Sometimes I feel that my life is a series of trapeze swings.  I'm either
hanging on to a trapeze bar swinging along, or for a few moments, I'm hurtling
across space in between bars.

Most of the time I'm hanging on for dear life to my trapeze bar of the moment.
It carries me along at a certain steady rate of swing and I have the feeling
that I'm in control of my life.  I know most of the right questions and even
some of the right answers.  But once in a while as I'm merrily swinging along,
I look ahead of me into the distance and I see another bar swinging towards
me.  It's empty and I know, in that place in me that knows, that this new
trapeze bar has my name on it.  It is my next step, my growth, and my
aliveness coming to get me.  In my heart-of-hearts I know that for me to grow,
I must release my grip on the present, well-known bar to move to the new one.

Each time it happens, I hope and pray that I won't have to grab the new
trapeze bar.  But in my knowing place I realize that I must totally release my
grasp on my old bar and for some time I must hurtle across space before I can
grab onto the new bar.  Each time I am filled with terror.  It doesn't matter
that in all my previous hurtles across the void of unknowing, I have always
made it.  Each time I am afraid I will miss - that I will be crushed on unseen
rocks in the bottomless chasm between the bars.  But I do it anyway.  Perhaps
this is the essence of what the mystics call the faith experience.  No
guarantees, no net, no insurance policy, but you do it anyway because somehow,
to keep hanging onto that old bar is no longer an alternative.  And so for an
eternity that can last a microsecond or a thousand lifetimes, I soar across
the dark void of "the past is done, the future is not yet here."  It's called
transition.  I have come to believe that it is the only place that real change occurs.

I have noticed that in our culture this transition zone is looked upon as a
nothing - a no-place between places.  Surely the old trapeze bar was real and
that new one coming towards me, I hope that's real, too.  But the void in between?

That's just a scary, confusing, disorienting "nowhere" that must be gotten through
as fast and as unconsciously as possible.  What a waste!  I have a sneaking
suspicion that the transition zones in our lives are incredibly rich places.
They should be honored-even savored.  Even with all the pain and fear and feeling
of being out-of-control that can accompany transitions, they are still the most alive,
most growth filled, most passionate, most expansive moments in our lives.

And so, transformation of fear may have nothing to do with making fear go
away, but rather with giving ourselves permission to "hang out" in the
transition between trapeze bars.  Transforming our need to grab that new bar-
any bar, is allowing ourselves to dwell in the only place where change really
happens.  It can be terrifying.  It can also be enlightening, in the true
sense of the word.  Hurtling through the void-we just may learn how to fly.
 

--From The Essene Book of Days by Danaan Parry