Even what we call stability or identity (e.g.: “I am me”) is really repetition, not permanence.
Change is just a different expression of the same underlying activity.
In both cases, there’s never true stillness – just different flavours of motion.
Even the past is an active construction, maintained by constant remembering and narrating.
Nature doesn’t distinguish between stability and change as opposites.
Both are expressions of process.
Maintenance is not stagnation.
It’s motion disguised as stillness.
Boundaries seem to be artifacts of system dynamics, not fundamental truths.
Take the analogy of an old CRT TV.
It is continuously and rapidly drawing and re-drawing all the images on the screen.
Even if you see the same frozen image, the CRT is actively drawing that same image again and again.
Just like the image persists via refresh, the identity persists via recursive maintenance.
The feeling of being a “continuous self” is actively upheld, like the CRT image.
It needs narrative, repetition, recognition.
Hatred and Love are about wanting change or no-change
Hatred is about trying to change something (push).
Love is about trying to preserve something (pull).
Hate and Love are for the ‘External world’ and the ‘Internalized world’.
– The ‘External world’ providing the good or bad experience
– The ‘Internalized world’ holding the good or bad experience
Conditioning is basically the ‘Internalized world’ derived from the ‘External world’.
It ties into craving (love) and aversion (hate).
Wanting to include –vs– Wanting to exclude.
Wanting to keep –vs– Wanting to remove.
Loved things torture you when they are gone.
Hated things torture you when they are there.
Hatred and Love are both responses to impermanence.
They are efforts to negotiate with the flow of change.
Some insights on change and free will
Generally, when we think of change,
We think of it in objective/external terms,
Like day-night cycles, season cycles, the rusting of iron, and so on.
So in this context,
We can study these changes, and make prediction models.
Here the subject stays as a relatively stable witness to the changing objects outside.
Changes of this kind are actually fairly superficial in our experience.
The subject is relatively unchanging while the object is changing a lot more.
Like when some people go on a vacation,
They are mostly the same people in different outer situations.
They mostly feel and act the same.
But there is another kind of change,
That is not objective, but subjective,
That is not outside, but inside.
Here, since the very subject changes,
This kind of change is unpredictable and profound,
It feels more like magic.
This kind of change is like when a person takes a medium dose of LSD.
There is a dramatic internal change that changes everything in their experience.
Childhood also is like that,
Where we go through dramatic shifts in our very view of reality itself with every passing year.
I am using the words objective and subjective in a more loose and colloquial sense here.
If I look at it deeper, all objectivity too would collapse into the subjective,
Where only the “Subjective” would exist.
Similarly I could also argue, that every subjective experience could theoretically be determined by objective factors that we still do not yet have the necessary subtle-enough instruments to define, study, and alter.
Objectivity = 3rd person perspective (3rd pp)
Subjectivity = 1st person perspective (1st pp)
All 3rd pp could be said to be subsumed into 1st pp.
I tend to look at all change as change in your state of consciousness (SoC).
Birth and Death are times of great change in consciousness.
Could equate it to sunrise and sunset?
While our Lifetime is more linear and less dramatic?
Could equate lifetime to day-time and after-death to night-time?
After death could be some unfathomable mystery though.
I think what is generally called free-will is the situation where:
We have a relatively unchanging subject in a changing outer world.
So then the subject is able to exert his/her steady will on the changing outer world and build things.
There is much less free will when we are undergoing any transformations of subject.
Here the subject changes relatively much faster than the outer world rhythms.
Transformation times are like kayaking in rapids.
The free will then has to be mostly used in service of the transforming force,
In navigating the rapid change,
So as to keep maintaining order and balance through the changes.
About transformation and true life
All transformation is by definition towards ‘the unknown’.
The surrender into it is not from any specific calculation.
It is ‘change’ for its own sake, and the ‘yielding’ to it.
The slogan here is:
“I am not trying to change, rather I am just allowing change to change me.”
