Key 4 - Reconcile our nature
copyright © john lamb 2019
“Give me the wisdom to accept the things I cannot change” -Gururaj
We now need to address the major impediment we cause by unwittingly seeking permanence. The mention of impermanence (2nd Buddhist Seal above) was kept short because it must be examined here, in greater detail.
Nothing ever stays the same. This is an absolute certainty related to ‘life’ in the 3rd dimension, to which we have restricted ourselves if we are reading these words.
Once more, we’re dealing with the mind challenging what is by projecting fearful imagination into the future. Isn’t it amazing that the mind doesn’t like real love? It only likes the possessing sort of love because that’s stuff it can hang onto. Nonetheless, once we can concede the mind is an imposter, with no foundation of any life other than a sense of grasping outside itself, we are travelling fast towards the goal of non-suffering.
Because of the mind’s duplicitous ways, there is also some difficulty acknowledging that space-time is also another inventiveness of our own doing. But space-time is an illusion. I quote Albert Einstein on this certitude: “Human life is an illusion of consciousness.” His statement isn’t viewed like a prophecy any more, either. Since his demise, physics has confirmed his truth by quantum examination.
The mind often projects a future fearing change declaring, “Change will disrupt and destroy me.” But fear, as we learned way back, is the opposite to love; thereby an obstruction to progress is formed, and we get stuck.
Here our fourth sattvic key flashes into the foreground. Concerning what’s going to happen, in what we call ‘the future’, we have to reconcile our nature. This means thoroughly coming to terms with our real nature, instead of living a false-outlooking form of pretence, to enable us to surmount the emotional status that resists the inevitability of change and the emptiness of phenomena mentioned in the Buddhist seals (in key 3).
Readers will hopefully excuse the repetition here regarding the illusion of solid matter; of separateness. But, seriously, we have to shout instructions at the mind sometimes, over and again; be its commander – and insist it listens to us. When apparent solid matter is rationalised as a falsity, only then can we discernibly come to terms with the nature of change, which is also a falsity in Real Self terms (so needs an adaptor to quell visibly disorienting tactics in what appears to be life).
This makes sense doesn’t it? The mind is yours to command. Your life and what you get out of it is the result of what you allow yourself to think. If you want to think, “Mind, control me, I’m happy living the lie,” you’ll let your brain run you around more or less chaotically. Most people don’t think this directly but, accordingly, they suffer from life’s vicissitudes because of unconsciously reckoning, “I won’t put in the effort required to master my mind.”
When we finally put in enough effort to quell the mind’s shenanigans, we soon find these two cardinal obstructions – a) insisting matter is solid, and b) resisting change - are the root cause of all unhappiness.
I call a) and b) The Naggers. By using a short relevant pseudonym like this I can bring these two bastardos to heal quickly when problems crop up!
As we’ve now scrutinised, if we choose not to challenge the mind, we would in effect be electing to suffer more when hurtful changes arise. In reverse, this obviously means if we accept and take on the flow of nature we’ll not suffer as much when things go wrong, by bringing the influence of change-truth to the forefront. And, what’s all this meditation-infused living meant to do for us? It’s for the removal of suffering of course.
I don’t want to sound like a priest who might whinge on about the threats to your future if you refuse to do something. No. What I’m pointing out is change is certain, whatever you believe and whatever way you decide to go about things from here on. We all have the choice to make it easier for ourselves but we definitely won’t improve our lives if we keep thinking of change as hurtful.
I can confidently state, from both personal experience and my discussions with hundreds of truth seekers, when one gets used to the concept of putting space-time-belief into its correct frame of reference, hurts diminish to a pinprick. Compare to what derives from the ‘woe is me’ attitude of those who can’t make out what they’ve done to upset an imagined controller or ‘can’t get back to the way things were’.
As I’ve postulated in key 3, facing the truth is our most powerful fuel. The mind doesn’t like truth and the threat of change surreptitiously nags us somewhere in the background. So let’s put truth facing into workable action, big-time!
With mind-power force operating behind the scenes, how do we produce in ourselves a willingness to change our outlook; more so a welcoming, inviting attitude to change, particularly when the mind repeats, “Don’t go there.. discomfort.. horrors.. unsafe.. avoid at all costs”?
