Transformation

In a recent blog of Richard Rohr’s, ‘Transformation as Awakening’, January 11, 2015, he asks the question: "How can we turn information into transformation? How can we use the sacred texts, tradition, and experience to lead people into new places with God, with life, and with themselves?” It would be nice if I could say Rohr then goes on to say exactly how that can be done and list those steps here for you!

Richard does go on however to include the following quote from Tobin Hart, author of From Information to Transformation and a professor of psychology, who maps six interrelated layers of knowing and learning:

1) information;

2) knowledge (where direct experience brings information to the level of mastery and skill);

3) intelligence (integrating intuitive and analytic),

4) understanding (seeing with the eye of the heart);

5) wisdom (blending truth with an ethic of what is right);

6) and finally transformation.

Transformation, Hart says, is about waking up, whereas the first five are more about growing up.

How can we help ourselves move from just learning new information to allowing that new information to change our very lives? When I think back over my own experience it seems that several things need to happen, and that none of them happen in a vacuum. While this may not hold true for everyone, it is important for me to have a mentor, someone who can make suggestions and listen, someone who is aware of who I am and where I am. In order for me to integrate the new information, the opportunity for discussion and debate is paramount. Reflection [like this blog] or journal writing are ways that allow the new ideas to integrate themselves with, and hopefully change, the ethics of everyday life. When those ideals being express through our everyday lives have changed, then, I believe, transformation has occurred.

Transformation is an ongoing event; not an end in itself. It does not happen overnight nor does it happen easily. It is possible only when I, as an individual, decide that the new information resonates with me to the extent that I see it as my new reality. Only then is it really transformation. Once it has occurred it can not be undone. There is no going back to the 'comfortable pew'.

How can we help others to change information into transformation? The answer, I believe, is that we can’t always. We can only offer the opportunities to others than we feel have worked for ourselves. We cannot force them to take advantage of these opportunities As the sower did in that parable of Jesus' where the seed was falling on the four types of soil [Matthew 13:3-8], we have no choice but to keep sowing our seed hoping that it will take root, and should it take root, being there to encourage it along its way.

As Hart says above ‘Transformation is about waking up’. The exact moment is not known, only that one day you will realize that the world is a different reality for you.

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