it's all practice; it's all good

I have a fresh reminder today of the way in which change occurring will sometimes produce what can feel like "going backwards". A new beginning. A shift into the direction that feels positive and forward moving. A realization that seems to plant us more solidly inside our own be-ing and feels empowering. A deep sigh of relief and gratitude. In one moment we are nearly flying with the feeling of excitement and energy that comes with healthy changes - - and then suddenly (or maybe upon waking the next morning) a frightened, vulnerable feeling place surfaces. It's not a new feeling. It feels familiar, like an old worn out shoe that has gone on many a journey with us over the years.

This is the kind of place that could easily be interpreted as regressing. Falling into the belief that the change was an illusion and not something substantial. An understandable fear. We all do it. And what seems to be true, also, of something we all do is that we take a step, risking what has felt frightening, or has been mired in stuckness, and then whatever fear that is not fully resolved yet in our system gets triggered into the foreground. It is merely indicating that our work is not done. It is not a statement of the work we felt we had accomplished being false. It is not done.

With any new skill, take learning to play the piano for example, we practice to develop the skill. We have to learn in this way because of the design of our brain. Neural pathway develops. It doesn't just exist in a completed form. We have the innate capacity to do certain things but we have to do those things to establish the pathway and then we have to practice those things to develop the skill. You don't sit down and play Chopin's Polonaise Militaire without years of preparation and rehearsal. The more established the neural pathway becomes the more your fingers just seem to know the exact placement of each chord or note. You no longer have to think it with intention, you no longer have to use visual attention in the same way. The pathway is established. Finally. But along the way you play a lot of wrong notes in between placing your fingers on the right ones.

You never lose your status as a work in progress. Enlightenment is the journey. Maybe we never get there. Maybe the human journey is not about becoming a perfect be-ing. We have this tremendous opportunity to grow because of our fallibility. We get to learn about things like gratitude and humility and compassion and love and often we learn them through experiencing the opposite. Sometimes the opposite is what happens to us and sometimes the opposite is what we do. It's all good. Painful, sometimes. Devastating, sometimes. Horrifying, sometimes. Illuminating, always. Lessons, always.