Change doesn’t have to be destructive to be productively disruptive. ~ Alva Noë
I share some devout values with Alva Noë, author of Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). One of those values we share is art. I have said there is a reason ART is in the word heart.
Alva Noë is a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he writes and teaches about perception, consciousness and art. In “Do You Wish Time Would Slow Down?” Alva Noë wrote this opening quotation about change. It really jumped out at me because of another of our shared values: Knowing change does not have to be destructive. It is downright inspiring to recognize the productive side to disruption.
In the Book of Runes, Ralph Blum has this to say about Hagalaz, the Rune of Disruption:
Change, freedom, invention and liberation are all attributes of this Rune. Drawing it indicates a pressing need within the psyche to break free from constricting identification with material reality and to experience the world of archetypal mind.
The Rune of elemental disruption, of events that seem to be totally beyond your control, Hagalaz has only an upright position, and yet it always operates through reversal. When you draw this Rune, expect disruption, for it is the Great Awakener, although the form the awakening takes may vary. Perhaps you will experience a gradual feeling of coming to your senses, as though you were emerging from a deep sleep. Then again, the onset of power maybe such as to rip the way the fabric of what you previously knew as your reality, your security, your understanding of yourself, your work, your relationships or beliefs.
Disruption takes many forms: a relationship fails, plans go awry, a source of supply dries up. But do not be dismayed. Whether you created the disruption, or whether it comes from an outside source, you were not without power in this situation. Your inner strength — the will you have funded until now when your life — provide support and guidance at a time when everything you have taken for granted is being challenged.
Another of the Cycle Runes, the term radical discontinuity best describes the action of Hagalaz at its most forceful. The more severe the disruption in your life, the more significant than timely the requirements for your growth. In the midst of disruption, at the center of the storm, take heart: know that the universe and your own soul are demanding that you do, indeed, grow.
Perhaps we can realize change, disruption, and even destruction as the necessary first step to improvement. I see that in every home improvement show I watch on HGTV (Home Garden Television). We certainly see changes happening in the lives of friends and family and companies and countries all around us. We even sense destruction happening within us. How invigorating to recognize these events as evidence we are indeed growing!
At the time of this writing, in the US we do not yet know who will be elected as our next president. We do know whoever is the holder of that illustrious title is not an individual who is to be held responsible for the quality of our lives. The quality of our lives is now and always will be entirely up to us.
People are awaiting test results.
People are standing by feeling helpless as they watch things fall apart.
Disruption is real.
Recently, a friend/client/colleague was diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer and told she needed to have a double mastectomy, with follow-up chemotherapy and radiation. This young woman still has a son at home. She was understandably distraught at this diagnosis and prognosis.
As I was driving to meet with her, I was listening to Abraham Hicks.
The most incredulous things that we hear coming from humans are words like incurable. We say, what? You say, ‘It’s incurable.’ We say, what does that mean? ‘It means that I can’t get to where I want to be from where I am.’ We say, what dimension are you in? How did you manage to withdraw yourself (to extract yourself) from the laws of the Universe as we know them to be? How did you manage to pull yourself out of the flow of nonphysical energy that is you? You didn’t. You can’t. There is nobody who cannot get from where they are to where they want to be. That is illogical in every sense of the word from every law we know and we know them all in all universes, in all dimensions, in all time-space realities. It is not possible for you to have something that is not curable. It is not possible.
When I got to her home for the session, I told her what I had heard on the drive.
I reminded her of Jane Foster’s experience and I suggested she watch the video interview of Jane at ImagineHealing.info.
Jane’s is one of the remarkable stories written about in my book, Falling Together in Love: Stories From My Heart for and about YOU.
Unknown to me at the moment, my client was going to another surgeon later that day for a second opinion. This doctor reported that the mass in the left breast which had been seen on the mammogram in August was not even visible on the PET scan she had the first week of October, and concluded, “A bilateral mastectomy is not medically warranted.”
The rest of the story for this woman is still being written. Isn’t that true for all of us?
You may wish to listen to Abraham’s words yourself, especially the part about how we can want something we have been holding ourselves out of alignment with. what I had been listening to
In “Do You Wish Time Would Slow Down?” Alva Noë says engaging with art is critical.
Art is warehoused all around us, in museums and galleries, or in the form of digital storage. It sits there and it harbors a most magical property. Turn it on, engage it, and it can transform your life and reorganize your mind (and brain!). Art can change how you see and think. It can reorient you. But not just for the price of admission. It isn’t a matter of walking through the gallery or pressing the play button. You need to study, look, listen, think, question. Not merely see or hear. And this isn’t easy. It isn’t easier than learning a new language. And it requires not only that we engage with art, but also that we engage with the communities of people who devote themselves to art and to its challenges and rewards.
Art can do all this or, rather, we can do all this with art. Art affords us an opportunity to step outside the projects that, in a way, hold us captive. A life with art is a life unbound.
Engaging with art is one way you can come into alignment. Let’s do whatever it takes to make sure we are in enough alignment that we can see the disruptions in our lives as productive changes…