We experience a false sense of safety when life stays the same for any period of time. We delude ourselves by thinking that we can keep change at bay—avoid its disruptions—if we simply focus on battening down the hatches more securely and concentrate on perfecting imperfections. There is a sense that by making things more perfect in the present, we will safeguard certainties, decrease uncertainties, and secure for ourselves a personally endorsed future.—from Fearless Future
When I observe how frantically we do this at times, I am reminded of an account I once read from a young man who emerged from autism with the ability and clarity to reflect back on how it felt to have experienced life as an autistic child. He described a memory of lying on the floor, feeling obsessively driven to count each minute bit of shag of carpet, fearful that if he should stop for one moment, his whole world would collapse around him. We expend tremendous energy in bracing ourselves against change, busying ourselves with minutia in order to avoid releasing ourselves into the fullness of life—and the unexpected.
It is freeing to resolve that nothing stays the same and that we are powerless to control our lives and the people around us. When we become more self-referral—checking in with a quieter place within ourselves—we are less dependent on sameness in our outer world for that illusion of safety. Alternative and far more creative routes are then revealed through our intimate connection to the Source that celebrates and operates through the ever-changing ebb and flow of life.
I experienced a shift in my own life, when I observed a change in my perceptions regarding the impermanence of all things. It came to me through two different, contrasting experiences, twenty years apart from each other.
When I was in my early twenties, after the passing of both of my parents, I took a trip to La Cañada, the town near Pasadena, California, where I grew up. I wanted to pay homage to the place where I spent my first eighteen years. I will never forget my feelings of sadness and frustration when I saw the house that my father was forever improving and maintaining all those years.
The house was now painted a dingy brown and the lawn in front looked unkempt and rusted from dead grass. I looked down into lower adjoining area—“the park”—where my brothers and I used to play baseball, kickball, tag, and hid and seek. We would shriek with delight (and fear) when we swung down into our playground, clinging to inner tubes suspended by long ropes and tied to the old oak trees. The area was now subdivided. All the trees were gone and the property looked invaded by the four houses that stood where we had romped and played.
“Can’t anything stay the same?” I lamented to myself, feeling a tremendous void left from my parents’ passing. I suddenly missed them, terribly.
Later, into my forties, I was living in an old apartment on Lakeshore Avenue in Oakland, California. It was a wonderful, funky old apartment from the ‘20s, with high ceilings, vintage glass doorknobs and beautiful hardwood flooring. Large bay windows overlooked Lake Merritt.
Over one weekend, a movie crew was filming “Made in America,” staring Ted Danson and Whoppie Goldberg. I walked around the lake to watch the production, periodically, throughout those couple of days.
Further behind the lake, the vacant space across from the public library had been transformed into a used car lot. A tall wooden cutout movie prop of a cowboy salesman waved in naïve customers. One end of the lake had been dredged to create the illusion of a beach. Before my eyes, I saw the movie people create a whole different reality.
I watched Ted Danson fall off a runaway elephant into the lake, I saw the camera crew carefully choreograph Whoopie’s “double” as she rode recklessly through a congested intersection on a bicycle. I felt sympathy for the forty extras who were directed to run down the middle of the street—shaking fists, furiously—at least as many times as they numbered.
On Monday, I took a lunch break and walked back around that end of the lake. There was no trace of the reality I had seen, created before my eyes. The illusion was gone. With surprise, I took note of the feeling of tremendous relief—rather than futility—as I allowed myself to experience my world as ever changing.
Over the years, something had grown in me that now anchored me to something deeper within myself and to my Source, rather than to all that is external, temporary and transient in my outer world. Granted, a lack of attachment to a movie set can hardly compare to the longing for the place and time of my childhood. But I noticed that the ache for steady, predictable sameness was most definitely, a diminishing one.
Years ago, a message came through for one of my earliest classes: “In these times, that by which you define yourself will be gone, so that you can truly know who you are.”
I observe more and more people who experience greater peace—as well as freedom—when they become anchored to life in this deeper and unattached way. Material possessions and approval from others no longer influence their motivation or their choices. Their guidance system becomes state-of-the-art when their hearts align with the Source. Synchronistic events and serendipitous meetings present unmistakable road signs.
Indeed, so much falls through the cracks—easily and so naturally—when we become the observers of our lives, living in an awakened state. Priorities, needs, preferences—and fears— shift and change. So does our relationship to our physical world. Our spiritual, eternal self becomes more identifiable, and our life’s purpose reveals itself. We value the lessons that bring the realizations and promote necessary growth. We are able to view the bigger picture by trusting intuitive insights. We operate from love instead of fear. It is well worth the journey.