Understanding Change
By Gurudev

Change is not just the force of destruction but also the force of creation. Underlying the forces of opposites is the integration that is inherent in change. Change has neither ups nor downs. It is neither good nor bad, neither right nor wrong. All opposites become one through change.

If you trust change, you have nothing you need to change. You are at peace with change. When you are at peace with change, you are at peace with what exists at any given moment. When you are at peace with change, you never feel short-changed. If you change with the changes that come, you won't be afraid of the future. Change is timeless. It has no future and no past.

Change lives in freedom from attraction or repulsion. It has no choice or preference. It moves through all opposites and never gets affected. Therefore, change is also central to harmony and balance between two opposites. Change is how the whole phenomenal world is born, grows and evolves.

Change is the reality of the material world, while changelessness is the reality of the spiritual world. Change is based on cause and effect. Changeless spirit has neither cause nor effect. It exists beyond all changes. All changes are inherent in the changeless reality.

The mediator between changing body and changeless spirit is the ego-mind that is itself subject to change. We resist change when we experience pleasure, but we want change when we experience pain. We are in a love-hate relationship with the opposing experiences of life that constantly change. We develop all sorts of control systems through money, power, skills, manipulation, and mind control to circumvent change. If you have personal attachment or preference for any given experience - which is bound to change – then you are bound to the fear of change.

Change is impersonal; however, resistance to change is personal: I want change at the rate I want it, and in the way I want it - that is personal. Personal desires and impersonal change are in perpetual conflict.

Because each of us is embodied spirit, we have the potential to participate in the physical body and live in the changeless state of consciousness through choiceless witness awareness. Attachment to either choice or witness is only a human possibility. Witness consciousness is individual, but change is universal. Through witness consciousness, the individual merges into the universal through total trust in change.