Humans inherently know that they are constantly changing. Just as Life is constantly changing.
Yet, interestingly, most people are afraid of change! They sit and wait in their familiar spaces and relationships, imagining that everything stays the same. This imagined stagnation brings the illusion of comfort and control – ‘safe’ human thoughts.
Let’s look at this illusion from a few unique perspectives:
Firstly, it is impossible for anything not to change. Just looking at the individual, we have physical bodies that grow and age, we have mental bodies that hopefully develop more integrated and abstract thinking, growing in complexity, and we have emotional bodies that also develop in complexity and maturity. We also have a spiritual body that goes through developmental stages to reach maturity, we have relational bodies, dream bodies and bodies of hope.
Secondly, let’s look at our spaces. Our spaces are in constant flux with our environments and others. Whatever and whoever we allow in our spaces, contribute to our experience of all our personal bodies as mentioned above. Start very near you and look at the clothes you are wearing, the room you are in, the people, animals and plants near you. Think of the food you eat. Think about the conversations you have, the trust/distrust your environment causes, the thoughts and feelings of purpose, belonging, love and compassion you feel. Our spaces change the whole time because we are alive and have agency. We move around, share our stories, and enter other people’s spaces too.
Thirdly, we have the illusion of time moving in a specific direction. It doesn’t really matter if time is real or not, what does matter is the personal experience of time: we see ourselves and others age; we experience birth and death, and we orientate ourselves, our hopes, dreams and relationships ‘in time’.
These three perspectives are important to consider when assessing our own quality of Life. Our minds take a snapshot of a significant moment, and we subconsciously compare our reality to the mental image we have of ‘how things should be’. As we update our mental image in line with the change taking place on all these levels and we allow the changes without resistance, we generally experience Life as good. The opposite is also true: by holding onto the initial mental image and not updating it, our various bodies resist Life happening. This means that our idea of Life is fixed and we resist the natural progression or evolution of Life. Unfortunately, our old mental image becomes outdated and far removed from what is really happening in Life. The further removed our idea is from reality, the more problems all our bodies experience.
All of us have the ability to look inside and see what works and what doesn’t – even if doing so is painful. I tell you this, once you have faced those painful aspects of yourself and are willing to update your ideas about self and others, we restore flow. Think of a river that was blocked and the water became stale. Such water is a waste, because it doesn’t mean much. It doesn’t support Life. As soon as the obstacles in the river are cleared, the stale water can once again flow and make space for fresh, Life sustaining water to move. Water is Life!
So, what can you become? You can also become living water. You can sustain Life and give Life, you can wash away debris and dirt. You can give hope. You can become renewed and reverend.
To become the river of Life, your highest calling, you only have to answer one question: “Are you willing?”
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