Joan Z. Borysenko Ph.D. - Saying Yes to Change: Essential Wisdom for Your Journey

Also by Joan Z. Borysenko, Ph.D.

Books

Minding the Body, Mending the Mind
Guilt Is the Teacher, Love Is the Lesson
On Wings of Light (with Joan Drescher)
Fire in the Soul
The Power of the Mind to Heal (with Miroslav Borysenko)
Pocketful of Miracles
A Womans Book of Life
7 Paths to God
A Womans Journey to God
Inner Peace for Busy People
Inner Peace for Busy Women

Audio Programs

Seventy Times Seven: On the Spiritual Art of Forgiveness
A Womans Spiritual Retreat
Menopause: Initiation into Power
The Power of the Mind to Heal

(And please see the Hay House catalog
for more than a dozen guided-meditation tapes,
unabridged books on tape, and inspirational lectures.)

Video Programs

Inner Peace for Busy People

The Power of the Mind to Heal

Available from Hay House

Please visit Hay House USA: www.hayhouse.com; Hay House Australia: www.hayhouse.com.au; Hay House UK: www.hayhouse.co.uk; Hay House South Africa: orders@psdprom.co.za

Copyright 2006 by Joan Borysenko and Gordon Dveirin

Published and distributed in the United States by: Hay House, Inc., P.O. Box 5100, Carlsbad, CA 92018-5100 Phone: (760) 431-7695 or (800) 654-5126 Fax: (760) 431-6948 or (800) 650-5115 www.hayhouse.com Published and distributed in Australia by: Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd., 18/36 Ralph St., Alexandria NSW 2015 Phone: 612-9669-4299 Fax: 612-9669-4144 www.hayhouse.com.au Published and distributed in the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK, Ltd. Unit 62, Canalot Studios 222 Kensal Rd., London W10 5BN Phone: 44-20-8962-1230 Fax: 44-20-8962-1239 www.hayhouse.co.uk Published and distributed in the Republic of South Africa by: Hay House SA (Pty), Ltd., P.O. Box 990, Witkoppen 2068 Phone/Fax: 27-11-706-6612 orders@psdprom.co.za Distributed in Canada by: Raincoast 9050 Shaughnessy St., Vancouver, B.C. V6P 6E5 Phone: (604) 323-7100 Fax: (604) 323-2600

Editorial supervision: Jill Kramer Design: Charles McStravick

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private useother than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews without prior written permission of the publisher.

The authors of this book do not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the authors is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the authors and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2005933233

ISBN 13: 978-1-4019-0778-4
ISBN 10: 1-4019-0778-5

09 08 07 06 4 3 2 1
1st printing, January 2006

Printed in the United States of America

To our children and grandchildren:
Justin, Regina, and Little Eddie;
Ben, Shala, and Emma;
Andrei and Nadia;
Natalia, Shawn, and Alex

Once upon a time, the Angel of Death came to Earth to escort a saintly man back home to heaven. God, the Spirit of Love and Guidance, told the Angel to grant the saint any boon he chose, since he was a pure soul who had dedicated his life to compassion. The saints most fervent wish was for God to retire the Angel of Death so that all people could live forever in a peaceful, predictable world without change.

As soon as his wish was granted, life on Earth came to a halt. Seeds, unable to die and shed their skins, could no longer release their vitality into new growth. White clouds hovered in a preternaturally still sky, their life-giving moisture denied to the parched earth, which baked in the sun of an undying day. The soft womb of night, from which life emerges new every morning, was driven into exile by a day without end. Eggs and sperm, deprived of the ecstatic merging that creates new life, languished in isolation. Soon the starving inhabitants of a changeless world became hollow-eyed and desperate, imprisoned in perpetual misery.

The saints desire to make all beings happy by preventing death had unwittingly caused a holocaust of all that lives. As he watched the agony of changelessness unfolding before him, the wide-eyed saint became frantic with regret. He understood that attachment to what is, no matter how precious, precludes the possibility of surrendering to the freshness of creation. Knowing now that death was the mother of life, he begged for the Angel to be sent on his rounds once again.

The mysteries of change that the saint realized are known in every cultures wisdom tradition. Its those insights that will be brought alive for you in this book, so change can become a guide to your clearest, wisest, and most compassionate self.

Writing a book is hard work. This is my 12th, and each one seems to be harder than the last. But this time there were special circumstances. My husband, Gordon, and I had given a seminar together on the wisdom of change and decided that it would be exciting to write about it together. Wed been married for all of two weeks when we naively sat down at our computers, fingers poised above our respective keyboards, prepared for a delightful, co-creative writing experience. The process was duly humbling, but the good news is that were still married, and even planning a second book. But before you read any more of this one, we thought that it might be helpful for you to know a little bit about us, and about our writing process, so youll identify more personally with our different voices in the text.

Gordon is an organization development consultant, sometimes known as a change agent. He gets called in to stir the pot and facilitate better communication when corporations get stuck in ruts or need a new vision. Hes also been a student of the Ridhwan School, the Diamond Approach to self-realization, for more than 20 years.

I, on the other hand, am a psychologist, medical scientist, speaker, and writer whos been described as a Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Sufi, Native-American psychoneuroimmunologist. The author of 11 previous books and a monthly column called Staying Centered for Prevention magazine, I have my own very practical, personal, and slightly irreverent writing style. Its all I know, and while Im not likely to win a Pulitzer Prize, I admit that Im attached to what I know how to do.

Gordon, who was trained in literary criticism and the history of ideas, as well as in organization development, has a much more abstract, poetic style. In fact, reading his chapters out loud will give you a very different sense than reading them silently.

My husbands fount of information is enormous, and a simple thought is likely to land him (and you) in the depths of Dantes Inferno, the heights of T. S. Eliots Four Quartets, or a commentary on how Theseus negotiated the labyrinth. When people asked us how the book was coming along as we were writing, I often replied, Imagine Peanuts meets Kierkegaard. Gordons fear was that the book would be too superficial; mine was that it would be too deep and abstruse. Our mutual hope is that its authentic and true.