Moving Through Transition

By Scott & Shannon Peck

Are you in the middle of a life transition? It seems most of us are.

Life keeps changing. Like it or not, some things are meant to fall away from our lives as new friends, new ideas, and new ways of living emerge.

Most of us like stability rather than change as it can be comforting, even when it is not satisfying. Stability gives us consistency.

Yet our inner hearts often yearn for more. We want to break out of limitations and rise to higher ground. We want to live closer to our dreams.

Change has a way of sneaking up on us and catching us off guard. For example, sometime ago, our yoga teacher suddenly decided to stop teaching her classes - and on short notice. We were presented with an immediate end to the stability of the yoga classes we had attended for four years.

That’s the nature of change. It doesn’t seem to float slowly into our lives but comes unexpectedly and quickly.

Such swift change also has a silver lining. It forces us to grow. Rather than looking for a new yoga teacher, we found ourselves strengthening our home yoga practice which we enjoyed doing together. A rather surprising outcome was that our progress in yoga continued at an even accelerated pace.

We sometimes look back on our lives in almost joyous disbelief when we think of the changes we have been through. Prior marriages for both of us forced us to become stronger. Shannon became a spiritual healer while I dramatically shifted from being a reporter to being an educator and counselor.

So when the two of us finally found each other and began to experience, finally, the wonderful love we truly deserved, we discovered something else as well. All the changes along our past paths had brilliantly prepared us for our careers together as teachers of love and healing. Who would have known that all those changes would have led to this? We sure didn’t!

Transitions has been a big lesson for us. We learned that trying to hold onto something just for stability is often not supportive of what will bring the greatest fulfillment to our lives. When we let go, as hard as it may seem, we create a vacuum—an opportunity for something higher to flow into our daily lives.

Ask yourself, “what is your intuition telling you to let go of?” It could be a relationship that is no longer fulfilling or a quality you no longer want to express. For example, perhaps you want to let go of sadness and replace it with joy. Or perhaps you are being called to let go of a past hurt that keeps haunting you.

You have a choice. You can view this as a process of letting go, which can seem sticky and pull at your heart, or view this as an opportunity to rise higher and focus on what that looks like. It is a lot more comforting to the heart to be growing towards something than to be distancing away from something.

We see this principle sometimes with people dating or in relationships where there is struggle and unhappiness despite attempts to work things out. Rather than letting go and creating a new opening for a better relationship, they often stick with a sinking ship until it breaks apart. There is great suffering at the failure or loss of the relationship, when what is really happening is a vast opening into the possibilities of expanded love.

It can be helpful to look at change as part of our ascending in life. The turmoil, agitation and upset occurring in our lives can bring us to a higher ground. They are part of our ascending. Change causes us to learn how to love ourselves more, to put a stronger premium on quality relationships. It encourages us to face up to our bad habits and actually replace them with good habits. Through change we develop wisdom, greater compassion, and a more genuine love in our relationships.

Whatever transitions you are facing, we stand with you in compassion. You may not yet see the blessing of these changes, but they will appear. Welcome to the heart of love!

Dr. Scott Peck & Shannon Peck are co-founders of TheLoveCenter, a non-profit educational organization dedicated to enabling everyone to create more love. Books authored: The Love You Deserve, Liberating Your Magnificence, All the Love You Could Ever Want! (audio set), Love Heals: How to Heal Everything with Love the Love Heals Study Guide. Visit at www.TheLoveCenter.com , or call, 1-800-266-1525.

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