CHANGE

“Growth means change and change involves risk,
stepping from the known to the unknown”

Although life involves constant change, often so gradual we do not notice it immediately, we seem to be more nervous about change than almost anything. All progress involves change and without it it we will remain stuck. The objective of life I believe is to move from darkness towards the light and from ignorance towards knowledge. As we gain more knowledge and our generous actions and thoughts to others brighten the light within us, so we learn about unconditional love. Through love we learn wisdom. As Emmanuel Swedenborg said, “Love is the light of the world; wisdom is the light in which love sees.”

In order to learn and grow we have to undergo many different experiences in our lives. Sometimes we fail to learn a particular lesson and when that happens we will be given the chance to learn the same lesson through a different experience. Whatever happens, it is certain that things are going to change. If we learn to accept life as an exciting adventure then it will be much easier for us to embrace change. For some reason we often assume that change is not going to be good or we are so attached to our current situation that we wish it to go on and on and thus fear of change is born.

In my experience, although when we look back we sometimes yearn to return to what we saw as a happy time of our lives, when we take account of who we have become since then as a result of growth and change we realise it would not be suitable for us as we are now. I think it is important to understand that we are the sum of our experiences; we are to a large degree, what those have made us. Alexander Pope said, “Changed through all and yet in all the same,” meaning that we are still the same soul and spirit, even though learning and experience have changed us in many ways. Pope was talking about all humans when he wrote this but I feel it applies just as much to individuals as it does to us as a species. All we have been through remains with us and has moulded us – all that we will experience in the future will mould us further, so that when we eventually leave this world, we will take with us the sum total of all we have learned and experienced and that forms our character. It is all we can possibly take with us because we, of necessity, must leave behind us all the physical things we have collected in our lifetime. Even things which we feel are vitally important to us and to which we are strongly attached must be abandoned.

Through change we build our character and learn to relate more closely with those who share our lives here. If our fear of change becomes too obsessive then we do stand still and when we come to look back on our lives from the spirit world, we will regret the missed opportunities that mean we have to learn lessons in spirit that we should have learned on earth. Some change is dramatic and because of this we are disoriented and wring our hands, wondering why everything can’t remain as it was. I believe that although some changes do appear to us be dramatic and lead to huge upheavals in our lives, the reason for such changes can be found if we look. Often we find that an apparently small action of ours was what began the process. We bring about most of the changes ourselves, we are just not aware until the change manifests. Our inner self knows what we need, it knows why we chose to come to the earth in the first place and it will always strive to create situations from which we can learn what we need for the next step along our chosen pathway. Consciously we cannot recall why we chose to come into this life but inside we know. If we try to understand the process of change in this light, I believe we will anticipate it eagerly rather than fear it.