When there is an upheaval in your environment you get an opportunity to re-evaluate your perspective, your beliefs, and the values on what you base your life and actions.

You get an opportunity to re-set your core values – your inner guidance system.  Just as your senses are your internal emotional guidance system to know when a boundary is being crossed, so are your core values your internal spiritual guidance system to set your course through your life.

When your life is bombarded by a set of upheavals or changes you are given an opportunity to reset your life course, your choices in how you move through, and act in your own life.

Upheaval and change can be a profoundly freeing and joyous time.  In every element it is like a new birth and new commitment to yourself and your goals.

Spiritual connection is paramount.  This does not have to be a specific belief in God or a religion.  Although, having the structure, ritual and connection of a set-belief is useful for some, for others it can be a barrier.  Opening your heart to a source connection without getting hung up on a name, or structure that is limiting, is best.  It may simply be knowing  that there is a fabric, an underlining, underpinning thread that connects all beings, one to another, and that your life is guided by some abiding principle of love and light and joy.

Intense and shocking upheaval can be debilitating if the fear of change is too strong.  This is especially true when the upheaval is in the area of health or relationship, or in some way in which you feel your capacity for survival is challenged.

• If you are being challenged by a loss of how you usually deal with things
• or if you are receiving sensory feedback that you must change your style of being in the world
• you can feel very vulnerable and alone.

An example of the latter is if you have been struck by a debilitating illness that can only be treated with a complete change in how you handle stress.

• Many auto-immune disorders are like this.
• They are exacerbated by stress, and imbalance of spirit, mind, and body.
• Continued physical and emotional stress to your body and attempts to control that which is out of your control will result in further injury to  your body.
• You can become physically debilitated.

To heal, you would have  to relearn how to be in the world.  This is frightening, shocking and resistance is often the first response.   Stress and lack of balance cause dis-ease in emotions and thoughts, and disease in the body.  So, although the precursor event was long, enduring, and insidious the appearance of the disease feels like a shock.

Another example that manifests as a shock is a change within yourself about how you want to relate to those around you.

• Perhaps you have discovered that you give away your energy in order to facilitate a sense of intimacy and survival, but in reality you feel alone and disconnected.
• You may have discovered a system of behavior wherein you are a caregiver for many others, but have little exchange, so that all your energy is going out.  This is another example of a longstanding insidious belief system misconnected to a core value of giving and compassion that has left you with an internal emptiness and illness.
• The sense of emptiness and illness are the shocking, arousing experience.

In order to assist your spiritual development and manifestation of balance you can use mindfulness and meditation to review earlier events and current events from a neutral perspective.  This allows for a renewed perspective that allows you to reset your core values to your current behavior, actions, and thoughts to create Joy and Health.

In fact, mindfulness, meditation, and neutrality are essential in order to resist the sinking into the abyss of fear or despair under these circumstances and to rebuild your inner core strength.

The I Ching, a profoundly spiritual, Confucian-Taoist text describes the underlining component of  upheaval in hexagram 51, Chen, The Arousing, (shock,thunder) as a time when one is enlightened and sustained by his knowledge of God.  And this sustains him and leads him to success.

The shock that comes from the manifestation of God within the depths of the earth makes man afraid, but this fear of God is good, for joy and merriment can follow upon it.  

When a man has learned within his heart what fear and trembling mean, he is safeguarded against any terror produced by outside influences. Let the thunder roll and spread terror a hundred miles around:  he remains so composed and reverent in spirit that the sacrificed rite is not interrupted.  This is the spirit that must animate leaders and rulers of men – a profound inner seriousness from which all outer terrors glance off harmlessly. 

The shock of continuing thunder brings fear and trembling.  The superior man is always filled with reverence at the manifestation of God; he sets his life in order and searches his heart,lest it harbor any secret opposition to the will of God.  Thus reverence is the foundation of true culture.

It is a profoundly compassionate and reverent passage and brings to the fore the importance of spirit in the life of a successful person.  Success here is a sense of joyful, balanced, purposeful action that creates wellness in action and experience.  The text is meant to be used by leaders and individuals in powerful positions so that they may deal with the complexities of life and leadership in a profoundly compassionate, directed, focused, balanced way to protect guide and create prosperity for the community.

The concept of God is not commonly discussed in this treatise.  In Confucian beliefs, there is a predominance of communication about energy following a course of increase and decrease and that is the way of the universe.  Yet, here it is a central theme and identified as the preeminent focus for internal strength in times of crisis and strategy.  This indicates to me that source energy is personal and private, and of great importance in our internal guidance system.

The methods of mindfulness, prayer, and meditation are the best avenues for discovering and maintaining a connection to source.

Practicing these methods will assist you in developing a strong positive connection to source so that when you are faced with an upheaval that is shocking you can utilize these techniques to redirect your life and create Joy and Health., in love and light, bg