What Is Change

What is change? The dictionary says this: to make the form, nature, content, future course, etc., of (something) different from what it is or from what it would be if left alone: to change one's name; to change one's opinion; to change the course of history. To transform or convert.

As we grow from infants, we constantly make small changes in our behavior to accommodate the changing world around us. As we grow older, we realize that we have a choice. We may think we know what is best for us, so we make decisions based on our current believes and they are not what we expected. Maybe we regret what we did or made bad choices; that's okay, it is part of growing. There should be a time when we realize that we may want to change the way we think to make our life easier or more fulfilling. Let's figure out what how to do that.

What is change? Why should we do it?

This is from the Science Of Mind text.

SELF-EXISTENT LIFE

"The most important thing that any student of the Truth can understand is the real meaning of self-existence. Whatever the nature of First Cause is, It must be Self-Existent, or else It could not be at all. It is, perhaps, hard to comprehend that there must be, and is, a Power which exists simply because It is what It Is; and yet this is the mainspring of all right metaphysical work and endeavor.

We must come to believe in, and trust, that Power of Life and Intelligence which is God, or First Cause. We must understand that we deal with First Cause whenever we think, at any, and at all, times. If we had to gather energy with which to energize the Creative Principle of Life, where should we go to get the energy with which to energize It?

We are constantly thrown back upon the fundamental proposition that Life already Is; and that we use a Power which already Is. Let us then, without doubt or fear, throw our word into that Great Receptivity and trust It to do the work."

I know you heard the term "do not live in the past, live in the present". This is true, although I will take it a step farther. What is change? It is the key to happiness. It is the ability to see, know and realize that every decision we make whether we are aware of it or understand it, it will affect us in what we call the future. This is cause and effect.

Try to really understand what I am going to say, please try to open your mind to all possibilities. There is no past, no present, no future, only now. As we think our next thought, anything before is the past. As soon as we realize this, the next thought is in the past and on it goes. We need to change our process of making decisions to positive habits. This will help in our future. Remember cause and effect; everything we do right this second will affect us in the next second. Leave nothing to fate, learn to make good decisions, make it a conscious effort so it becomes natural when you are not conscious of your thoughts in real time.

Dedication to Reality

"The third tool of discipline or technique of dealing with the pain of problem-solving, which must continually be employed if our lives are to be healthy and our spirits are to grow, is dedication to the truth. Superficially, this should be obvious. For truth is reality. That which is false is unreal. The more clearly we see the reality of the world, the better equipped we are to deal with the world. The less clearly we see the reality of the world-the more our minds are befuddled by false-hood, misperceptions and illusions-the less able we will be to determine correct courses of action and make wise decisions. Our view of reality is like a map with which to negotiate the terrain of life. If the map is true and accurate, we will generally know where we are, and if we have decided where we want to go, we will generally know how to get there. If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will be lost. While this is obvious, it is something that most people to a greater or lesser degree choose to ignore. They ignore it because our route to reality is not easy. First of all, we are not born with maps; we have to make them, and the making requires effort. The more effort we make to appreciate and perceive reality, the larger and more accurate our maps will be. But many do not want to make this effort. Some stop making it by the end of adolescence. Their maps 9re small and sketchy, their views of the world narrow and misleading. DISCIPLINE Dedication to Reality 45 By the end of middle age most people have given up the effort. They feel certain that their maps are complete and their Weltanschauung is correct (indeed, even sacrosanct), and they are no longer interested in new information. It is as if they are tired. Only a relative and fortunate few continue until the moment of death exploring the mystery of reality, ever enlarging and refining and redefining their understanding of the world and what is true. But the biggest problem of map-making is not that we have to start from scratch, but that if our maps are to be accurate we have to continually revise them. The world itself is constantly changing. Glaciers come, glaciers go. Cultures come, cultures go. There is too little technology, there is too much technology. Even more dramatically, the vantage point from which we view the world is constantly and quite rapidly changing. When we are children we are dependent, power-less. As adults we may be powerful. Yet in illness or an infirm old age we may become powerless and dependent again. When we have children to care for, the world looks different from when we have none; when we are raising infants, the world seems different from when we are raising adolescents. When we are poor, the world looks different from when we are rich. We are daily bombarded with new information as to the nature of reality. If we are to incorporate this information, we must continually revise our maps, and sometimes when enough new information has accumulated, we must make very major revisions. The process of making revisions, particularly major revisions, is painful, sometimes excruciatingly painful. And herein lies the major source of many of the ills of mankind. What happens when one has striven long and hard to develop a working view of the world, a seemingly useful, workable map, and then is confronted with new information suggesting that that view is wrong and the map needs to be largely redrawn? The painful effort required seems frightening, almost overwhelming. What we do more often than not, and usually unconsciously, is to ignore the new information. Often this act of ignoring is much more than passive. We may denounce the new information as false, dangerous, heretical, the work of the devil. We may actually crusade against it, and even attempt to manipulate the world so as to make it conform to our view of reality. Rather than try to change the map, an individual may try to destroy the new reality. Sadly, such a person may expend much more energy ultimately in defending an outmoded view of the world than would have been required to revise and correct it in the first place."

The Road Less Traveled, 25th Anniversary Edition

A NEW PSYCHOLOGY OF LOVE, TRADITIONAL VALUES AND SPIRITUAL GROWTH

M. SCOTT PECK, M.D.