Jose ATID LEIIA STEVENS 149going to be disciplined about it. You are sick of your life the
way it is, so you will grit your teeth and get out there in the
front lines.
Already you have created an impossible situation. You
will never change successfully because the change is not from
the heart. What you really want is to be more at ease and
connect with people, rather than be the party animal. It
won't surprise you then that the parts of you that dislike the
bar scene will not cooperate in your endeavor and will surely
sabotage your action step of forcing yourself to the bar. A
better action step here is to take a pen and paper and to
write down all the reasons why people should be drawn to
you the way you are. For your true goal is to draw yourself
out, not to try and be like someone else.
Think of action as anything that you can do on the physi-
cal plane that brings you even a fraction of a step closer to
your change. The action and results are your only measures
of whether or not you are successfully changing. Set some
tasks for yourself that you know you can handle and if you
are committed, you will do them and, little by little, begin to
notice results.
What can help you through a change? Shamans would tell
you to look in nature and the spirit of all living things. Since
shamanism is based on the natural order and balance found
in all of nature, it would stand to reason that you could turn
here for help. There are many properties of nature that are
in a constant state of change or flux. Take, for example the
wind. It is always changing and making changes to other nat-
ural things such as sand. Water, another strong symbol, is in
constant motion and flow, like an ever-changing pattern.
Molten lava becomes rock then changes into sand or dust
with the constant forces of nature.
Nature is not as resistant to change as we are and it there-
fore has much to teach if we will only listen. We have a friend
who visits the seashore anytime she is in a state of change.
She will sit for hours seeing, sensing, listening to the sea, the
swelling and crashing of the waves, the surf washing over the
sand. There is a sense of balance that you get from becoming
one with nature that can greatly aid your process of change.
And since change usually requires letting go of one pattern
or situation to make room for another, there can be a sense
of loss involved. This loss is likely to be overlooked and re-
main unexpressed unless you can relax enough into the
rhythm of change to allow it expression. Our seashore friend
often finds herself crying in a state of emotional release,