After two weeks I have my laptop computer back.  It went in for repairs; motherboard, ram, LAN card, I almost ended up with a new machine. I guess if you’re going to have a breakdown it might as well be complete.  In the world of computers replace is almost always the only option, they are the epitome of a throw away culture and consciousness.  This is simply an observation.

I once had a friend in my life who had had a breakdown, how he described it didn’t sound all that different from what my computer went through. 

As he described it he went through a complete loss of identity, he had moments where he still knew who he was, but they were moments and they were fickle moments.  Everyone and every thing lost its place of priority in his mind and nothing really mattered any more.  His biggest challenge was not so much where he was mentally as where the world was in relation to him.  Society did not know him, it could not relate to him.

At first he fought his impending collapse but the more he fought against it the bigger and more terrifying it became for him.  The crisis continued to grow until finally he was unable to hold back any more; he collapsed. Until he surrendered into it he could not move through it.  He had to let go, and he had to let go completely.  One can compare his process to the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly; his whole mental framework had to dissolve in order for the new mental construct to take form.

He told me that when he pulled himself together, or more accurately, when he came back together, it was like he was a completely new and better person.  He said it wasn’t like the old him was lost.  It was more like the pieces had not been put together in the right order the first time and his break down was really more of a reassembly.

He felt much better, much more complete, after that experience and he learned and shared with me something valuable in the process.  He shared the importance of surrendering to the process, the importance of trusting that even this terrifying loss of identity was really for his greater good.

Have you ever noticed how important this perspective has been in your own life?  I have.  As long as I hang on to my beliefs, opinions, programming, strategies or whatever name I choose to call my limited way of thinking, life seems to be a painful repetition of mishaps.  It is only when I let go to some greater something that I rediscover a level of harmony.  Always when I get hung up on an old way of thinking I get stuck, I create pain and I ultimately have to change my mind.

The only real challenge is that I don’t really know where I’m stuck or what the new idea is.  If I knew I would have already changed.  So I am forced to surrender and turn my problem over. 

Those we call ‘healthy’ people go through this process all the time every day unconsciously.  They just don’t necessarily call it surrender, forgiveness or letting go.  The beauty of unconsciousness is this; that we don’t have to justify or validate our processes.  So we shelve our problems for the night, or while we take on another project, help out another or take care of necessities.  And when we come back we find our solution has just ‘popped’ into our minds.  Because we unconsciously do this on a regular basis there is no serious buildup of pressure.  Therefore the transformations in our lives are not overwhelmingly dramatic.