Change, Transformation, and Rebirth - April 2022

Dear Ones,

Here we are, following the Full Moon in April, a time throughout the world and in most cultures of celebrating rebirth and celebrating the resurrections.

Every year at this time I go into my garden looking for some signs of life. In the pots, I’ve wintered over I look for anything that looks like a tiny harbinger of rebirth. It would be easy to dismiss the lifeless stems and assume that winter took them, but after the sun begins to warm the cold soil, nothing short of a miracle takes place. What at first appeared to be dead is alive, it shows itself as the most diminutive nodes of leaves, so small I might have missed them altogether. It is amazing to watch this rebirth, as day by day this precious newborn is midwifed by nature.

You might say that wintering over is really nature’s Savasana, a Yoga pose that most are familiar with, meaning corpse-pose. In Savasana, we are experiencing that little death, an end of a cycle, the letting go of the old so that we can be reborn in the next moment. In Savasana we have an opportunity to let die anything that does not serve us, we can let go of undigested experiences that leave impressions in our mind and body, known as Samskaras, Samskara comes from the combination of the words joined and cause. Samskaras are ingrained impressions that come from our habits and behaviors. These impressions are under the awareness of the conscious mind. Some Samskaras are light and shallow and some run deep and vast. These Samskaras provide the lens for our reactions to, and our view of, the world.

When we want to make a change in our life, it often first comes into our awareness as divine discontent. That little nudge from the universe, “Hey, this isn’t working anymore”. This divine discontent is a powerful first step in leaning into change.

So what is the difference between change, transformation, and ultimately rebirth? Change is the process we go through to alter something, to make it different. Once we change something we can change it back, so change is a process that can be temporary. Transformation is much bigger than change, it is a larger alteration that often cannot be reversed, it can’t return to its former expression. When we transform something it’s necessary to remove the old expression, an important step in transformation is the disintegration and dismantling of the old patterns, our Samskaras. Wisdom tells us that you can’t put new wine in old skins, in order to have newness you must discard the old skins. But how many times do we desire real and lasting change only to fill up old skin? When we are completely renewed, re-birthed we are free from attachments of our Samskaras we move and interact in the world from a fresh perspective, without information or judgments, we arrive at every moment with wondrous curiosity and life is shiny and new, completely refreshed.

What if life can be thought of as a series of Savasanas? An eternal cycle of changes and transformations, a little death, and ultimately rebirth? The cycle moves in one direction and never repeats itself, so in every revolution, we can evolve, express, and embody something new.

"When every unnecessary, once treasured particle is
transformed and taken to light,
we can see a trillion stars in its nothingness
and watch the slow movement of minerals unfolding,
like sand on stretches of white beaches
 
When everything seems to stop existing,
when everything seems to be gone,
it is not,
it is transformed”

Reflections

1. Thinking upon your own life can you recall a time when you were making a change? Recall the divine discontent that you felt that encouraged this change. Did this divine discontent lead to change or transformation? In what ways were you made new in what ways have you stayed the same? Can you identify old Samskaras that came to the surface to be released during this process? Are these Samskaras a reoccurring theme?
2. Is there a feeling of divine discontent in your life right now? Is that “something has to change” feeling showing up in an aspect of your being?
3. Can you imagine what this change/transformation might look like? Take a moment to experience yourself as reborn, as new, as if this transformation has already taken place in your life. How does it feel?

OM & Blessings, Kate