My Chaos Theory

What a crazy time this is in the world, and the past few months the craziness seems to be escalating.  It feels like every day something more horrible happens, adding to the chaos of a world gone mad.

And it's not just 'out there' where the chaos seems to be. It's everywhere I turn...family, friends, yoga teachers, horoscopes, random online posts from acquaintances...the actual word 'chaos' has been showing up in my world, one way or another, for a couple of months now.

I try not to get caught up in the drama around me, whether it's in the news, or in my house. I try to stay centered, and remember that 'this too shall pass'.  

I try to remember that I'm a spiritual, energetic being who chose to have this human experience in order for my soul to grow and expand. And that it's through life's challenges that my soul can learn the lessons that it came here to learn.

I especially try to remember that, as a spiritual, energetic being, I have the  power to create my own reality by keeping my thoughts and feelings aligned with the good. With the positive.

But wow...this is REALLY getting hard! It's a full-time job trying to keep my thoughts and feelings positive when I am being bombarded from every direction with negativity, anger and fear.  Politics, protests, shootings, flooding, earthquakes, corruption, censorship...there doesn't seem to be anywhere to turn to get away from the madness.

So what's a humble spiritual seeker to do to make sense of all the chaos in the world?

Well, according to Deepak Chopra, 'all great change is preceded by chaos'. And  Barbara Marx Hubbard, the late spiritual author, said that 'problems are evolutionary drivers' and that 'crises always precede transformation.'

Which gives me great hope that maybe, just maybe, we are on the verge of a big step forward. That perhaps this chaos we are experiencing, whether political, religious, environmental, personal, or all of the above, is a sign that old systems are beginning to break down, opening the way for new systems that will be even better.

Maybe this chaos we're experiencing is simply:

 Change Happening Around Old Systems 

This chaos theory makes a lot of sense to me. It's like what happens to a caterpillar as it begins its transformation to a butterfly...total chaos on the inside as the old 'caterpillar' system breaks down and the new 'butterfly' system takes over. The caterpillar doesn't know what the outcome of the chaos will be, and though it may fight it for a while, at some point it simply must accept what is happening and allow the process to take place.

And from that place of least resistance, a beautiful butterfly emerges.

So I think I'll start being more like the caterpillar. I've been fighting the chaos up until now and looking at it as something bad that is happening to me. Maybe if I shift my perspective and start to see it as something good, that is happening for me, I can more easily allow whatever transformation is taking place to happen more easily.

I, for one, can't wait to see what great changes will emerge on the other side of this great chaos.