Don't Try to Change

We all have our strategies for change.  If I am not feeling myself, I meditate not just once but twice a day.  I will do my asana practice but then I will also go for a run.  I may even go on a cleaning binge, organizing and reorganizing.  Or I may follow a clean diet for a few days.  And this is the conventional approach.  You don’t like how you are feeling? How you look? How you think? Change it!

But then what if this desire for change becomes a strategy of avoidance.  An unwillingness to see our vulnerability to feeling a certain way.  An unwillingness to see our vulnerability to looking a certain way or to having certain thoughts.  ‘Wait I can’t be this un-compassionate, I have to change.’

Sometimes the attempt to change is not only a strategy of avoidance but also an attempt to control that which feels out of our control.  Organize and reorganize!  And yet any change that comes about through exerting control usually doesn’t last.  

There are those spiritual teachers that say ‘Sure we can go about our strategies for change, read self help books, find a guru, see a therapist, and so on.  Or what if we don’t try to change a thing?’

What if we don’t try to change a thing?!  Imagine how many segments of our economy would crash if we all just stopped trying to modify ourselves: cosmetics, fashion, fitness, yoga, etc.

Rosso Gobbo, 1955 Alberto Burri

Rather whatever it is that we are trying to reform, inquire into what is larger. What is larger than the malaise, what is larger than the heartbreak, what is larger than the anger, the confusion?  And just observe where that inquiry of “What is larger than this?” lands you.  Into what space it delivers you.  Staying away from concepts of “Love of family”, “Love of Guru”, “World Peace”.  Inside of you, in the experience of you, “What is larger than this thing I want to change?” (Make this initial inquiry with eyes closed.)

From this space view fully the melancholy, the confusion, the pain, whatever it may be you wish to alter.  It may even look different from here. Allow this space, this awareness to be the starting point for the meditation, the asana, the clean diet, instead of the desire to change or control.  From a larger capacity, not from a perceived limitation, we act.