We may want our illusions back! We want to pretend the
friendship works. We don’t want the trauma of searching for
another job.
Faced with impending change, change we have set in
motion through our own hand, we want to mutiny, curl up
in a ball, bawl our eyes out. “No pain, no gain,” the nasty
slogan has it. And we resent this pain no matter what gain it
is bringing us.
“I don’t want to raise my consciousness!” we wail. “I
want ...” And thanks to the morning pages we learn what we
want and ultimately become willing to make the changes
needed to get it. But not without a tantrum. And not without
a kriya, a Sanskrit word meaning a spiritual emergency or
surrender. (I always think of kriyas as spiritual seizures.
Perhaps they should be spelled crias because they are cries
of the soul as it is wrung through changes.)
We all know what a kriya looks like: it is the bad case of
the flu right after you’ve broken up with your lover. It’s the
rotten head cold and bronchial cough that announces
you’ve abused your health to meet an unreachable work
deadline. That asthma attack out of nowhere when you’ve
just done a round of care-taking your alcoholic sibling?
That’s a kriya, too.
Stop thinkingand talkingabout it and there is nothing
you will not be able to know.
ZEN PARADIGM