Personal Transformations

"The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but seeing with new eyes."
Marcel Proust

I just finished a book entitled, Quantum Change: When Epiphanies and Sudden Insights Transform Ordinary Lives.

What is facinating about this book is the "jump" in adult development that can and does occur through what the scientists call, Quantum Change. In some ways it flys in the face of the other article posted earlier, Change or Die (See post below). Quantum Change experiences are those experiences that literally re-orient the way we see the world and we feel as if "everything" about the way we viewed ourselves, our lives, or our values is now different."

The main pre-cursors that seems to trigger a significant Quantum Change experience, as stated by the authors, are one or more of the following:

• Breaking Point: Reaching the end of our rope and then it snaps
• Deep Discrepency: A deep conflict or discrepency between where we are and where we could be, how things are and how we want them to be, how we are and how we want to be...
• Personal Maturation: Kohlbergs work on moral development and Susan Cook-Grueter's work fit nicely here. This is identified as a "personal integration, a consolidation of wholeness or identity" that results in a discrete jump in development.
• Particular Person: This is interesting in that intuitive types are more proun to quantum change experiences than sensing types. What Jung calls "knowing by the unconscious." It is also worth noting that these experiences can tend to come to those who search for their personal meaning or purpose. "Perhaps it is particularly those who seek deeper meaning who find - or are found - by quantum change."
• Sacred Encounter: What is most facinating here is that these scientists are acknowledging a spiritual realm in our material existence. Those interviewed had a quantum change experience after some kind of conscious decision to be open to the possibility of another realm of knowing. (Crying out for help, prayer, etc)

The researchers quantified a before and after "quantum change" experience in terms of their life values - it was different for men and for women and the shifts are intriquing:

_______MEN___________________________WOMEN_______ Before ................After ..........................Before .................After
1 Wealth ..............>Spirituality .................1 Family .................>Growth
2 Adventure ........>Personal Peace ............2 Independence ......>Self-esteem
3 Achievement ....>Family.........................3 Career..................>Spirituality

I have had a few "Quantum Change Transformations" and found this research very revealing. I would love to hear your thoughts to this post or the book!