What Is Transformation?

In this episode Dr. Sally & Dr. Jen explore the concept of transformation from many different lenses including personal, social and ecological. 

Transcript

[00:33] Intro, who we are and what we do.

[03:42] Sally describes the long history of people interested in transformation, and she describes how people in the East and in the West have used different names for the process of ‘radical change’. Words like “realization, liberation, enlightenment, and freedom” were used in Eastern spiritual practices, starting about 3000 years ago. In the West, about 100 years ago, therapy and education were developed, and they also started using words to describe this process of becoming more of our potential, such as “actualization, individuation, empowerment, maturation and integration”. Transformation appeared Biblically too, as transfiguration. Sally mentions ‘semantics’ – the use of many nuanced words, that all describe change through developmental processes. Sally then describes the differences between Eastern and Western views of this change - from dysfunction to function in the West, and from function to absolute optimal consciousness in the East. This podcast adopts the word transformation for that whole spectrum. Sally then defines what transformation is NOT, and what it IS, a holographic three dimensional shift in the structures of consciousness, an improvement in one’s entire wellbeing. Sally says transformation is a loss, as well as a gain. She reads a quote from Adiyashanti, who says transformation is the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true. 

[14:24] Jen says there’s been a desire to transform and understand change in humans since the beginning. Defining transformation depends on how you look at it. She uses three different lenses: the personal, the social and the ecological/universal. Everything that we know and experience about reality started with violent transformations. The Big Bang, meteors hitting the Earth, ice ages, rain for thousands of years, extinction events. Our life as we know it arose through extreme destruction. Transformation is a constant in the universe. And on a smaller scale, we are experiencing that same tumultuous transformation in our own lives. Many can relate to that pattern of destruction and emergence as breakdowns and breakthroughs. She then describes the differences between personal transformation, sociocultural transformation and ecological transformation – we are in a field of constant change. Indigenous folks and white Western views frame transformation differently. Nature itself is a transformative impulse. Jen then quotes Brian Swim, who says, when you look at the Moon, you are absorbing the Moon and you become a new creation. There is no separate self. Rather, you are totality is permeated with the Moon's presence. That is what cosmic sensitivity means for the human. And ultimately there is no separation between us. 

[23:01] Sally agrees that change is a ubiquitous phenomenon. For humans, that means a movement towards noticing that that we're all connected, and the illusion of being a separate self is outgrown. Transformation is opening up to more and more reality and noticing that it's a system, that we're all interdependent, and that my transformation affects you and the whole world. Transformation is a construction of new ways of being and a destruction of the old, dysfunctional ways of being. There is what we call ‘eros’, which is a construction project of evolution - a movement from atoms, to single cells, to multiple cells, to mammalian life forms, to you and me - evidence of a life process moving in time, to more and more complexity, sophistication, and awareness. We are comprised of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, chlorine, iron, and yet we have the capacity to be self aware. So evolution itself is this process of moving towards more and more capacity and awareness. And if we're fixated on a limited identity, we're going to suffer. Sally discusses the difference between pain and suffering. She follows this with describing the Hindu model of ‘changing pleasures’ as a sign of maturation. We experience wake up calls in the form of an intense experience, which alters our consciousness forever. This is a creative process, of building more capacity through eros, and losing more illusion through entropy. Sally quotes Maxine Green, who says it’s through the process of affecting transformations that the human self is created and recreated over and over again. Sally then tells the story of how she was suddenly transformed in China by a Taoist master in a park, when she learned that transformation is mastery of the being, and letting the being determine all the doing. The transmission occurred through an experience, an embodied lesson from a master. 

[38:08] Jen suggests experiences arise up through the field of transformation. And the more open and receptive we are, the more we invite those opportunities into our lives. She describes how snapping turtles hibernate, which is a wonderful example of transformation, conserving energy through the harsh winter. They don't take a breath for up to six months. They do this with a wild type of transformation, which she describes. We also all rely on photosynthesis, which is another example of transformation. So the universe is constantly creating itself out of itself in these recursive flows of transformation. And turtles have been around for over 200 million years when dinosaurs were around. They are real survivors. So these are beings that have moved with transformation, and have been able to adapt to the changing conditions. She wonders how people can be more adaptable. No turtle ever survived going against the flow of life. Jen then shares a courageous moment of transformation, which was a transmission through experience, not through words. She describes a three day, solo, fasting experience in the wilderness, as a disabled women. She experienced profound pain as one of the metal rods in her back snapped. Instead of returning home early, she courageously continued her transformation quest, and found refuge amongst some aspen trees, which supported her for three days, like a healing community. She entered an alternate dimension of reality and come out the other side profoundly transformed and not a word was spoken. 

[46:53] Sally suggests our lessons can come through pain or pleasure or both at the same time – an example of ‘paradox’, that will be showing up through most of the episodes as a transformative mechanism. The universe is performing peristalsis on us all the time, massaging us, to keep learning, growing, changing. Some of that is painful, some of that is pleasurable. And we begin to see all of these experiences as gifts. Every moment is our teacher, and can help us transform. Sometimes it is instant and sometimes it takes time. If change is too fast, sometimes we don't have the opportunity to adapt. Sally discusses the current situation of the grizzly bear, and the coral reefs, all of which have not been able to adapt in time to change imposed on them by humans. People are particularly gifted with adaptability, due to being able to learn things efficiently through language, books, cultural processes, and transformative curricula, with changes in our values, our perspectives, our structures of consciousness, and even our identity. But animals and plants can’t adapt through these processes, so we have to honour different speeds of change within the whole system. 

[53:03] Jen expands on how human transformation impacts other species and that the turtles and the cockroaches and the tardigrades might actually outlive us. If we extinct ourselves off this planet, it will go on, and continue transformation without the human experience. Transformation happens harsh and fast, and also slow over time. She then reads a beautiful piece by the poet Rilka. 

[54:51] Sally concludes that it’s a deep privilege to know each other and to have a year long conversation about transformation.  

[55:39] Jen agrees. And invites listeners interested in transformation to share their own experiences on the Facebook page called Radical Emergence Podcast, which stories could maybe be included on the show as an example of transformation. 

Sources and quotes:

AdyaShanti:  
https://www.ramdass.org/featured-teacher-adyashanti/

Brian Swimme:
 Home - Center for the Story of the Universe

Maxine Green: (1988). The dialectic of freedom. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. (p. 21). 

Piece about the snapping turtle: 
Birdsong Landscapes 
Right now Common Snapping Turtles... - Birdsong Landscapes | Facebook

Rilke Poem:
Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets To Orpheus, Part Two, XII