A Transformation Pathway: From Order to Disorder to Reorder

Real change always follows this pattern.

There is only one way people make significantly major changes.

To make a big, seismic change in your life you have to change one or more of your fundamental beliefs. And if there is one thing human beings hate, it’s changing foundational beliefs. We cling onto them like imaginary life rafts on a sinking ship. They make us feel safe and in control — regardless of how true they may or may not be.

But sometimes we need to change.

The mystic teachers in most all religious traditions agree that this sort of change always follow the same pattern:

A movement from order to disorder to reorder.

This is often also called the pathway to enlightenment.

Not to get to woo-woo on you.

The thing is, we don’t only do this in the religious or spiritual realm.

Here are some examples of how this CAN work when things goes well. It doesn’t always work this way. Sometimes, because we are all humans, it just doesn’t always work out. But when it does, it goes like this:

In a marriage or a life partnership:

1. Order - We meet, connect, we set up a life together with full confidence we know what are doing.

2. Disorder - The life we set up doesn’t fully work, we fall into destructive or dismissive patterns, we blame the other.

3. Reorder - We find a place of love, grace and forgiveness that lets the relationship continue. We accept that we don’t know more than we do know about how to love one another.

In parenting:

1. Order - We start with a clear understanding of what good parenting is, how we will parent, and how our perfect kids will respond to our perfect parenting.

2. Disorder - Turns out these little human weirdos break us like a boot camp instructor.

3. Reorder -We did our best, they eventually see it as well and life is remarkably ok after a couple decades.

In career:

1. Order - We “know what we want to be when we grow up” and do everything right to prepare for it.

2. Disorder - We don’t get into the college or get the right jobs; or, more commonly, we do get all of that only to find out we don’t want that career after all. We are lost.

3. Reorder - Through a meandering journey of trial and errors we end up somewhere where we feel good about our work.

In faith:

1. Order - We are either taught what our parents believe or come to a faith position in our late teens/early twenties that has all the answers for our current problems. We go all in.

2. Disorder - It starts to unravel slowly as we ask questions, we struggle to find a belief system that works for us, perhaps we latch onto something else but the cycle only repeats itself.

3. Reorder - We land at a place where we know we don’t know and that’s ok, we have patience for those who are on a similar journey.

You get it.

This is the pathway to ultimate change.

You will likely not change every single belief system you inherited as a child in your lifetime. Doing more than a few big transformations at once is very difficult, as it turns out.

But at every turn, the Morpheus to your Neo is offering you red and blue pills.

Don’t take all of your red pills at the same time.

Take only the one that call out to you now.

Take the red pill that needs to be taken.

But for the sake of all that is holy and good, take at least one red pill before you permanently retire from this orbiting space rock.

Too much?

I’m on cold medicine, sorry.

Also, turns out this analogy makes way more sense if you’ve seen The Matrix.

Here’s the bottom line:

Disorder absolutely sucks.

It’s awful.

Everything in you will want to avoid it.

It feels like death.

Because it absolutely is.

But, turns out, there are some things worth “dying” for.

And. you get to choose which ones.