feature of our universe. Without chaos, stars cannot die and new ones cannot be born, species cannot adapt to unexpected changes in their environments, the earth cannot renew and recreate itself, and we cannot experience and cooperate with the interdependence of all things in our world. Chaos is at the heart of evolution, and so it needs to be at the heart of evolutionary spirituality.

When things evolve, something new and often unexpected happens. This results in changes in the environment and in any creatures that are impacted by that new thing. These changes mean that some things will die—some species won’t survive the change. Some will adapt by losing some of their characteristics and adopting new ones. And throughout these evolutionary processes, beings will connect, reproduce, and bring new life into the world. But all of this is unpredictable and chaotic.

Human beings are not separate from the chaotic forces of evolution. Our world has not stopped evolving and neither have we. As Ilia Delio expresses it:

What gave rise to everything before the human is enfolded in the human. Nor did evolution stop at the level of thinking humans or homo sapiens. We continue to evolve through higher levels of consciousness and complexity, especially in our global internet age.⁹

Our spirituality, then, needs to evolve to meet the challenges of our ever-evolving lives and world, and it needs to empower us to evolve consciously—freeing us from being at the mercy of evolutionary forces beyond our control, but teaching us to work with these influences and navigate them in meaningful and creative ways. And for this to happen, our spirituality must engage deeply and intentionally with chaos.