Many of us have a problem with embracing change.

To me it all points to change, whether it be to ourselves or our circumstances, being looked at as a challenge or leading to a positive outcome.  Something you should embrace. This may not always feel true, as it could be that a change in the work place has left you more financially challenged.  Which may not be a good thing.  However, motivating you to find another job that might pay you even more than you were originally earning and one that brings you more joy is a good thing.   Last week we spoke about how sometimes the worst things that happen to us pave the way and prepare us for something greater. As the Dalai Lama says, “Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck”.

I remember many years ago reading some work by Deepak Chopra saying that we don’t grow old but when we stop growing we become old.  In other words, embracing change is important because if you “don’t move with the times”- you run the risk of becoming stale and bigoted.  As much as I would agree here, I also think that it is important to retain your values.  Just because half the world seems to be taking topless or half naked Instagram shots- doesn’t mean you have to do the same to get “likes”, if it is not in accordance with your values.

I believe the main reason we should embrace change is that if we don’t, we get stuck in the mental stance of complaining about how things should be.  Complaining is a great way to strengthen the ego.  It keeps you at a great distance from accepting what has happened and moving forward.  It makes you right and others wrong.  Like I heard Eckhart Tolle say, when people complain about the traffic it is as though they have put themselves somehow above reality.   In terms of becoming present or conscious living, constant complaining is an obstacle.

Accepting everything that happens to you like you chose it as Eckhart Tolle puts it, is one of the greatest ways to start living consciously.    At some level, the book “The Secret” tells us we have created it by allowing our energy to vibrate at a level for which the event was a match.

I just want to deviate for a moment here, to say that; I am aware that the last point is particularly hard to accept if you are a victim of crime or have received an injustice of any type.  Very briefly I will add, so as to avoid those that have been victims leaving this Blog feeling irritated in any way, that sometimes you cannot isolate an incident in your life and make sense of it, out of the context of the bigger picture.  It is like taking a paragraph out of a page and trying to make sense of it without the context of the book.  Maybe it will be an instigator of greater presence in your life.  Maybe it will not.  Without the totality of your life, and reason for being here- it sometimes just won’t make sense.  It is sometimes better to leave it at that.  We will explore this topic in greater detail at a later date.

The main point of this Blog is that there are many positive things that could possibly be achieved from acceptance.  Even change that can be perceived as negative may play a role in leading to increased awareness, individually or collectively.

Photography courtesy of Iggy Kreutz and Fagun Mishra