The Key

One of life’s greatest ironies is told in the story of the Israelites. Just as they escaped the enslavement of Egypt, in fear they cried to Moses that it would have been better to remain rather than face uncertainties and possible death in the wilderness.?

Even though human beings are hardwired for growth, we are also hardwired to embrace and protect what we already know--to seek comfort in the familiar even when the familiar is no longer comfortable. Our neurology grooves to our habits and resists the one thing that is inevitable, the one constant… Change.

How many times during life’s transitions, despite knowing that To everything there is a season, have we longed for things to remain just as they were.

How do we flourish amidst these powerful and potentially opposing drives??

Sometimes it takes a catalyst of seismic proportions, the likes of a pandemic, to disrupt and push us out of our resistances and the attachments that enslave us.

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I have learned that disruptors can be great illuminators.

At a global level this pandemic, if we heed its call, has the potential to awaken us, to open our hearts to our interconnectedness; to change the way we cooperate and care for one another. At a personal level it calls attention to the limitations and fragility of our human control.

It was during the pandemic, in the midst of experiencing the fragility of life and my own loss of control, that I made a life-changing decision. Without fully realizing what I was setting in motion I decided to retire--to step down from my CEO position; from a career of leadership and from the way I had been working for the past 30+ years. It may have been that my decision was an attempt at control. I only know that at the time I felt something deep within pushing for change.?

I was catapulted into an ontological void. No longer defined by the trappings of my position I was unsure of who I was. Without realizing, I had dismantled a major structure—the mirror of work, a mirror that reflected to me my value.?

I am one of those fortunate individuals who has been blessed in my work--a career that evolved with me over time, affording a stimulating diversity of engagements, connections and friendships with inspiring colleagues and the deep meaning, value, and purpose of service. As an adult educator, I designed transformative learning environments.? In my work as a therapist and healer I supported individuals in their developmental transitions and as an organizational leader orchestrated mission driven change.? I became expert in managing change and navigating processes of transformation. But all my expertise did little to protect me from the immediate pain of my own transition.

In the discomfort of liminal space, I held on tightly and persisted in the way I knew how. I worked hard, set a goal. ?In this case to embrace the unknown—I kept a dream journal, found a therapist, enrolled in a seminary, and deepened my meditation and walking practices. But, In the silent darkness of early mornings with no schedule to contain me, no reason to hurry out of bed to get dressed, I quietly and anxiously worried about whether I had made a huge life mistake with no way to turn back.??

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I buoyed myself, reaching for all the inspiration in the books that lined my shelves.

The Tao teaches, if you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow.

William Bridges offered, it’s a paradox: To achieve continuity we have to be willing to change.? Change is, in fact, the only way to protect whatever exists, for without continuous readjustment the present cannot continue.

I was living the dark night of my soul—my own version of? winter solstice, the longest and darkest night of the year where it appears that dark triumphs over light.? I couldn’t yet see the reality that this night is a turning point.? It is a sacred time of rest and reflection, a fertile silent darkness out of which our soul's yearnings and new inspirations can eventually emerge in the slow build toward brighter days.

I was impatient—light was not dawning quickly enough for me-- I was eager to be engaged to feel vital again to quiet the inner struggle.? As it has many times in my life, The universe responded and delivered what I thought I wanted.? Without seeking, I received a number of consulting opportunities—the kind that excited me-- mission-driven educational organizations and spiritual centers, all struggling to return to pre-pandemic life and like me to their vitality.? I filled my dance card.? It felt good to be, busy and valuable.

My friends laughed at the idea that I had retired.?

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These centers were struggling to get back to their familiar—to business as usual-- as they faced the pandemic’s losses. Yet, beneath these challenges lay an even deeper one of Relevance. How to meet the current needs of a rapidly changing world, given that they had been founded and grown up in very different times and for the most part had operated in the same way with little innovation since their inception. What had worked pre-pandemic was no longer working. How would they serve now? What prepared them for the current reality? Who would they be if they could no longer serve in the way they had. Many just struggled, without really knowing why, to keep existing to keep moving on. It’s what they had done for years.

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THE TRUTH IS- None of these challenges were new.? As in my own life, the cracks of the pandemic illuminated impulses that had existed for quite some time.

