By: Linnea Nilsen Capshaw

Ultimately, deep change, whether at the personal or the organizational level, is a spiritual process….Contemplation is recommended to help us meet and overcome the challenges we face from our powerful defense mechanisms.  Confronting our defense mechanisms leads to a necessary examination of self.  To thwart our defense mechanisms and bypass slow death, we must confront first our own hypocrisy and cowardice.  We must recognize the lies we have been telling ourselves.  We must acknowledge our own weakness, greed, insensitivity, and lack of vision and courage.  If we do so, we begin to understand the clear need for a course correction, and we slowly begin to reinvent our self.  The transition is painful, and we are often hesitant, fearing that we lack the courage and confidence to proceed.  We uncover a great paradoxical truth.  Change is hell.  Yet not to change, to stay on the path of slow death, is also hell.  The difference is that the hell of deep change is the hero’s journey.  The journey puts us on a path of exhilaration, growth, and progress.

The hero finds strength, power, vitality, and energy in change.  In experiencing deep change, our selfishness dies.  Discipline and sensitivity are melded into one element and become our foundation. ….We find the vision to empower both ourselves and our community.  It would be useful if we could learn to communicate more comfortably about the process of deep change.

pg. 78-79