Change Willingly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJxRnjoTGDA

Video Blog Transcription:

(00:00):

My teacher used to say that you can change out of hope or desperation. He also had an edgier, similar saying that you can change willingly or on your hands and knees.

This second saying suggests that change is going to happen. That change is inevitable, that life itself is change. The essence of life is change. It's always growing, changing, and evolving.

But what I think we do sometimes as human beings is get into a phase of our life or a way that we're comfortable with things, and say, “This is how I want life to be. I don't want life to change. I want it to stay this way.” We try to make this dynamic and changing life static.

(01:01):

And, as I spoke about in a couple of video blogs ago, things tend to run their course; that phase of our life grows, develops, and then it gets to the point where it's complete. And right about then, life will send us this signal saying, “You know it's kind of time for a change. That this phase of your life is about done.”

And that's when we get this choice, if you will. We can either change willingly or on our hands and knees. In other words, we can say, “Okay, it's time to change. I think I'll do that.” Or we can put that off, and then it ends up that life forces us to change.

(01:53):

So, unfortunately, as human beings, I think we often choose to not listen to life's invitation or message that it's time to change.

It could be a relationship that we’re in, it could be a job or a phase of our life. What happens is, as it completes itself, it begins to shift, and it begins to kind of degrade. It's less and less satisfying, it might become more dysfunctional, and it's not as fulfilling anymore.

And it ends up getting more and more painful until it gets to a point where it's either too painful or sometimes something shifts outside of us. Like, we get fired, or they break up with us, or COVID happens, and our life gets rearranged that way. And something happens, and we're forced to change.

(02:55):

Now, obviously, this is not pleasant when this happens. And then we tend to take a little bit of the victim stance, like I got screwed over or this happened or whatever else. And we forget the point that Life gave us a choice, and we chose not to listen to it.

So then we tend to resent that life forced us to change. And then we brush ourselves off and begrudgingly say, “Okay, well, I guess I don't have much of a choice, so I guess I'll have to change.” And then we make the change.

But if you think about it, that's a lot of pain that we put ourselves through to make this change. It's a lot of karma, a lot of pain that we're creating for ourselves to go through this process, which, as my teacher suggested, is gonna happen anyway.

Life basically says, “You know what? This change is going down. You get a choice on how it goes down. You can either accept it or you can fight it.”

(04:01):

This brings us to the alternative, which is that we could change willingly. So Life comes along (spirit, life, the universe) and shows us signs that it is time to make a change. And it gives us an invitation. It says, “Okay, it's time to change, this thing you've been doing, it's kind of stale, it's come to its end.”

And we could say, okay, and we see that it's time for it. Or maybe we're still attached to it, but either way, we say, “Okay, I see that it's time to change. I'm going to open myself up to that. I'm going to explore what the new thing is.”

Even if I'm still attached to it, I could say, “Okay, it's been a nice run. I've enjoyed this while it lasted. It was sweet, or it was comfortable, or it was fun, and I'll miss this.” And we can go through whatever grief or whatever we need to do. And then we can venture off into the unknown, into something new.