Faith & Disorientation

“Faith is a small movement, slow but steady & sure, holding all our experience in a clear circle of compassionate light.” ~K. Patel

It’s fair to say that most of our lives have been upended by the past 2 years of living with a pandemic. And that’s only what’s gone on collectively. There’s the personal challenges that have happened for each of us as well.

We’ve all been impacted and yet we don’t all have a context. What we are going through is known in the transitions process as “Disorientation”. Here’s what William Bridges, author of the book “Transitions” has to say about disorientation:

“Traditional people in passage did not enjoy or embrace the experience of disorientation. They suffered through it because that was the way, which is to say they had faith in the death and rebirth process. Having that faith they did not need to try to make distress comfortable. However, many modern people lacking that faith are caught between positive thinking and despair, keeping themselves going by lighting matches and whistling in the dark.”

Disorientation is only one part of a transition process. What’s essential to know is that life moves in a circle, not a straight line. In our embrace of linear thinking exclusively, we lose track of the life/death/rebirth reality of life. Under conditions like the relentlessness of these times, linear thinking is a quick path to despair as we toggle between hope and fear.

Everything in this life has a beginning and an end and every ending offers the promise of a new beginning: in between those two places is disorientation.

Accepting that all things come to an end requires faith in the circular nature of life and in our capacity to familiarize ourselves and trust in the natural phases of all change.

(“Transitions:Making Sense of Life’s Changes” William Bridges, PhD/Addison-Weslely Publishing, 1980)