Trapeze Story
Sometimes I imagine that my life is a series of trapeze swings. I’m
either holding on to a trapeze bar swinging alone, or for a few moments,
I’m hurtling across space in between trapeze bars. Most of
the time, I’m hanging on for dear life to my illusive 
trapeze
bar of the moment. It swings me along at a certain steady rate and I
imagine that I'm in control of my life. As I swing, I know most of the
right questions and even some of the right answers. But once in a while,
as I’m merrily (or not-so-merrily) swinging along, I see another
trapeze bar swinging towards me. Deep inside, there is a place
that ‘knows’ that this new trapeze bar has my name on it. It
represents to me my next step, my growth and aliveness coming to receive
me. In my heart-of-hearts, I know that in order for me to grow, I must
release my iron grip on this present bar and move to the new one.
Each time this happens to me, I pray that I grab this new bar from a deep spiritual knowing place within me, intuitively receiving the teachings without wanting to ‘figure’ it out in my mind. I realize that I must totally relax my grasp on my old iron bar, (letting go of story in the process) and for a moment, hurtle across the unknowing space before I grab onto the new bar. When I do this, I am filled with terror and fear; imagining that I will miss and therefore be crushed on unseen rocks in the bottomless chasm between bars. It doesn’t matter that in all my previous hurtles across the void of unknowing, I made it. Perhaps this is the essence of what the mystics call the faith experience (a conscious encounter with God or with an action of God, initiated by God, and having observable results in the lives of individuals and communities).
Without guarantees, I choose to do it anyway because to keep holding on to the current iron bar is no longer on my list of alternatives, and so for an eternity that can last a microsecond or a thousand life times, I soar across the dark void of ‘the past is gone, the future is not yet here’. This place is transition. I have come to believe that this is the only place that real change occurs, not the pseudo-change that only lasts until the next time my old buttons get pushed.
I have noticed that in our culture, transition is looked upon as ‘no-thing’, or a ‘no-place’ between places. The old trapeze bar was real, and the new one coming towards me is also real, but what about the place in between? Is this place, as in my experience, our culture promotes, just a scary, confusing, disorienting “nowhere” place that I must go through as fast and as unconsciously as possible? What if the trapeze bar was not real? My hunch is that this transition zone is the only real place, and the bars are illusions to avoid the void where real change and growth occurs. Whether or not my hunch is true, the transition zones in my life are incredibly rich places that I honor and even savor. My imagination of fear and of being out of-control may accompany transition, but they are still the most alive, growth-filled, passionate, and expansive moments in my life.
Therefore, transformation of fear energy may have nothing to do with making fear go away, but rather with giving myself permission to “be” in the transition between trapeze bars. Transforming my want to grab the new bar is allowing myself to be in the void, the only place where change really happens. In the process I am finding my wings as I learn how to fly as I move through the void. This experience is both terrifying and enlightening.
The Essene Book of Days by Danaan Parry/Arthur Munyer edits to my work.