Transformation

In the story, Trishanku’s heaven, a King wants to go to heaven with his body intact. He solicits the help of a sage who promises to send him to heaven with his body. The sage pushes the King’s body up towards the heavens. The Gods, seeing that the King is trying to enter with his body, send him back down to Earth. As result of the force of the sage pushing up and the counter force of the Gods pushing back, the King is left suspended upside down between heaven and earth.

This metaphor neatly describes how you cannot have a transformation and stay the same (enter heaven with your body intact). It is somewhat ironic that the original prompt for this journey began on a plane lifting off to the sky with people’s consciousness distracted by tech!

Hard change

Regarding transformation, coach Michael Bungay Starnier outlines two types of change: easy change and hard change.

Very simply: Easy change is tinkering with our current self. Hard change is building a future you. This involves facing up to the fears, triggers and anxieties that hold us back from changing. When these fears are triggered, they will hold us back as we revert to our ‘old self’, pushed back towards Earth. This is why we needed to address the difficult topics in the section, ‘Down the rabbit hole’. Only by addressing these problems can we achieve a true transformation.

With any transformation, particularly with addictions, there is always the possibility for relapse, since we are aiming for a full physical, psychological and spiritual transformation, which is no easy change.

In our own journeys, we relapsed many times, but each time the renewed effort felt more achievable, and we learned something new every time. So, again, we urge kindness with ourselves and curiosity.