Transitions
“We cannot change anything until we accept it.” ~ C. G. Jung
These days my mind is contemplating transitions, as I am facing another one of these at the moment. It’s tricky in times of transition. Being someplace else, but not fully, as I am also needed to be here and now, but I am unable to do that fully either. Missing a precious present moment, here, by preparing to be there, where I can’t be just yet and I don’t know what it will be like there, nor what it will require from me. Sure, I can begin to pack my bags and say goodbyes, but that is not all. That is just a scratch on the surface. What lies underneath is a layer of different sensations and feelings - grief for something that is ending, something that could have happened but didn’t, as well as a mixture of nervousness, excitement and anxiety about what is coming and what is unknown. And it is difficult to let go of all expectations and speculations, and allow what’s next to freely unfold without my desire to control and interfere. It’s tricky in times of transition.
Transitions are usually events or periods in our lives that ask of us to re-examine our present sense of being, sometimes also our worldview and livelihood. They can be predictable - such as leaving school or college and starting a job, entering into a long term relationship or marriage, birth of a child, or death. Transitions can often be unpredictable as well - such as a move to a different house or country, change of career, an accident or a sudden loss. Most of us will experience transitions at all stages in life both on a micro, as well as a large-scale level - some of these will be through conscious decision making, and others as a response to life events. Overall, we are all facing transitions in our lives. Every day, we encounter an apparently endless spectacle of transitions, from the uneventful ones - one day, one week, or even one year into the next—to significant life transitions that can be much more difficult to adapt to. By recognizing and honoring each transition - no matter how insignificant it may seem - recognizing that we have a choice in it, becoming aware, and then letting go of our attachment to the past identities, hopes and expectations - we also prepare ourselves for the great transition at the time of death.
I wish I knew this wisdom when I was younger. Considering my lifestyle and my life choices, even small, micro life transitions seemed eventful, exciting and also painful and often excruciating. Since I graduated high school I studied so many different things, lived in many different countries, met many fascinating people, lost many beautiful souls and countless relationships, struggled with addiction and found recovery, just to mention a few. I didn’t have much grace and patience, or understanding for that matter, during transitions in the past. I would go from one thing to another, keeping myself constantly busy so that I wouldn’t feel anything. I just wanted to get it over with. It always seemed that I am capable of just bouncing back when something stressful or difficult, or exciting for that matter, happens. But the thing is - I wasn’t feeling much, I would shut down. To be in contact with our feelings can be messy and painful. No surprise that all addictive processes represent an effort to keep feelings under control, they represent an effort to keep the flow of life itself under control. Addicts are generally unable to let things be, to let things take their natural course. And if you think about it, emotions are here for a reason. They are meant to pass through us and let us know what’s up. Fear can motivate us to think about our future and can energize us for change, grief can prepare us for our own mortality and teaches us empathy and maturity, anger can bring clarity and strength, and so on. Feelings are here to be felt. And in times of transition there are usually a lot of feelings involved.
As humans we both desire things to be different but we refrain from change - this causes suffering (impermanence again ... it’s everywhere!). It is normal to have some anxiety around change. Jungian psychoanalysts say that the dilemma of daily choice often requires us to choose between anxiety and depression. When we are faced with such choices, James Hollis advises us to choose anxiety and ambiguity, “for they are developmental, always, while depression is regressive”. The difficulty can be that we can start to “get in our own way”, and the way of natural fluidity and flow of life - that could allow us to meet life on its own terms and allow us to grow - is then lost or compromised. Additionally, creating space for grief of past events where we honor our experience and people that came with it - is crucial. This is the only way for us to then slowly let the grief come out and create space for a new energy, new life events.
A Tibetan Bön Buddhist teacher, Yongdzin Rinpoche, when speaking of transitions, said that we need to “be packed and ready” when the great moment of our passing approaches. Being packed and ready - meaning being just as we are, not bringing anything else with us. Whether we are transitioning from life to death, or we’re simply passing from one stage of life to another, the invitation is to try to cross with empty hands. Tibetan Bön Buddhist teachings tell us that transitions themselves - even the greatest transition of all that comes at the end of this life - are not the cause of our suffering. The cause of suffering is our persistence on trying to take things with us as we transition. As we can’t take anything, in trying to do so our minds get disturbed and mental afflictions take over. So, the practice here is to work with ourselves and that well-known sense of attachment, because we all find something - usually way too many things - to be attached to.