Unemotionally, look at what’s already happened. People all get from eight to eighty (on average) and change occurred every second of their lives. Sometimes it was massive change within their own demesne but that was karma and not due to the fact that things and circumstances continuously change.
Acknowledge that life is change and it’s not scary, it’s ordinary. Without change there would be no growing up, no reproduction, no enjoyment at all - in fact no life. Consequently, the mind has no grounds at all to think these things. In effect, we are change, just as we are awareness and we are love.
If we suffer from mind-disturbance on this subject we must change perspective. Changing perspective is the best, most remarkable, change we can bring about for ourselves. Gururaj’s words ring through my head as I think about it “Meditation doesn’t bring you to self-realisation, it’s for building the strength to change your perspective.”
Here is the central plank of this whole thesis. Changing our perspective is opening up to greater consciousness and is the single key to solving life. It’s literally the only route to self-realisation. Once we get to grips with this cornerstone of life-truths we are up and away into new, graceful, alluring, pleasing ground.
First, accept everything is now and is always the way it’s meant to be. Our nature will always have its way. We can’t alter what is to be, however much we try. Trying to resist change causes suffering, often to the point of severe illness and early death. Living life positively expecting change as inevitable is the mountain we all need to climb - and quickly too.
[Incidentally, ‘meant to be’, quoted in the previous paragraph, is a widely used phrase but a bit of a misnomer. What’s happening is just happenings. Nothing anywhere intends happenings. I prefer to think of this phrase as meaning things are, as the Buddhists say, ‘as they are’. But the existence of karma (key 5) means nothing happens to an individual by accident.]
By welcoming change we accept self-responsibility for the way things are - today, tomorrow, at any time. We can learn a lesson in each happening. In this way we open up to life instead of trying to hide from it. Life is a challenge. It isn’t supposed to be a system where the way things are today is the way they’ll always be. If life was supposed to be like that, it would be like that. But it isn’t. As already mused over, if life was like that, we wouldn’t grow up or reach any of our desires or goals.
I like to recall the anecdote about a woman aged (circa) 110 years – fit and well and still walking several miles each day in the mountains – who was asked by a journalist to what she attributed her long healthy life. After some thought she replied, “I welcome change.” There’s so much wisdom in this story. The woman didn’t want to shape anything towards any projected image. She welcomed life each day, whatever it held. Accordingly, she saved otherwise wasted energy - and she lived very happily. It’s our resistance to the nature of life - our refusal to reconcile it - that uses life up. [Thanks to beloved friend Roopa Morosani for using this anecdote in one of her talks in the UK during the 1990s].
Welcoming change is a mindfulness practise. It coincides with the art of being in this moment, when thoughts of what might happen are overridden. This art improves the more we practice it. When we live in this moment, not seeking any better moment, nothing can affect us.
We can find this statement practical and true by challenging, each and every day, the false idea of a personal past that matters. There isn’t a real path or a real journey but, as Gururaj put it, a cosmic dream exists in which we are more or less consequence-free holograms. The quicker we get used to this actuality, the better off we’ll be.
So, we have a solution. The more we practice welcoming change, we’ll arrive at the inclination, “I don’t need to avoid change.” When this stage is reached, we cease taking life so personally. All the (waking) practices integrate with each other, bringing us to a point of attention; the no-thing that encompasses every-thing. We become the observer of our journey, seeing it as a series of lessons we need without attachment.
I’ve read about particular affirmations, which seem to me relevant to this subject. These could be practiced as well, turning these examples into your own wordage. Go back over keys 1 to 3, and look elsewhere for advice, to help develop affirmations as a continual practical assistant.
[Examples] First, “Every change is one I have given myself.” “Change is the wonderment of evolution.” “I love life’s changes, bringing newness constantly.” Affirmations can be repeated silently or orally. They are so powerful. Affirmations are discussed again in key 5.
There’s an experience of joy and lightness to be had each time we affirm we are not resisting change. We can swim leisurely with our natural energy flow, dropping resistance to it, once we subscribe to truth and alter our perspective accordingly. I advise this, after many (slipping and sliding) attempts myself: It’s worth the effort, repaying us a million-fold.
Click below for the other Keys: