How good are you at accepting change?
I know sometimes I don't like it so much.
There's this really interesting challenge for those of us in this teaching or for those of us just wanting to have a better life.
So in order to have a better life,
You have to be willing to change,
Right?
Because the life we have now requires us to be,
Do,
And think something different than we've ever been,
Thought,
Or done before so that we can have a new experience.
That's change.
And the ability to accept change makes us more resilient.
It allows us to flow with our living.
It allows us to grow.
And so I often feel like we have this counterproductive relationship to change.
On the one hand,
You might be sitting there thinking,
I have a dream.
I have a goal.
I have a desire for my life.
And I know I need to change.
But on the other hand,
You walk into your favorite Starbucks and they've changed the way they've put it in order and it irritates you beyond no measure.
And so we don't get to have it both ways.
We have to be willing,
I think,
To accept change in this human experience because it's the norm.
Whether we like it or not,
It's going to happen.
Things will change.
People will change.
Conditions will change.
Circumstances will change.
And the better you and I are at accepting that,
Rolling with it,
Being with it,
Processing it,
Of course,
Grieving it because certainly some changes bring about huge amounts of grief for us.
The better we are then at putting change forward when it's time to change our lives for the better.
I did an interesting experience a few years ago,
An interesting experiment.
I did a class or a workshop on change and people came in to sit down for the workshop and they all got their places and they were all comfortable and cozy and ready to start the class.
And so I said,
OK,
This is a workshop on change.
And so everybody pick up all your stuff and go to a different seat.
And boy,
The curmudgeon-less that came up,
People were like,
Oh,
They're looking around and they were groaning with deep,
Profound pain,
This horrible assignment that I had given them to change their seats.
And they went and they moved around.
And some of them even refused and sort of gave me nasty eye and said they didn't want to change their seat.
And I thought,
This is so fascinating.
This little simple thing,
Change your seat,
Change your life.
We say here around all this place all the time,
Change your thinking,
Change your life.
And boy,
The angst and upset that it took for people by just me asking them to change their seats was very profound.
And when we processed it and we talked about it,
What we came up with is that some of them had arrived very early to assure that they could sit where they wanted to sit and that my asking them to change their seat disrespected their willingness to come early.
Some of them just have their favorite place.
They like to sit when they come into the room where we have the class.
And I had usurped their experience of favoriteness.
And some of them had gotten all settled in and gotten very used to the comfiness of the seat they were in and had gotten themselves all set up for the class.
And then I disrupted their routine by asking them to change their seats.
And so all of these things can cause us angst.
And my point in the activity and my point today is that if that is so uncomfortable for us,
Imagine the discomfort that comes when big changes happen in our lives that we're ill prepared for.
And then imagine that as you are yearning for some betterment in life that requires you to change and the conditions to change.
And there's this underlying feeling of I don't like it.
I don't like it when things change.
I don't even like it when someone asks me to change my seat or when they change the aisles at my store or when they change something on an app that I'm used to and they upgrade it and suddenly it's all changed.
That our complaints,
Our discomfort,
Our angst about these little changes.
What if they're keeping us from actually changing our lives for the better?
So as you might imagine,
My first invitation today is to accept change to the best of our ability.
I think what that requires is for us to be conscious and conscientious of little changes that occur.
Yeah,
They change the way the lanes go on that street.
Oh,
Cool.
They made an interesting change.
Let me enjoy this.
Oh,
They changed the aisles in my favorite store.
Well,
I wonder what I'm going to get to see now.
Oh,
They changed something on that application.
What if I assumed it was for the better?
So in those easy elements of life,
Just going with the flow,
Letting it be okay.
In the more profound places,
When big things change in life,
People leave,
Move,
Pass away,
Step out of our life,
Whatever it might be,
Processing our emotions about that,
Being clear about that.
Because some of our resistance to change is a triggered reaction to the past when change occurred and it was painful.
And so being willing to be proactive in your life and my life when big changes happen and journal and cry and get prayer support and talk with people and understand that if big change has occurred,
That we can and should do what we can to deal with it at an emotional level.
Because the willingness to accept change and therefore bring about a greater ability to be resilient or a greater ability to flow with it doesn't just happen magically.
It happens because we're proactively willing to process and do what we must do in our lives to continue our healing journey to get more centered for ourselves so that when the change happens in the world of form,
We're prepared for it.
We have some place to go to talk about it,
To complain about it,
To bemoan it for a little while until we can learn how to integrate it.
And that's the next step.
It's to integrate changes more quickly,
To integrate those changes that are small or that are bigger into our personal experience to be able to talk about it.
Yeah,
Yeah,
When that person moved away,
It really changed my life.
Or when I became a parent,
It really changed my life.
And here's how.
Be able to articulate it,
Be able to be aware of it,
Not be in denial of it,
Not just push it down and persevere forward.
That helps a lot.
And to accept from a mature state of beingness what the prophets and the teachers and music and art has told us forever,
Everything must change.
Every one must change.
Change is the constant in this human form,
In the human condition,
In the world of effects.
Resisting it really is a waste of time and energy.
Learning to go with it,
Learning to flow with it,
Learning to be with it is profound and powerful and allows us then at that human level when it comes time to make important changes to better our life,
The resistance,
The drag of our change resistance is healed more so that we can walk forward into our dreams and our goals.
And that leads me to the last thing.
Our founder in his homes here in the Science of Mind and Spirit talks about the changeless element of life.
So I think as a human being,
As a spiritual being,
I do this work at the human form.
You do this work at the human form to get comfortable with change.
And at the same time,
We deepen into spirit,
God,
Source.
And the reason that it's called the changeless one is that it can always be relied upon for comfort and wisdom and guidance.
And so we can feel that the more we bask in the presence of the changelessness of the divine nature of our being,
Then there comes,
I think,
An even greater empowerment to the changes that occur in your life because there's a sense of the presence.
There's a sense that I'm being flowed forward in the river of livingness in a profound way.
Embrace change,
Dive into change,
Flow with change,
And remember that changeless energy that is the truth of who you are.
Accept it.
