Change

Change

is never a loss -

It is change only

-Vernon Howard -

The Mysic Path to Cosmic Power

I'm currently in a state of transition between the old and the new. As I wrote here between The New Year and the Chinese New Year I am taking stock, reviewing, assessing, clearing, finishing and letting go.

In this image from Remedios Varo the woman is leaving her psychoanalyst and dumping baggage into a well as she moves on. For me its difficult at the moment to actually dump the baggage, because I am still working on my final edition of Down to Birth. In essence I'm still carting the baggage.

While I am still caught in the HMA machine its easy for me to become bitter and angry - because I desperately want to move out and move on, but my personal integrity (thanks Annie for pointing this out to me this afternoon) wont allow me to just dump my stuff down the well and move on - however much I truly desire to do so. I need to finish this last edition, I need to honour the work and effort that others have put in, and I need to end this chapter of my life without regret or the haunting of my conscience. I want to leave being remember for all the right reasons. This is the legacy I deserve to bequeath myself.

But the problem is I keep getting caught - like a persnicketty crumb in the back of the throat. I try and cough to move it, I take a long slow drink, I stick my tongue down the back in some weird and completely wong movement ... but it remains stuck. I think of all the things that are difficult at the moment in relation to finishing the magazine, but without the energy nor the passion, I keep get stuck. Rather than resolving to find a new and creative solution to a problem layout, an article that requires rewriting, photos that need to be resent or artists that dont return my emails, I just turn the computer off, walk away and pretend that it doesn't exist. Sigh ... I need to swallow my pride and accept the challenge head on ... reminding myself all the time that I can do this ... that the time for dropping the bundle down the well is nigh.

The other aspect that I continue to struggle with is to not demonise what (which also includes who) I am moving from. I need to remind myself that I made the choices to do what I did in the past three and a bit years, I choose to be the martyr and it was not anyone else's doing. While there are things about the last three years that are difficult to accept (there is that word again) there have been many wonderful and positive aspects to everything I have done in the past three years. While I may have been a shadow artist during my time as Editor and Layout Designer for Down to Birth - it helped me to keep in touch with the artist within me, until it was strong and confident to emerge from the shadows.

It seems that while I'm transiting its easier to see things with a negative pall cast on it. Perhaps its a survival mechanism that I have created to help me move on from things. I wrote the other day that I am not a bridge burner but I think I lied - while I dont tend to burn bridges with people, I tend to burn bridges in other domains - even if its only within my head. It's something to be mindful of and to give myself permission for these thoughts and feelings to pass through me, rather morphing them into a cord in which to bind myself with. So my challenge is to just accept this change that is occuring both within and around me, to understand and honour the truth as it is, was and will be, and finally, to allow myself to move forward with grace and conviction - the grace bit being the hardest of course!

What have you recently changed in your life? What presented the greatest challenge for you in accepting and being a positive part of this change?