“The whole moves the whole, no part moves the whole.”
True life is not about one’s smartness or calculations.
It is for its own sake.
It is the indiscriminate surrender into dissolution.
It is along the lines of: “Thy shall be done” or “Let thy be done”.
It is allowing the flowering, blossoming, maturing, burning up, unfolding of life through one, whatever the case may be.
It is like a great unravelling.
It is the indiscriminate and total willingness to dissolve into the greater.
It resembles a kind of great love.
That one dies into willingly.
It is not something a part of you does to gain something.
It is not something that is chosen.
Rather, it is something that one falls into,
When there is the realization that there is nothing greater that one can desire.
It is like falling into a black hole,
And letting the black hole turn you inside out.
Everything goes through a 180degrees reversal here,
As the mystics have shared since ages.
Whatever was once believed to be outside,
Is now seen as the projection of one’s inside.
Connects to the saying: “We do not see the world as it is, but as we are”.
It reminds me of the idea of the philosophers stone.
A peculiar saying that goes along the lines:
“The philosophers stone is not an object in your imagination,
Rather, you are the imagination of the philosophers stone.”
One never returns to the regular worldview after this.
This black hole is the passage/portal through which one exits this great illusion.
It is simply unimaginable and impossible to explain to the uninitiated.
It is like stepping out of this great magical spell that makes us believe we are a body in this world.
The past idea of the world and all that was believed to be real knowledge fades like a dream.
One is then carried through this vortex by the will of life itself,
From the known shores into the unknown.
All ‘Change’ is ‘Death’
All ‘change’ is ‘death’.Â
# Growth is additive change
# Decay is depreciative change
# Transformation is total change
All change is death.
All change is life too.
Change is both death and life,
When looked at backwards or forwards in perspective.
To die is to live.
To live is to die.
The changeless and freedom to change
The degree to which you root yourself in the changeless,
To that degree, you give yourself the freedom to change.
To be fully alive
Life is change.
All that does not change is dead.
So total change is total life.
To be fully alive,
Is to be like a fire,
That blazes, sparkles, and dazzles.
Everything you do must change everything,
So as to fall into endless transformation.
Whatever you do must be:
Towards what matters to you the most,
Towards what means the most to you,
Towards what you most deeply feel/desire/care about.
It must transform and change you fully from moment to moment.
Living in a way where the whole moves the whole.
Where all of you is free,
In full power, glory, and splendor.
Living every moment from the creativity,
Of ushering a whole new world at each moment.
Bringing/Gathering all of one at each moment,
Only to fire up and change it all up in the next.
Prayer for Wisdom
Give me the wisdom to know:
# What I CAN change + What is WORTH attempting to change.
# What I CANNOT change + What is not WORTH attempting to change.
# What I CAN change + What is WORTH attempting to change.
# What I CANNOT change + What is not WORTH attempting to change.
Change and Death
Generally we think of death as an event,
But really, when we look into our experience,
We see, all change = death.
Total change = Total death.
And the change is in the contents of consciousness.
Total death = Total newness/total rejuvenation.
So every death is also a rejuvenation.
But really, when we look into our experience,
We see, all change = death.
Total change = Total death.
And the change is in the contents of consciousness.
Total death = Total newness/total rejuvenation.
So every death is also a rejuvenation.
I am interested in extreme experiences
I am interested in extreme experiences,
Internally or externally induced,
Experiences that give me liberation, powers, freedom,
Experiences that release or change the spell I find myself in now,
Experiences that convey and indubitably prove to me,
The emptiness and freedom inherent in the field.
When something is changed,
Freedom from that thing is straightaway proved.
Internally or externally induced,
Experiences that give me liberation, powers, freedom,
Experiences that release or change the spell I find myself in now,
Experiences that convey and indubitably prove to me,
The emptiness and freedom inherent in the field.
When something is changed,
Freedom from that thing is straightaway proved.
Journey to the Abstract 