Shaking the Tree.

“What does not change is the will to change?” Who said that? Pindar perhaps.

The Buddha suggested that resistance to the natural process of change is a cause of unhappiness. Forcing change to happen can be equally problematic. Change is evolution. What I mean by change is a change in values and perspectives, rather than simply a change in outward circumstances.

Change means adaptation. It is the power to respond in new ways, to always re-evaluate. To be open - always. To listen, even when we are afraid.

As a teacher and a facilitator of change, if I am to help others change their lives, I must also know that some people will be impatient, while others will be left behind. Some will be disinterested, or even take the invitation to re-evaluate their assumptions and habits as a personal affront, others will embrace the challenge.

Leadership is very much about catalyzing appropriate change and then implementing it in an appropriate manner. You can’t make everyone happy all the time. To do so you would make you an enabler at best. It could make you complicit in preventing the best from emerging. The best emerges - in an individual, in a community, or in wherever context you work in - in its own time, catalyzed, in part, by what that person or community is willing to learn in the process.

I have noticed that the work towards personal change that I have facilitated for several years (Meditation and Mindfulness drawn from Buddhist traditions) has often been a way for people to feel better about things they have decided they can't change in themselves, rather than actually being a means of effecting genuine personal change.

I am aware that meditation practices that espouse change often do not really encourage people to change basic habits and perceptions. Is that sad or what? I have noticed that some practices actually anchor people into despair, dysfunction, and resistance to really questioning their ‘stuff’ and console them by encouraging them to believe that they are part of an elite community that understands things more deeply than other people.

It was that way with me too. There were times when I was stubbornly stuck. Am I a bad teacher and a bad student? Maybe. Though what I am describing is something I see in various chronic dysfunctional forms in Buddhist centers of different varieties (and in other 'spiritual' contexts too). It's a disease that infects religious thinking and institutions. Stasis. Denial. Dogmatism. Complacency. . .

But now I am excited about change. I am excited about person change that takes place outside of religious or political constructs (are they any different?) - dogmas, fixed systems, and rigid therapeutic modalities.

Therapy is ‘why’.

Buddhism is . . . . well, it's many things. Unfortunately it also can be,
'don't challenge authority'.
or 'practice more and harder and then you will understand'.
Although in essence it encourages us to 'keep asking questions, don’t take anything on faith.' In fact it's often 'don't question me'.

My own interest now is ‘how’ and ‘let’s do it!'

Now the combination of tools that I use to facilitate change, tools I have been given, over many years, adapted and honed, and which I continue to examine and refine and challenge are, if I say so myself, pretty exciting; and judging by the results I am getting from clients and students, pretty darn effective too!

Learn more at manzanitavillage.org and 5changescoaching.com

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