In our recent past International conference (Activating New Leadership) it was emphasised that more advanced forms of leadership would become possible once we have reached a higher, more unified consciousness.
But for this higher state of consciousness to happen, we need, first, to undergo a transformative process. And could there be a better time – the Holy Week and Easter period, so recently within our consciousness – to underline the extreme difficulty and magnificent promise of such a process?
An image that was used in the Daring to become the Un-Known presentation was the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly, a well-known symbol of transformation. But what is less known is the transition stage, called pupa. During this time, while nothing seems to be happening on the outside, the butterfly’s organs all form from the “soup” that the decomposing caterpillar has become.
As humans, we know that we sometimes need to undergo radical transformations. We understand the concept. We embrace the notion…or reluctantly accept it as inevitable. Unlike the caterpillar, however, we come equipped with a high-performing tool that can sometimes prove completely inadequate for the task at hand: a powerful mind.
At our current level of development, the lower mind is probably the biggest barrier to any major transformation. If we truly are to transform and enter a higher state of consciousness, we cannot just acknowledge the concept. We need to humbly let ourselves turn to soup and surrender to an alchemical process over which we have no control.
This is very difficult to accept for the mind. It is, indeed, very tempting to stop at understanding the process, based on the erroneous belief that understanding equals doing. But in so doing, we conceal a whole deeper, emotional and often unconscious dimension which, if unacknowledged, risks obstructing the whole operation. And, of course, we won’t be able to “understand” why the expected transformation did not occur after all!
Another way of avoiding the uncomfortable soup situation is for the mind to project itself directly into the “after” stage. We devise, from our current state of consciousness and knowledge, how things will be afterwards, which just cannot work. This is a subtle mental escape mechanism, which seeks to bypass the process rather than surrender to it.
A third and perhaps more insidious danger that the concrete mind poses to the transformative process is to tell ourselves “yes, I already know what this is about”, and then dismiss the whole process because it thinks it has learnt all there is to know. The mind delights in drinking from the source of new knowledge and tends to discard apparently redundant experiences on the ground that it “knows”. But each transformation is both new and unique by nature and should be approached as such.
For any transformation to effectively occur, we cannot experience it solely from a mental level. We need to experience whatever comes with it: the pain and grief, fruits of the attachments to our past, the fear of the unknown, and all kinds of small and not so small resistances that we carry deep inside.
Why is it so important? Because to be fully complete, a transformation must be fully experienced and lived at all levels.
by Agnès Revenu