Albert Einstein said that we can’t solve the problems we face using the same mindset or consciousness that created the problems in the first place.
Countless wisdom traditions have said as much — that it takes a change of heart and mind to create change ‘in the world’.
What’s pretty clear is that we need a big-time change of heart, mind, and consciousness to find our way through the rather impressive collection of challenges currently facing us.
Perhaps we’re living in a “Tipping Point” time, that point where we have that shift of heart, mind, and consciousness. Or the possibility of it, anyway.
A tipping point requires or is preceded by friction — a.k.a. challenge, restlessness, epically transformative experiences — because it needs that energy to fuel the ‘tip’.
Otherwise, we’d just meander along in our normal — though normal is not a virtue (as Aunt Frances reminded us) — without the catalyst or desire to shift, the courage of a particular purpose-related conviction unripened and laying fallow within us.
The feel of the Tipping point:
If you’ve been tipped, you’ll have an internalized, experiential sense of this.
We move along with things ‘business as usual’, normal as usual, la dee da, it’s all good, or good enough.
Then something happens … or a string of somethings happen … and we find ourselves in the middle of a mess, or feeling restless or besieged by challenges.
We might very suddenly find ourselves with a completely different set of priorities and perspectives, and restless with ‘life as we’ve known it’.
We may not know exactly how to shift it — to get where we might prefer to be — but we DO know that we can’t stay where we are.
That’s when we feel the friction, the heat, the fuel … the alchemical process, catalyzed.
That’s the ‘tipping point‘, where something clicks or catalyzes and shifts mind, heart, and perception.
Then we’re able to begin approaching to issues or problems or challenges differently than we did in our ‘business as usual’ mode. It’s a practice; something we live into.
Once we find ourselves ‘tipped‘, we contribute to the momentum of the tipping point collectively, though we must also learn to live having been thus transformed and needing new skills of navigating the radical discontinuity — the new normal — with no maps at all.
Step by step, guided by the ability to read the clues and respond accordingly. An ancient art, remembered.
Have you been tipped … or are you in the friction just before the ‘tipping point’ or that radical post-tip discontinuity zone?
Read some inspired insight in the links throughout this article, and from Howard Thurman and the the Courage of Your Convictions part of this article in The Wake-Up Juice at my Ivy Sea Online site.
You’ll find a link to the Embracing Uncertainty & the Spirit of Creative Adventure article there, too — inspiration to kindle the fires of your heart and soul and purpose.
Big Love,
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