The Only Constant in Life Is Change

By Shawn McAndrew

When Greek philosopher Heraclitus uttered these words in the 500 BCEs, I’m sure he could never have foretold how meaningful it would be today.

When our local counties, and then the state, declared Shelter-in-Place mandates, the Hoffman Institute shifted into high gear. The Hoffman Process, our signature offering, could not be held. First, we cancelled the remaining March Processes, then April’s, then May’s Processes. Faculty and staff scrambled to adjust, rethink, re-create. Many hours went into creating virtual offerings for our graduates, as well as for all the people who had enrolled in Processes and now who had to wait out this pandemic until we could figure out a way to be safe together.

Change Is Constant

So many things changed that day in mid-March – we shut our offices and staff went home to work remotely. We couldn’t even give each other the famous Hoffman hug as we departed. We couldn’t gather as a community in person for courses, grad groups, and Ceremonies of Integration.

However, the Hoffman Process has been around since 1967, and this pandemic has not been our first challenge. Teachers and staff worked together remotely to come up with ways to support our grads and prospective grads. In a mere three weeks’ time, we began to offer:

• A Virtual Graduate Intensive
• Multiple teleclasses a week
• Two Quadrinity Check-Ins every day of the week
• An appreciation and gratitude session at the end of the day
• Hoffman graduate groups held via Zoom

You can find all these and much more here:
https://www.hoffmaninstitute.org/shelter-in-the-light/

Tools & Resources

For many people, this pandemic and physical distancing are strongly triggering the Dark Side. We are being challenged in almost every aspect of how we live our lives, perceive our futures, and interact with each other. We, as Process grads, have the tools and resources to get through this on an intellectual, emotional, and physical level – as long as we stay safe and healthy. This really is the time to lean in to what we learned at the Process. We need to let Spirit lead now more than ever.

Use the tools, join in on the daily offerings or virtual grad community groups, sign up for courses – do what is necessary to stay connected to your Spirit, to your Quadrinity, to the world. The challenges I encounter as I make my way through each day sometimes send me into vicious cycles, sometimes take me down the rabbit hole of despair.

What I Can Depend On

What I can always depend on is the knowledge that I am a spiritual being having an extraordinary human experience. Each pattern that pops up is an opportunity to heal, an opportunity to do something over and have a different experience, helping to shape a better future for myself and others.

I think Hoffman’s tag line – When you’re serious about change – says it all.

A note from Hoffman teacher Regina Louise:

A day or so ago I sat down with the adjective “Uncertainty” and had an interview with it. I asked the attribute to share with me how it’s feeling during this time; what’s it like to be overcrowded with potentially 7.8 billion people pushing in on it.

This is the result of the conversation:

“Although intangible in its nature, the appearance of uncertainty – an incalculable and capricious occurrence – jettisons us into the unfamiliar, leaving our plans to cavort through the air and land on unfazed ground devoid of their rhythms, stripped of their tunes.

“The mystery of ‘not knowing,’ ‘if,’ ‘whether or not,’ or ‘when’ disrupts our connection to expectations – the sweet seductions of entitlement, the malaise of privilege – and the dance left undanced hangs in limbo, leaving us bewildered, breathless, stoned in its wake.

“Perhaps, though, chance is the peculiar and preferred way for Divine Intervention to arrive in its own time; to prepare us for an initiation into that unfamiliar place, that sacredness where curiosity waits for our return, and in a grand gesture extends a palm upon which rests a silent offering from the sublime – an invitation to awaken us from our habituated slumber.”