Change Is Life

I am spirit and life. I grow and become more aware every day. I discover new aspects of myself, qualities that I didn't know I possessed, all the time. Many of the things I knew about myself in the past turned out to be inaccurate or mistaken. I hardly know my dearest friends of 40 years ago and love to do things now that I did not like back then. However, I consider myself the same being that I was earlier in my life. So much has changed throughout the course of my life but my awareness has remained all along.

I wasn't as aware of myself 40 years ago. I was aware of myself but I wasn't sure which aspects of my being were significant. When I graduated from college, I had developed a strong identification with my analytical mind, my ambition, my dreams formulated out of the world in which I grew up, my work ethic and my beliefs about the nature of reality as well as what I thought mattered in life. I was aware of myself in that context but it turned out that I was fitting myself into a distorted picture of reality rather than experiencing myself as I really am. I tried to fit into the model of reality presented to me by my culture but didn't feel comfortable with all the cuts and edits required for me to be there.

I am glad I didn't accept the challenge of fitting into the standard reality because I don't imagine I would know myself or enjoy life nearly as much as I do now. I had to separate myself from others and the cultural standards to actually get to know myself as I am. I was studying science to become a physicist back then when I was fitting myself into cultural reality, but wandered off that path when I started exploring myself instead. I didn't think it would take very long to get to know myself, imagining that I would find a better way to fit myself into cultural reality once I knew more about myself and what I wanted to do with my life. I didn't realize that my identity was so interconnected with the picture of reality I carried.

The truth is that both my sense of whom I am and my understanding of reality change as I became more aware of myself. In fact, I grow accustomed to the changing landscape of reality as much as I discover that my sense of whom I am is an ever-expanding experience. Change is an aspect of life, not the disruption that I once considered it to be. I am not the same as I once was because I have changed. My life continues to change. So, there's no reason to hold onto the past. Life is change and that's spirit come to life. No wonder all the changes taking place in my life right now feel so natural to me.