The Chinese word for "crisis" is composed of two characters.
             The first means "danger" and the second means "opportunity".
             To use a crisis constructively in our lives, we must see both
             the danger and the opportunity which are present.

                A crisis is a threat of loss or an actual loss which arouses
             anxiety, grief, guilt, anger, depression or craziness.

                Such a threatened or actual loss in itself might not be so
             catastrophic except that it exposes an identity problem within
             the individual which might otherwise remain hidden.  Therefore,
             the crisis, although painful, can be used to confront one's own
             identity dilemmas and enhance self-awareness and personal growth.


        However, because of the pain provoked by the crisis, it is usually very
        difficult for the suffering person to look at the self clearly without
        support and guidance.  The sufferer wants to run from where she is and
        retreat to some old familiar place of safety, wants to cling to old dreams
        and favored behaviors without facing the new dimensions of her identity
        which need to emerge in and through the crisis.


        Reactions to the loss, such as the grief reaction, come not only from losing
        a beloved person or status, but also from losing one's old identity and
        dreams: grief tempered by the understanding that a new identity is born out
        of the ashes of the old.  If a crisis is to serve its evolutionary purpose,
        the sufferer must see the opportunity to shed the cocoon and learn to fly.
        If grief turns into resistance the opportunity to move to the next step is
        lost.  Through awareness she can learn to cooperate with the birthing
        process of new consciousness and allow grief to perform its true function.

        Likewise, only through understanding can she use her anger, guilt, or
        anxiety to make her crisis and its pain into a passageway for new self-
        awareness of her whole person: body, mind, soul and spirit.

                                          *

        Each crisis occurs at the point where the old is holding on and the new
        wants to emerge.  What was once our security or even delight is now
        becoming a chain around our neck.  Insensitive to our tremendous potential
        for development and expansion, we keep settling for less.  When an old
        dream or lifestyle has reached the limits of its value, a crisis occurs to
        tell us we are ready to move on.  We have unconsciously helped to create
        the crisis, and we must consciously de-code it if we are to detect our
        needed change of direction. We must move into the new (unknown) dimensions
        or stagnate.



        Crisis is a time when all our ego games and normal supports are stripped
        down to nothing.  We feel isolated from important others.  We are tossed
        back upon our own resources even though we may not know what those
        resources are or how to use them.  We have been wrongly related to others
        and in our solitude we have to discover something within ourselves before
        we can return to the community of relationships with a new attitude.
        A mini-community or bridging person must somehow help us to understand the
        meaning of our crisis.  A guide for such a sufferer must be one who
        has faced her/himself and who understandshe potential dangers and
        opportunities of a crisis with regard to one's very identity.  To support
        our courage to search the depths of the pain for the treasures therein.

                                          *

        Crisis is not just an annoying or destructive mishap to be gotten rid of.
        Crisis has to be seen as a door-opener, a time to look and reevaluate
        ourselves.

        If we can decipher the lesson of this experience, we can go with it rather
        than oppose it.  Usually, however, people make the crisis into a problem
        to be endured, ignored, gotten over, anesthetized, drugged, hypnotized away
        or cut out.  Seeking solutions by focus on alleviating symptoms is
        seductive. We feel cheated, helpless or undone, and others conspire to
        rescue us from immediate pain.  But we must allow the message to help us
        transition to the next level of unfoldment.  The crisis is an assist towards
        change, a chance to see dependencies and become free of those attachments
        which limit our aliveness, love and freedom.  What we hold on to, holds on
        to us.

                We rarely reach the point of arranging for our own self-change,
             and so life must give us an assist toward change, often in the form
             of a crisis.  If we feel cheated, helpless or undone, remember that
             sorrow is transcendence in disguise.

        It is usually primarily our own inner beliefs and attitudes about ourselves
        that trap us rather than another person or outer situation handicapping us.
        A crisis occurs when the outer fails and we have not yet discovered the
        power of the inner.

                We are angry that our trip has been interrupted.  Only later
             do we realize that ahead of us in the darkness was a precipice.

                The felt danger of a crisis is that we have lost the fulfillment
             of our dreams.  The actual danger is that we will not discover who
             the dreamer is, nor know our true spiritual nature.  Thus the time
             of greatest loss is also the time of greatest potential awareness.

                                         ***

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