The In-Between

We all know change is inevitable and yet we often resist.  There have been changes aplenty for me in the last year and I am finding that, counterintuitively, one of the things that helps is a willingness to be in the in-between place.  A friend recently shared a sort of mantra, I think from Joan Boryensko, “No longer and not yet.”  That’s a good one—how do we let go of something when we don’t know for sure what is coming next?

It seems like at least part of the difficulty has to do with identity.  Ego (ahankara or asmita) likes to say, “I am . . . ” or “I do . . . ”  The more ego turns something into an identity, the harder it is to let things change.  Lately, I’ve been thinking about this in relationship to how I eat.  A few months ago, I decided to do an elimination diet to see if I have any food sensitivities.  Pretty soon, I was getting used to eating very differently than I had been and even though I didn’t find anything dramatic, I was feeling pretty good and it just seemed to make sense to keep going.  It seems to me that if I had held on to my old identities as someone who eats dairy or sugar or whatever, I may have reverted back as soon as the official elimination protocol was done.  Then the diet change becomes an aberration, just a thing I did.

The other side would be to create a whole new identity as someone who is “gluten-free” or “vegan” or whatever, which doesn’t really feel right.  I don’t know how long I will eat this way.  I didn’t set out to become something different.  I mostly just think, “This is how I’m eating right now” and that seems true.

I went to a workshop with Sonia Nelson recently that was about change and she was talking about Sutra 2.15 and saying that one of the ways change causes suffering is when it is happening too quickly or too slowly.  And I wrote it down, even though it seemed not that earth-shaking to me.  But maybe this is getting at the same thing.  If I am holding on to an old identity, then the change feels too fast for me.  If I am grasping after or trying create a new identity, then the change feels too slow.  If I can allow myself to be in the in-between, then the change can go at the speed it wants to go and I have time to adapt and to actually see what is happening instead of trying to control it.