The Art of Falling Apart

I've lost count of the number of people I've talked to recently who are unsettled, restless, not sleeping and vaguely uneasy in a way they can't pinpoint. Yes, yes, yes! We are living in strange times of intense transition, both personally and transpersonally. There is an enormous wrestling match, combative dance, tug-of-war going on between the old paradigm and the new.
   The old paradigm is ruled based, hierarchical, all about survival of the fittest and invested in "fact" and what can be proved. The new paradigm is more about consensus, shared welfare, intuition and how each of our unique strengths make a more fluid and stronger whole when they are allowed to flourish.
   We see this clash in the news every day. In the same week several states chose to acknowledge same sex marriage while others work to pass archaic abortion laws. Microcosm - macrocosm. While this struggle plays out in the world around us, it also plays out in us. We are ALL, collectively and individually, in transition. Old pockets of internal conflict and the places where we are incongruent with ourselves are coming to the surface...and demanding attention.
    The old paradigm says there are rules to fall back on. Confusion is a form of weakness. We just need to make a decision and get on with it. The new paradigm invites us to stay with the process and questions the relationship between push and allow.
    Initially I looked at what is surfacing in my life as individual issues that I needed to work on. But from one day to the next, the issue seemed to change. One day my restlessness was connected to one thing. The next day I my uneasiness seemed tied to something else entirely. So what do I focus on? To add to the confusion, these shifts weren't connected to any external event.  They were fueled by some change in my internal landscape.
   I had a vague sense that these individual issues were all pieces of something larger, but what? One of my responses to feeling unsettled and confused was the desire to exert control over small things just because I could. Okay. Normal human response to chaos. Not a big deal unless I find myself trying to force outcomes on a bigger scale.
Then one night I watched an amazing documentary called Wake Up. At the end of the film, in reference to the main characters struggle, someone remarks that  he'll be okay because he falls apart well. Oh.....
   The disconnect isn't about wanting to control the small stuff. It's about wanting to use the illusion of control to avoid the unknown. We are all in transition. Transition involves rebuilding and recreating but that can only happen after coming apart. The individual issues that are surfacing are asking us to pay attention to the unknown, to stay with the falling apart.
   If we give in to the urge to control or "fix" something just because we can, we risk building on the foundation of the old that is still coming unwound. We risk cementing something that really doesn't serve us anymore just because it's more comfortable to have some solidity.
   Until I watched that documentary, it hadn't occurred to me that falling apart was a skill.  In this time of intense transition, we are being invited to hone our skills at coming unwound....to live the art of falling apart.