Each time we transition in life, we could pay attention to how much of our “stuff - our stories, plans, fantasies, replayed conversations, events that happened, the persisting pain in our mind and emotions - did we bring in with us. Every moment of transition is a new opportunity to practice awareness and clarity, to learn about ourselves, about our habits and patterns, to see the ways we become stuck, and to let go. What if we could see each transition as a doorway of opportunity to practice skillful means to meet change and grow? In order to do that, we must pay attention and be willing to change. Can we learn to recognize what personal and circumstantial resources we could cultivate (or maybe we already possess) to enable us to do so? And can we practice recognizing patterns and “unfinished business” that might be holding us back in this process?
Different transitions challenge our various attachments in different ways. Going from one day to another may be simple, but what about transitioning from one relationship to another, old job to a new one, or from one city or country to a completely new one? Along with our age and life experience, each of these transitions becomes harder as our attachments and expectations around them strengthen. This shows us how hard it is to transition to the new phase of life if we are still attached to the previous one. We must practice right now the ability to let go, no need to wait for a grand moment in life. Maybe inquiring - at this moment of my life, right now, how many things could I let go of? Thinking of one thing at this moment that I am attached to, that I am strongly identifying with, that I am holding onto, that causes me pain … For me personally, it is mostly fear of financial insecurity. Each time I am about to make a move, this fear of existential needs not being met takes over. After thoroughly processing it, I have realized that this fear stems from a (false) sense of not having enough. And it has played a big role in my life, especially in my addiction. I can only imagine how much of letting go will be required of me when the time comes for me to go. I wonder - why would I hang on to this false belief and carry it to the last moments of my life when it will be hard enough to let go as it is? Could I just let go of it now instead? Brining in curiosity and exploring this possibility is the key for me.
Just like with everything else really, we go back to awareness. With awareness, we can see where and when we struggle in a transition, and realize that there is an attachment - to an identity that we internalized or something outside of us. Letting go of things is gradual, it’s practice like anything else - letting one thing at the time go. Finally, bigger things seem easier to let go too. I remember when I was leaving my last apartment in Los Angeles in 2018. I sold and gave away everything - every single piece of furniture and kitchen stuff, a lot of clothes I did not need - and as I was leaving, I turned around to see an empty space one last time, and I could feel my heart crack a little. “I have nothing”, I thought. I remember feeling extraordinary sadness and fear; fear that somehow by not having all these things I am not safe now, I am like naked and unprotected. Soon, however, I recognized that not being attached to things not only made my life easier, but also helped me tremendously in the practice of not being attached to places, people, situations, either. From “I have nothing” I transitioned to “I can do anything now”. If we do not apply ourselves to small, everyday opportunities to let go, if we can’t handle the little things that come along, then we are most likely to have a harder time with the big things.
It may sound silly, but a simple opportunity to practice letting go would be to clean up your closet, or your garage. Creating more space for something else to come. I love giving away clothes and things I do not use. My rule is one year - if I haven’t worn a thing in one year, I will most probably never wear it, and it’s going someplace else. In the beginning it was hard, but I kept on doing it little by little and now it is rather liberating. Energetically too, these small acts of letting go can make a big impact. Maybe selecting and deleting photos from your phone, emails that you keep for no reason, boxes of old memories and photographs that you never revisit - these seemingly insignificant acts can lighten our attachments. Cleaning is also a form of purification. We don’t say for no reason that if the space around us is cluttered, the mind is too. There are many ways to clean up the space and enter the next moment. We can find a way to bring the best out of each new space, new time, new purpose, new beginning, new phase of life, every new moment. And the best thing is - we don’t have to wait for a new year and new resolution to do this - every morning is a new opportunity.
The problem is that often in the times of transition and change we act without awareness. We behave in a conditioned, habitual way, with pain, with fear, anxiety, grief, inability to let go. I am noticing this as well. The other day, during my morning walk with Mala, I felt tightness in my chest. I felt my belly twisting and turning and shaking. I felt that old habitual way showing up, as if I don’t have a choice. As if life is happening to me. As if decisions that I made this time were somehow forced on me … But that’s not true - I do have a choice. And just knowing that and acknowledging it helps. Coming back to the awareness of my body and my breath always alleviates things. I get to be aware of my feelings, and more and more I get to stay with them and honor them.
