Metamorphosis, or Cosmic Puberty Strikes Again

Monday, July 14 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

5 a.m. -- I wake up from a restless night's sleep with lower-back pain that shows up in my left buttock and upper leg. I try to find a pain-free position. No luck. I get up.

9 a.m. -- "I need a chiropractor," I say to myself. "No," an inner voice insists. "But I'm in pain!" I argue. I then flash on a memory from a few years ago when a series of chiropractic adjustments did little to ease a similar problem. A week after canceling my remaining appointments, the pain was gone. "Let it be," I hear. "You'll be fine."

10 a.m. -- I'm not fine. I take two Advil, do my best to buffer my stomach and spend the day moving between bathtub and soft-seated easy chair.


Wednesday, July 16

8 a.m. -- Another Advil/easy-chair/bath day. I grumble about my inner guidance but surrender to it. No chiropractor.


Thursday, July 17

9 a.m. -- With even the toilet seat barely manageable, I abandon inner guidance and scan the phone book for a holistic-sounding chiropractor. The first one can't see me until Monday. The second greets me with voice mail. I know I shouldn't make a third call, but I do. I get an 11:30 appointment.

11:30 a.m. -- The chiropractor's office is empty and dark. I wait a bit, then leave. "Hang in there," my inner voice says.

11:45 a.m. -- On the drive home, my July 7 blog post echoes in my head: "We are morphing into a new species," I wrote. "We are stepping into our Divine Selves, into the Gods we have always been." I also wrote about "strange physical symptoms" that "kick in for no conventionally explainable reason."

Noon -- Suddenly, this thought: What if my body is trying to adjust to that very morphing I wrote about? What if I don't need a chiropractor to adjust my spine back to its old alignment but need to give my body the time and space to adjust itself to a new alignment? This explanation feels right -- to part of me. To another part, it sounds crazy. I resolve the dilemma by taking a nap.


Friday, July 18

6 a.m. -- I'm still in pain. "Damn!" I mutter. I can't get back to sleep, so I give myself a mini sound-healing session. This is my second early morning self-treatment this week and the second time a spine-shaped DNA strand appears in my mind's eye. I fall asleep.

8 a.m. -- I wake up. The pain is nearly gone.


Tuesday, July 22

The pain didn't stay gone. Instead, it ebbed and returned over the next days, each return less intense than the last. Today, I feel pretty good, if still just a little bit achey.

Why am I sharing this story? Not to prove what a wonderful self-healer I am, nor to show off my fearless, resistance-free existence. We all have the former capacity but, like most people, I don't always trust mine. As for the latter, it's not as constant as I would like it to be.

Rather, I share my story to remind you -- and me -- to listen to the voice of your deepest heart, to discern what is truth and trust it, to honor not only the demands of your body but also the call of your highest self. I share it, not for you to avoid necessary treatment, but to be open to the wisdom and healing power that is your birthright.

I share it, too, as a personal example of that Cosmic Puberty experience many of us are living. I share it because I know that many of you are experiencing your own strange symptoms -- either new ones or a recurrence of old ones.

For me, the past week involved more than back pain. I was lethargic, slept poorly and had little appetite. I also experienced a catalog of other physical and emotional oddities. Even my computer was affected: On Tuesday, my laptop's trackpad died. On Wednesday, its battery followed suit.

Today, after eight days of listless emptiness, I feel energized and transformed. It's as though I went through a physical and emotional retooling and now stand at the threshold of something new. Even my computing life has had an overhaul -- new keyboard, trackpad, battery and printer.

Perhaps I should have seen this metamorphosis coming. At the end of my talk at a local library a few weeks ago, the librarian gave me a gift: a thermal mug emblazoned with the theme of the summer's teen reading program -- Metamorphosis.

That mug has been sitting on my kitchen counter ever since, refusing to be hidden in a cupboard, its transformative message staring me down multiple times a day.

I can't tell you where this metamorphosis is taking me or what its next stage will look like. Nor can I tell you how it will manifest in my life.

The only certainty for me is that metamorphosis is an ongoing journey, one that continues to call on me to surrender to it. Unconditionally.

The only certainty for us all is that we are all evolving, that we're all engaged in the kind of r-evolution (radical evolution) I often write about. At least, we're engaged to the extent that we allow it to be so.

How engaged are you? Are you allowing metamorphosis or resisting it? How is it playing out in your life? Where is it uncomfortable? Painful? Where is it joyful? Transcendent? How can you surrender more fully to it and flow more easily along your journey to the Divine? How can you move through the human stress and confusion of these times while acknowledging the God you already are? How can you help others on that same journey?

I know you can do it. I know you can, because I believe in you.

Art: "Remembering the God That You Are" (#12) by Mark David Gerson. Graphic: Logo for the Rio Rancho Library's "Metamorphosis" summer teen program