Transformation

Internal transformation is, by its very nature, a lonely process. No one can go down your path with you. We can have people there to encourage, guide, love, and cheer us on the way, and life would be a much more dismal place without those people, but no one can step inside your life, your mind and heart, and hold you while you turn into something different than you were. We all go through this process at least once when we go through puberty. Many women go through it three times: puberty, motherhood, and menopause. (Of course, a physical change doesn't necessarily lead to a mental or spiritual change, but they do often seem to show up right around the same time.) Anyway, with any luck we go through these transformations many times in our lives. I say "with any luck" because without change we are stagnant and in danger of any of a number of mental, physical, emotional and spiritual problems. 

Obviously, or maybe not so obviously, I'm going through this process right now. I am currently undergoing a dynamic, fundamental change at the core of me that is a response to not only my first year as a mother, but also that mother's response to the beauty and danger of the world, and my animal body's perceptions of the world around me. It is more than that though, and it is oh-so-difficult to verbalize. I can't really explain it to you, partially because of that inability of words to express some things, and partially because I don't know exactly what is happening. Or, I know what is happening right now inside of me, but what that will lead to in the next moment, and what the final result will be, I'm not exactly sure. I can tell you it is about how I know, view and perceive myself, how I understand my relationship with beings that are not me, how I engage with beings that are not me, and the right way to live in the world as a being OF the world.

I know that one philosophical view that is closely related is deep ecology, but I find that the concept fails as a description of the process. It is a noun, and transformations are verbs. Plus, I adhered (for lack of a better word) to the deep ecology paradigm before this started happening. Maybe this is just a deepening of it?

I think that this blog exists solely as an outlet for this, even though I don't necessarily post about every little change or "aha!" that happens. This is one way of trying to push through the loneliness and connect with something larger. My close face to face friends and some of my family get to hear about it in person, but often I am not able to make the connection that I am looking for. I wish I could tell someone some of these thoughts, these happenings, and I would see the happy glow of recognition in his or her face.

Anyway, I leave you with some pictures I took the other day.