January 2011
Finding Gifts within the Storm
by Frannie Rose (January 2011)
Life is going great. You are on top of the world! Your work is moving forward and family seems to be good. It appears you have everything under control – almost perfect. Then one unsuspecting day you wake up and your once peaceful world turns into a hurricane: the basement floods, the car breaks down, health issues, financial issues, family issues, job issues, and legal issues all hitting you at once! When the initial shock is over, you find the questions beginning: “What’s happening to my life? Why is everything is going down the drain? How can I keep centered in this – this chaos?”
Uncertainty always falls randomly from the skies mostly when you think you have life under control. It follows the second law of thermodynamics: everything moves toward chaos. A few days earlier your mind felt as if everything was in place and then without warning – winds and fog blocked your view; creating chaos everywhere once seen.
Your first reactions are panic! This wonderful work you have done to keep everything in place, working to the best of your ability to understand every challenge is now ruined! How can you clean up this inconvenient mess? How do you find order in something that has not stopped blowing?
This mess is scattered everywhere and so dynamic that you cannot hold it still! Energy in chaos is not something you can control and the fact that you can’t control it is a reminder that life is not within our control. If we are lucky, we are awakened to a greater reality: the reality that God is in control!
Our minds ask, why me? What have I done wrong? Why is my hard work being destroyed? What happened to my ability to control things? This is the illusion that we live with. The real captivating question is, “Who is trying to show me a greater truth?”
Will our minds allow us to focus here? Fruitlessly they point to the task at hand, a futile endeavor of struggling to put things back into the same places they were before. How often we do this without the knowing that the nature of all God’s new creations begins with chaos!
I invite you to look at chaos in a new way. Accept the chaos. It is pointless to resist what already is. Make a conscious choice to be open to it. In the book “The Seven Life Lessons of Chaos”, John Briggs and David Peat mention: “Artist, healers and those undergoing life changes open up to the uncertainties accessing degrees of freedom that can spur new self-organization.” Have you ever tried opening to chaos? Have you ever tried to understand what it teaches you about yourself and about God? From chaos always comes new growth, newer ways to do things that your mind always closed down before while thinking all was under your control.
“When you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” Do you see yourself in this quote? What if there are new possibilities for you? What if God wishes better things for you? How can you see while you are buried in your same routine believing the illusion of control? Perhaps the greatest reality is that God is creating new, more wondrous possibilities for you!
If you find chaos in your life and it feels like your mind finds it frustrating, can you open your heart to it? Open and see chaos as the birth of new possibilities, new organization and new growth deep underneath the fog. Let go and allow for God to do what God does: create change and beauty through chaos. The chaos of a storm cleans the trees of old debris and blows away worn and weak branches. When it’s over, chaos allows that tree to bloom and blossom in a new and healthier way!
Inside each form of chaos is a lesson of letting go of illusions – pointing to the illusion of control. At first we find ourselves holding more tightly to what is not real – thinking that if we hold on, we might find a way to control our environment. I invite you to awaken to a greater reality, the reality of a God much greater than the illusions of the human mind. Open to a greater freedom beyond the minds limitations, that forces us to hold to these illusions. Perhaps you will find within this greater reality, a wondrous sense of opportunity and possibility! Perhaps if you learn to accept and open to the chaos, you can allow God to do what God does. Try thinking of it this way: when at last the fog gently lifts, and you open your eyes in awareness, you will find a handful of God-given gifts from the storm.
With blessings and peace,
Frannie Rose
