January 20, 2024
It never occurred to us that we needed to change ourselves to meet conditions, whatever they were. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
If an individual soul is inseparable from the Universal Oneness, temporarily experiencing Self as a physical being, and the Universal Oneness is unchanging…does that mean that at the deepest and highest levels, I, too, am changeless?
I’m making an assumption that Universal Oneness is an immutable (and largely incomprehensible) essence. I believe its original, present, and future nature is changeless. It is a stillpoint around which other things change. Planets, individuals, every molecule that ever was or will be, all mutate and become other than what they were.
It occurs to me that perhaps human stubbornness, our characteristic resistance to change, might be because we intrinsically know our nature is to not change. We are that stillpoint. Perhaps the confusion results when we fling ourselves into physicality while still clinging with one tiny hand of memory to the knowledge that we do not and cannot change.
*****
I’ve concocted a nice theory as to why I am so resistant to change. One might even say I hate change—unless I instigate it, of course.
I can assign all the highfalutin spiritual concepts I like, but I still have to deal with continually morphing personal circumstances and a world that changes in ways that are uncomfortable, frightening, irritating, or otherwise discomfiting.
When things slow down enough—I never remember while alarming events are in progress—I adjure myself to use the spiritual tools humanity has so generously been given. Granted, they all rely on me changing to suit circumstances. I’ve yet to master the noble attitude of accepting this disagreeable fact without some resentment, even while using a spiritual tool.
Is resentment an entrenched aspect of my personality? Is there a spiritual tool I can wield to exorcise it? Naïvely, I imagine that if the resentment dragon were tamed, I’d experience a much more comfortable existence.
*****
You’d think Change with a capital C could be a tiny bit more accommodating. How about, no more than one alarming change a month? No can do? Okay, one a week?
Maybe the only okay-ness I can find in the swampy morass of this unpredictable life is to take the tiny hand of memory that knows this isn’t really me, here. Give that hand a tug and say, hey, take me back to Papa. To Mama. To who I was and who I am, before I dove into the absurd, risible funhouse of third-dimensional Planet Earth.
Take me back home. Even just for a minute. And let that homecoming sustain me through whatever the next overwhelm might be.
