Creating the Change We Seek

How does change happen in our lives? I find myself really reaching these days to enact the "Intent before Event" or "Consciousness before Being" wisdom of the ages. For me it often feels like a contradiction or a conundrum of action vs. receptivity. For example around work/career where a job search can stretch out without apparent success. I find myself advising myself and others in my life who feel stuck in one area or another that while you have to do something it's not just about doing. There's an internal way of being and a joining with the greater consciousness that combines with individual effort to create the change we seek.

So far the correct balance or combination has eluded me. I seem to swing either towards the manic action side, or towards not doing/feeling anything. I used to work for an organization whose tagline was Taking Action, Making Change, a good match for my action-oriented tendency. Yet I keep on. Because as in most big efforts, the seeking may be the whole point. I guess this is what Parker Palmer means when he talks about developing an ability to live with and within contradiction. With all of this in my heart and head this morning, when I saw this Rumi quote in the Samarya Center newsletter it spoke to me:

When grapes turn to wine, they long for our ability to change. When stars wheel around the North Pole, they are longing for our growing consciousness.
Wine got drunk with us, not the other way. The body developed out of us, not we from it.
We are bees, and our body is a honeycomb. We made the body, cell by cell, we made it.

~Rumi