What is change?
Everything changes; it comes into existence and finally disappears.
There is nothing which is not a matter of being changed. There is daytime light, night time darkness; the change of seasons, there are mothers giving birth to a new born, and 40 or 80 years later this being has become old and finally dies. We know changing life-situations, changing social situations, economical changes, and changes in our love-relationships.
We easily witness these eternal changing things, and we are familiar with it since we live on this planet. To rely on change is extremely reliable.
But as obvious the matter of change appears as denied it is in public consciousness; and it remains dark in its essential being.
Experienced psychotherapists know how difficult it is to change
character structures in depth. People like to hold on to their old identities no matter how difficult they may appear in life situations. Most people today know about the advantages of synergistic actions, joint ventures, cooperation, a consciousness of "we"; and they hold on to their competitive patterns - no matter what price they have to pay for it.
The public consciousness constructs an (almost) never changing world: (Almost) ever lasting goods, oaths of eternal love relationships, the everlasting glamour of a fancy car. Quarrelling couples sometimes act as if they would live for ever.
Buddhist teachings say that there is a grasping
for situations, things, beings, inherent to the human nature; it is a grasping, a holding on to the comfortable and an aversion to pain. The grasping human nature is seen as responsible for the illusion of stability, for the denial of change. People are greedy to reach comfort zones, and they feel aversion to the uncomfortable - even if they know that this pattern paralyses their lives, even on cost of no development, no inner and outer growth, and no change.
Greed to the comfortable may create a world of the fancy glimmer of paralysis. It is a world of doing, of action, and of no acceptance. To accept change means the approval of suffering in the world. And paradoxically this may open hearts.
People behave so greedy to the avoidance of pain because their lives are so painful, the more we are grasping to joy the less we are able to accept it.
There is too little joy, too little ecstasy in people's life.
There is so much anxiety. It is not only the anxiety of death. It is the whole sum of all the little anxieties of the daily life: the anxiety not being able to talk about personal needs to the beloved ones, the anxiety not being able to function, not standing out in the daily routine, the countless many anxieties of doing right and wrong in decisions etc.
It is the body of anxiety
who wants things, situations and beings to be unchangeable. The early philosophers of the 20th century talked about anxiety as the ground of all existence.
I think there thoughts were loveless. Anxiety is only the ground of everything when love is missing. Anxiety creates the paralysis of stability while love makes people jump in the never standing water of the river of life.
The evolutionary step for many people today may be the unification of brain and heart.
We may learn how damaging thoughts are in separation from the heart. Thoughts separated from the heart come to existence out of the anxiety-body; and anxiety makes this separation go on and on.
We may learn to synchronize our hearts and our brains.
Then anxiety becomes an illusion, and change can be seen as the motor of growth of an even bigger and greater heart.
May we be mindful and trusting.