The choice becomes known when we take time to be still, silent, and spacious. We practice pausing and not doing, not saying, not thinking (right away) - and trust, me, I know that working with not thinking is the most challenging ask, a tall order. My mind is very analytical and likes to process everything. Literally, everything. When there is nothing to process, it will create imaginary scenarios and work with that. And with that processing, narratives come, speculations arise, and naturally, fear creeps in. But, once I have calmed down, once I found some stillness out of the ordinary daily rat race, I usually find a new space from which I can do things and say and think. What happens then is that what I do and what I say might actually be different from what I originally would have said or done. It almost always is.
Each time we make these little transitions and feel free, feel good, feel balanced - the world opens up a bit for us. We are not in a small box of our original conditioning anymore, scared to look around beyond our little world. All of a sudden we notice that moments, places, locations, people, changes, transitions happen all the time in life; and they happen for all of us. These are all opportunities to cultivate and practice to better support the larger transitions, including the greatest one of all - death. At the end of the day, whether practicing for death or simply transitioning from one room into the next, it is about how clearly we enter, how clearly we go to the next day, with how much awareness and clarity and acceptance we go to the next thing.
Moreover, I find that faith and trust in times of transition are important to invigorate us and point us into the right direction. Their energy is drawing us back into the core of knowing why we are doing what we’re doing in life. It is trusting in myself, trusting in life itself and the world around me, and trusting that no matter what happens, I will be able to create a meaning from it and receive a teaching out of it. I am aware that this is easier said than done - but what’s the other option?! Think about all those times when you didn’t like the outcome of a certain situation and wondered why it happened to you, just to realize soon after that it brought you something else in life, that it opened up a whole new world for you. Most moments are like this. Not all, but most.
Often we wonder what do we mean by faith. Faith that we will be alright. Faith in our practices and that they will support us. Faith that we know what to do. Faith that we are supported and taken care of. Faith is about a practice that invites us to trust in the process of exploration and inquiry and curiosity, and not necessarily having all the questions answered in life. Just like that beautiful quote from Rainer Maria Rilke goes:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Buddhism teaches us that faith does not go without wisdom, as it would be delusional, superstitious, what we call a “blind faith”. Wisdom here shows up as recognizing closely each transition - recognizing that we have a choice in it, becoming aware of the process and how it affects our emotions, body and mind, and letting go of our attachment, our clinging.
I read recently that in Chinese medicine, worry is “out-of-balance expression of Earth energy’s emotion - empathy”. Too much empathy just becomes easily a burden if we are not well balanced, and we don’t pay attention. We can get overly concerned of what might happen, of the unknown. When balanced, however, empathy finds its way to understanding and care, instead. Being balanced here would mean, among other things, that we have faith. As Mimi Kuo-Deemer, a teacher of yoga, qigong, and mindfulness meditation, beautifully puts it: “When we begin with faith, we relax the search for security and control.”
Another thing comes up when speaking of transitions - how to have no regrets when we move through one thing to another in life. I used to think that I don’t have any, but in a way I believe that regrets are inevitable. There just isn’t enough time to do everything in this life. There is always some grief about all the good ideas we never get around to developing, places we never get to visit, things we never get to be doing. Bust spending too much time and effort on regrets is a type of clinging too - it’s an attachment that causes us suffering and pain in the end. As someone said, life does not have to be perfect to be fulfilling. Maybe learning how to handle regrets well, how to work with attachments in general, is more of a task for us rather than putting too much energy into avoiding them.
Transitions and changes are tricky - yet, inescapable. And the only way is through. With a little everyday practice in many areas of our lives, we can get good at it. And these seemingly simple daily practices can prepare us for the great transition at the time of death. I choose to have trust and faith in this.
“I invite you not to cling. I invite you to open to the next moment and allow it to have its own richness. Nothing will kill the glow faster than clinging. I realized that everything in life is extraordinary if I just want to look. It’s true there’s nothing new under the sun, and yet it’s all fresh.” ~ Baba Ram Dass