It is the inner reorientation and self-redefinition you must go through to incorporate changes fully into your life.

Transition involves letting go of your beliefs and assumptions.

We usually fail to discover the need for Endings until most of the necessary external changes have already been made.

While members of a system may consciously try to change the ways they behave during change, they also perpetuate the current form by undermining their own attempts to change it.

The fear and reality of losing connections to the activities and people that once mattered very much to us must be faced.

Endings = Fall: Going back to the old reality, trying to reinstate old motivations through rewards or punishments, is as futile as trying to put leaves back on the tree in Autumn.

Disengagement: Break up old cues that reinforce roles and patterns of behaviors. Jesus in the desert; Jonah

Dismantling: More cognitive than the emotional stages of grief. Remodeling.

Disidentification: Who am I? Who are we? Let go of old ways of seeing & being.

Disenchantment: Realization that old reality was in our heads. Different from disillusionment.

Disorientation: Loss of direction. Meaningful but not enjoyable. Fear of death and abandonment. Confusion.

A period of re-orientation.

Culturally, we don’t allow enough time here--act like we’re just crossing the street.

Feelings of emptiness--the old reality is transparent, and nothing feels solid.

Transformation: The place between death and rebirth. Christ had to descend before His Resurrection.

Source of Renewal: disintegration and reintegration. The energy for renewal is in the energy of chaos. Organic not mechanistic.

Perspective: Give up trying to get out quick--focus on ways to amplify & deepen Neutral Zone experience.

The need for time in the Neutral Zone is seen again and again in the Scriptures and in the lives of the saints:

Jesus after baptism
Israelites in the desert
Jonah in the fish
St. Paul after his conversion
St. Benedict after the fall of Rome

They gained clarity after taking time to reflect and transform.

Genuine beginnings depend on an inner realignment, for only when we are aligned with real longing and wanting do we become powerfully motivated.

We fear the actual change from our old idea of “what we are.”

We must do more than simply survive and outlast.

We can mistake defensive reactions to endings as real New Beginnings.

When you are clear about identity and purpose, you must act on that clarity. We learn by doing something: fail forward!