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In the synchronous co-incidence of engaging with these organizations while I was trying to regain my own footing, I was reminded of the parable of the Lost Key. The tale tells of a man walking home late one night when he sees an anxious neighbor crawling on his hands and knees on the road.? The man is searching frantically under a streetlight for something on the ground. What have you lost?” the passerby asks. “I am searching for my key,” the man says worriedly.

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The passerby gets down on the ground and helps him to search and after a while asks, do you remember where exactly you dropped the key?” The man waves his arm back toward the darkness and says, “Over there in my house …” Exasperated, the passerby asks: Then why are you searching for the key over here?” “Well, because there is more light here and I can see better”, the man answers.

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Aren’t we all so well represented in this tale? We all look for the key that feels lost to us—the key to happiness, to success, to freedom, to inner peace and tranquility, to love. ?You fill in the blank.? In our frantic search we look in the light of the places we already know, often places that exist outside of ourselves. In the face of disruption, we tend to hold on tighter to what we know, doing what we have always done. Even when what we know is no longer serving. Rather than pausing our frantic search, quieting to sit in the fear and pain of not knowing, so that we might feel deep within ourselves, in the core impulse of our beings. The only place where the key is to be found.

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What a gift it was to see mirrored in the organizational reactions to disruption, my own. The reflection was powerful-- Seeing is knowing.? And knowing, I was no longer willing/able to persist in the old ways of protecting myself. I became present to an internal beckoning to still.

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As my mind stilled, I found myself curiously pondering an image that I had been introduced to years ago during a time when I was leading an organization through culture change.?

The image persisted. It clearly had something to teach me. I opened myself to listen to its wisdom.

Sankofa is a Ghanaian word from the Twi language meaning “go back and get it”.

It is symbolized by a bird flying forward while looking backward.? The bird carries an egg in its mouth.?

Sankofa teaches discernment. It reminds us that to move forward and birth our potential we must go back and discern our roots--to reach back to gather the best of what our past has to teach us-- to honor what has served and to understand the impulse of why and how we came to be who we are today? so that we may birth the egg in its mouth, which like all DNA, represents the knowledge of the past upon which wisdom for the future based. It also represents the generations to come that would benefit from that wisdom.

The persistence of the image had so much to offer as I began to understand more deeply its invitation. Not to hold on to the past nor to cut it off, but rather to know more deeply who we are and what in our DNA is emergent needing to be born now. Discernment can be the path to knowing our essence and not confusing that essence with how it may be expressed at any point in time. It invites a compassionate and reverential process of loosening our grip on those expressions of ourselves and the things we create that no longer serve and it opens us to the core of who and why we are and to expressions that are yet to be.

In our human resistance to change we become attached and hold on to the forms we know, fearfully protecting ourselves and our inventions from loss and inadvertently from what may be possible.

It was in the pain and struggle of confronting my own attachments and identifications that I opened to encountering my Self—the grounded and divine spark of my own nature—the created creator; the impulse that attempted to know itself through all of my attachments.

Living through my own solstice I knew the impermanence of night. It is a turning point into the dawn of awakening in which new inspirations of our soul can eventually emerge. ?I knew that this was also true for the entities with whom I was consulting, and I felt a deepened compassion for all of us.? It takes courage and trust to call into question how we have operated in the world.? Who will we be?? How will we survive?? What if we don’t know how to respond to what is being called for now.?

Our fears are understandable. We are hardwired to hold onto the familiar.? We are also hardwired for growth.? We are held in both these impulses. These disruptive times of rapid change are calling us to evolve. They call us to hold these dual impulses in harmonious balance; to loosen our grip on ego attachments and compassionately acknowledge the false security they have offered. To discern as we seek outside the light of what we have known. To consciously align with the natural rhythms and cycles of change so that we may awaken to our interconnectedness and embody the fullness of who we are and who we might become.

?James Crews eloquent words are just such an invitation:

Let me endure whatever fires must

pass through here, must scorch my skin.

And if I have to feel the heat, let me

also trust that like the lodgepole pine,

the fire will open the parts of me

that are still closed tight, releasing seeds

I’ve been clinging to, hoarding for years.