What is Change?
Change is an energetic shift which engages our awareness and our choice.
Let’s take a look at the process from the perspective of spiritual energy dynamics.
How energy works.
Everything is energy. All energy is continuously flowing along a continuum with potential at one end and solid form at the other. As humans, our lives experience this flow from potential to form back to potential in every thought, action, and feeling.
In addition, who we are is an interaction of three co-creative forces: the physical, the spiritual and universal life force. Each moment of our lives is an interaction of who we are physically and spiritually interacting with the divine flow of universal life energy.
Balance with the Universe is our desire.
In each moment, our physical and spiritual dimensions are seeking balance or equilibrium with the universe’s divine motion. We want to be in balance at the “highest” level possible. Unlike hot and cold water reaching equilibrium at warm, the pure vibration of universal life force always maintains its pure vibration. (Vibration is the natural oscillating movement of energy.) Therefore, unable to be diluted, our interaction with this flow of divine potential raises us upward and inward, toward its pure, clear perspective.
Shift happens.
Each moment is an interaction striving for balance. Every breath, every creative act, each thought and feeling interacts and intersects with the flow of infinite potential. Following either our conscious or unconscious intention, in this interaction the divine flow sparks our energy flow increasing the vibrational rate of resonance of our physical and spiritual flow. The spark ignites a shift in us and the process of change is begun.
Feel the Shift.
In some manner, you have awareness of this sparking. You can feel a shift if ever so slightly, usually internally but perhaps also externally, particularly in your relationships with others. The shift can feel like nothing works all of a sudden. Or it can take an opposite tack and the shift shows in a new ease. The shift ignited by the spark also draws up many different mental and emotional feelings or reactions – some pleasant, others not.
Make your Choice.
With growing awareness, now is the opportunity for your Choice — which usually takes one of four responses to the spark/shift:
Fight,
Flee,
Freeze, or
Integrate.
Fight: interpreting the shift in a negative light, you defend against the perceived attack. Fight responses including feelings like, “I didn’t ask for that. I don’t want that. I don’t like that.”
Flee: not able or willing to fight, you attempt to avoid the shift. Often Flee takes the form of not even acknowledging the shift, a response conditioned from previous life experience. “If I ignore this, it will be like it never happened!”
Freeze: you are unable to respond. Like the deer frozen in the oncoming car’s headlights, you find any action, any response near impossible as conscious thought disappears, and the possibility of physical movement is lost.
Integrate: you find or open to the truth in the situation allowing for balance to exist, to sustain within. Guided by a sense of inner truth, you are able to witness your awareness and choose to act rather than react.
Fight and Flee are physical responses geared to avoid the spiritual dimensions of the moment, often because of associated feelings of blame. Freeze is the rational mind unable to deal with or accept the spiritual dimension, usually because of the presence of fear. Often our awareness takes us through a meandering path which may visit Fight, Flee, Freeze or all three before eventually making its way to Integrate.
Integrate is the human equivalent to the animals’ shaking it off. However as human, instead of shaking off, we accept the shift inward towards the higher resonance and we are able to let our body-mind-spirit acclimate to the new. We come to a new yet natural place of balance and peace.
Change Defined
Change is a shift in vibration that sets off a spark in the divine flow within. We feel the shift and make our choice.
Spark –> Shift –> Choose –> Integrate
Remember: Choice is always available.
Gently remember that there are many understandable reasons for any choice made. Condemnation of yesterday’s choice is never supportive. Engaging with our spiritual side helps us learn and understand this process.
The good news is that we always have the opportunity to rewrite our stories and make a new choice creating new space, a new story, within and without, in our lives. Choosing freeze yesterday doesn’t close off opportunity to change forever — because we always have the choice today, in this moment, to spark, shift, choose, and integrate.
For a deep dive, begin with What is Spiritual Practice?
