Modes & Practices of Transformation

In this episode Dr. Sally and Dr. Jen explore modes and practices of transformation. 

Find more at: 
radicalemergence.org 

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

3:20  Sally summarizes the podcast to date. Transformation is a beautiful, orchestrated system of change, and we're playing inside that field. So learning how to navigate it is important, and it's not easy. Expansion is often uncomfortable, often painful. This episode focuses on several important modes of transformation. She quotes Anais Nin. Then she outlines the 4 modes to be covered: 1) hormonal changes over a lifetime, 2) education, transformative curricula, and learning through practices , 3) suffering and pain, and 4) creativity. The podcast will deal with creativity in several episodes later on, so it won’t be covered in this episode. Sally then outlines the first mode = the hormonal changes over a life time that happen, despite us, and which cannot be resisted or changed, from conception, to birth, puberty, midlife, aging and death. Consciously, we're not even aware of these changes, yet we do all we can to avoid some of them. We're orchestrated by evolution. In another episode, the stages of mature adulthood will be covered. All along though, our ‘meaning’ and purpose is changing. And on the physical level, we know that we need a good structure to manage physical changes. We need good nutrition, sleep cycles, movement, relationships. Managing the ‘feel good’ and ‘feel bad’ chemicals is part of our energy management. We can get stuck in the fight and flight mode, whereby corrosive hormones like cortisol and adrenaline are constantly present. Regulating the hormonal and nervous system is the basis of managing a life full of turbulent transformation. 

15:10  Jen agrees we are ‘being moved’ all the time in these unconscious ways, but which are really determining much of our lives. Many of us resist the progression of hormonal influences and we can end up suffering when we try to hit the pause button on those ways of transformation. None of the modes of transformation happen in isolation - chemical and hormonal cascades, transformation of atoms, molecules, particles, are a mixing of ingredients. Jen then uses cooking as a metaphor. There are also mechanical transformations, through heat and pressure. Diamonds are formed, transformed under great amounts of pressure. We have many ways that biological systems are transformed. Then there are digital and technological transformations. Our imaginations are incredibly transformative - art, literature, music, etc . Artists aim to create a transformative experience in the listener, or viewer. There’s also social transformation, and Jen describes some of the most important ones. Personal transformation will always extrapolate into the collective, and vice versa – we experience spiritual transformation, mystical peak experiences. We have integration, and disintegration and suffering, which is a very powerful mode of transformation. Jung spoke about the transformation of our unconscious mind, confronting our fears and doing shadow work. So transformation is happening both on a conscious and unconscious realm. And then we have cognitive transformation, the deliberate acquisition of knowledge. Jen describes how trauma interfered with learning for her as a younger person. Yet we develop resilience, when we can participate with these modes of transformation consciously. 

26:37  Sally agrees that modes of transformation are like a smorgasbord. Pressure comes from our context, and we can choose to respond or not. Transformation is often in response to a crises, something that's not really functioning. So we can block it or resist it. Or we can consciously work with and facilitate it. And that's what conscious learning is. Sally then talks about how the mind transforms and how we deliberately learn to adapt or we die. That's why we spend so much of our tax dollars on our children's education, we want them to be able to hold the body of learning that humanity has accumulated. So learning is an important mode, and it actually includes all the other modes. Sally discovered that every time she was having a pressurized circumstance in her life, and some deep traumas, she focused her mind on further learning. She then describes how high school debate club, as perspective learning, was so deeply transformative. She learned to look at the opposite as a cognitive capacity. She describes how civil war was averted in South Africa through perspective taking. And the changes since the women's movement which started 50 years ago is now calling men to learn to adapt to these changes. Sally then describes Jack Mezirow’s work on transformative learning. 

36:10  Jen then asks how do we move with transformation, rather than oppose it? She suggests through increased self awareness. The deeper we know ourselves, the more we are able to participate with practices in a way that is generative, that encourages growth and evolution on all levels. If we have a fixed way of being in the world, or a fixed identity, we are going to end up suffering more than if we move with transformation. So the goal of all of the various practices is to encourage a deeper understanding of self and identities, beliefs, trauma, epigenetic inheritance, values, goals, dreams. A great way to do that is to seek out new experiences, to step outside of our comfort zone, to challenge assumptions and beliefs. When we try to do something differently, we open ourselves up to flow, to that field of transformation. Traveling is also great for that, hobbies and art, self care, self acceptance. A reset is incredibly transformative, or just self regulating, or co- regulating with somebody, the capacity to breathe deeply, foe example  when we have a certain identity that we're trying to protect. Another way that we can participate with transformation is exposing ourselves to people, circumstances and situations who are doing what we want to do. We can participate with modes of transformation by welcoming discomfort and uncertainty. So ‘modes’ of transformation are the ‘ways’ transformation appears. And ‘practices’ of transformation are ways that we can engage with those modes. And what we're looking to do is to engage with those modes of transformation consciously, from a place of being in relationship with ourselves, so that when these points of resistance come forward, we can meet them consciously with practices.

44:52  Sally then gives an example of resistance, in wire – it gets hot when twisted. 

Working with flow is helpful. Deliberate practices reduce suffering as a way of learning. Sally describes gardening as a practice, which is transformative on so many levels. She then suggests that suffering is only part of our life, but it’s a profound opportunity to learn what’s not working. Yet we resist it, and suffer when our needs are not met. She then describes Abraham Maslow’s pyramid of needs, and her research in communities of great need, where they still include artwork, dance, poetry, etc as practices, because creativity and expression are a real need, as well as food and shelter. One of the ways we can understand the pyramid of needs is that we're trying to transform suffering at each level, and by meeting needs. When people's needs are not met, they cannot learn. They struggle to transform, because needs occur at physical, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual levels simultaneously and fractally. And it is a real privilege to be able to meet all of those needs. It's a difficult thing to take a good look at the uneven distribution of privilege and unmet needs. Some of the great teachers have looked at suffering. She describes how the Buddha, Jesus, the yoga tradition, modern therapy, feminism, liberation psychology, Marxism etc all look at suffering in different ways. We've gone through a beautiful understanding of liberation - the freedom to transform, and to relieve the suffering of certain groups, so necessary because Dominator Hierarchies impose suffering without even knowing it. 

57:33  Jen then suggests one of the most powerful examples of transformation is neuroplasticity, and also the research coming out about how our soil is transforming us, as is trauma, especially the trauma we experience as young children, which can literally damage the brain for the rest of our lives – through adverse childhood experiences. Yet our brains can be healed. Jen goes on to describe this healing through practices already discussed. We are self-healing beings, through the various modes and practices of transformation. 

1:02:28  Sally says she gets so inspired by this possibility of healing as evidence by both their own lives.  Transformation is feeling, healing, understanding more, caring for more and more. Transformation is about building meaning, as well. The complexity and the beauty of transformation lead us to realize the universe is participatory. Our brains are transforming all the time, below the level of our consciousness, as well as consciously. Our bodies are transforming all the time. There's this cascade of hormones that dictate many of our urges and desires. The Buddha didn't know about hormones, instead he spoke about desire. Jesus spoke about love, as he didn't know about oxytocin and serotonin. We just know so much more now about these various layers of the body, mind and spirit and how they dance together in the cosmos. Sally then describes Viktor Frankl’s theory of meaning making. How do we work with that understanding of the darkness and the light? And how do we create meaning, and co-create this universe with intelligent fields of energy that are constantly shifting.  We're in a dance of meaning from birth to death. And we create that for ourselves. We create the belonging, the relationships, the meaning for ourselves and others.