Invoking Change

WEEKLY CONTEMPLATION

This week during your daily meditation, contemplate the following:

"In order to experience that which never changes, we must invoke change."

Dear Friends,

Is this simply an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms? Or, is there something in this teaching that we are being asked to look at more deeply? At first glance, we may think we understand it, and then carry that understanding out into our lives with great conviction.

But later, after more contemplation, we realize that what appeared at first to be a contradiction was in fact a profound Truth?

We all search for that ultimate experience of fulfillment, satisfaction and contentment. Don't we all want happiness and love in our lives and don't we want it to be consistent and lasting? When we finally experience a moment of real love in our lives, don't we utter a sigh of gratitude and fervently wish it would never end?

Happiness, love, contentment-forever! What a concept. Yet, underlying our most profound hopes and dreams, we tacitly pray for a state of bliss, joy and love that will never end. Heaven, Nirvana, Shangri-La, immortality-the list goes on.

The question arises: Is it possible to even consider a state that never changes in a world that is forever changing?

The Great masters tell us that not only does this state exist but it is the only state there is, that all else is an illusion created by faulty perception and wrong understanding.

The fascinating part of this whole drama called life is that we will never know the real Truth until we begin to see through it all. And what is the prescription for discovering this Truth???? Change itself!

I have looked back on my life so much after a profound, life altering experience with meditation almost 30 years ago and have come to realize that all my frustration, broken dreams, unhappiness and fear was the result of trying to get something grounded and lasting in a world that was incapable of giving it to me. Everything I ever did in my life previously was with the intention of finally capturing something or someone that would end my search and finally give me the contentment and love that kept alluding me.

But it wasn't until I came across a passage in one of my Meditation teacher's books, where he simply stated that all frustration and fear is created by trying to find something lasting in world that is transient and forever changing. "While you hold in your hands all of your accomplishments," he said: "your money, your fame and fortune, your children and family, even your body and your very life, they are all dissolving right before your eyes, and in the end the world will betray you."

He then went on to say that there is a part of us that knows no fear, that is never lonely or afraid, that is eternally happy and full of love and never changes-this is your True Self and all that is real. "Why would we ever want to seek this great state," he said, "if we felt content and happy as we were?" Enter the magic ingredient-Change!

It is now my understanding that the universe is totally benevolent, compassionate and filled only with love, for I have come to realize that it is out of this futility, this continuous frustration of trying to find something lasting in a world that is incapable of giving it to me, that a longing deep inside me was created. I became a seeker of peace, real peace. A seeker of contentment, real contentment. A seeker of Freedom, real Freedom.

In the end, it is an invocation to change the way we have always lived our lives, carefully and very beautifully orchestrated by this incredible universe of ours that ultimately puts an end to our suffering and fear and reveals to us the only Truth there is: We are all already free. We are all eternal beings, longing to experience that truth for ourselves. There never was anything else.

Meditation is the key to unlocking that experience. Meditate, Great Ones.

Love and blessings,

Alan