It was a bird...

I had an odd experience the other day which made me drift into my land of metaphor again. I was driving when I was startled by a large brown bird hopping and dancing across the road in front of me. I swerved slightly and then noticed that it was actually a big brown leaf, blown across the street by a gust of wind.

In my mind I settled, decided not to worry about hitting it, "it's only a leaf." And kept driving, the entire incident having lasted no more than a few seconds.
Something wasn't right though. Because for a brief moment, it WAS a bird which caused me to react. Yes, I was perhaps deluding myself, or had a moment of lucid imagination. However, what force or process creates the difference between something being one entity and, in the next moment, becoming another? A bird and then a leaf?

This, of course sent me off into a contemplative process that sees everything as metaphors. (Thank God for the mental capacity to drive on autopilot).

Most often the changes that take place in life are small, incremental. Sure, occasionally we have a dramatic, often emotional, transformative experience - an epiphany, or breakdown that can lead to spiritual awakening. But most of change goes unnoticed to ourselves.

The Quantum Leap
In physics a quantum leap is the term used when sub-atomic particles go from point A to point B without passing through the space between the points.  Essentially, it then exists in one place or state and then in another - it doesn't 'move'. Imagine an electron being on one side of the street - it then disappears and reappears on the other side of the street. This is not a gradual change, but a sudden shift or transformation. The shift is usually not huge, but significant nonetheless because it indicates that transformation is not necessarily a linear or continuous process with required steps but can defy the classical logic of physics by being discontinuous or disconnected.

Did you ever make a 'flipbook' cartoon as a child? (ex: the stages of drawing shown to the right) You draw a character in the corner of a pad of paper and on each page the next stage of the character's movement is drawn. As you flip them, you get the illusion of movement and the feeling of progression or continuity. But if you look at each drawing individually, a small change is being made from one to the next. The 'space' that is being crossed is something invisible, in our imagination.

What if life were like this? As I mentioned before, shifts and transformations do take place - often imperceptibly in the moment, more often obvious in hindsight. Think of the last year - did you grow, change, shift in some way? In your consciousness, your awareness or level of energy? (if not, you're probably in need of a challenge, getting out of your comfort zone - come to Ignite: http://nextgentrainings.com) If you did, can you pinpoint a moment or span of time when it happened?   Most often, we can see when - or in what situation or set of circumstances - a realization, a shift took place when we look back in hindsight. But we rarely know it's happening while we're in that moment.

There is sort of a Catch 22 of being what others presume or perceive us to be or, more likely, what we presume ourselves to be and what is, or becomes reality. If there is an expectation in myself that I'm a screw up, it's likely that I'll start to perform this way. When I change my belief about myself, I then start to live in to that belief and suddenly the world begins to shift.

When my daughter was 12, she and I had a misunderstanding and, in a moment under stress, she called me a loser - on stage in front of 100 or more people at a workshop I was teaching. I took it very personally and was hurt to the core. Years later, we discussed it and I know that's not what she actually believed, but for years I lived under the assumption that this was the sum total of her belief in me.
Because of that moment, when I accepted that statement as fact, I spent years living into that statement. Desperately trying NOT to be the loser I took her to think of me, only made it more difficult to communicate, since whatever you focus on, multiplies.  After realizing this 4 years later, I talked with a good friend whose sage advice I have painfully grown from over the years. His response: "Boy, you really ARE a loser." Of course, it hurt. But I realized that I had, in fact, become the very thing I was trying to avoid. 

There is probably a whole other article on how we rebuilt after that realization, but what I want to express here is the slow transition of stages of our growth (or decline). There is a subtle shift from one reality to another. Imperceptible at first, but dramatic as we continue down that path of diversion only obvious in hindsight. So we need to practice awareness in every moment. Not to be reactionary. To act from love, not fear or doubt.

There are moments that cause us to shift from one reality to another. In physics, there is a release of energy, or heat, before any shift (as described in laws of Thermodynamics and perturbation).  For us, the 'heat' of a quantum leap of transformation is marked by strong emotion.  

We are either growing or we are dying. But change is inevitable. How dramatically that takes place is often based on how much we are willing to think outside the box and to be willing to see ALL events as an opportunity for our evolution.

So, back to my bird.. leaf. 

Was it just my imagination playing tricks with me? Well, of course it was! we would all agree. It's ridiculous, in any rational sense to consider any other alternative. Psychology and science have proven the hard, static existence of all matter - haven't they? 

But, what if...