Deep Personal Change

Deep personal change is a changeless change. This paradoxical statement hides a great truth: in order to be Self-Realized we do not have to change. We are already Self-Realized; the challenge is to know this truth in the same way as we know other things in our life.

Change is always perceived as a movement from one point to another. All our life we try to change or reposition ourselves to cope with changing external circumstances. If deep personal change is not change in the traditional sense of the word, what does it mean? Let us look at all the three words carefully. “Deep” means finding our current surface state (the current mental and spiritual state) and stretching it in different directions to find a glimpse of the special qualities that we possess as human beings and probing the meaning of it all with a “beginner’s mind.” Where do I come from? Where am I going? What is the purpose of my life? What kind of life should I lead?

Any such inquiry is “personal” because it is focused on our own narrow self and as it gradually expands it turns itself into a maddening search for Spirit (or Self), that is our true inner core, a state of changeless bliss, ever present and eternal.

“Change” is nothing but a realization that what we always believed to be real is real only in a relative sense. We have to live in the world but we have to do it with dynamic detachment. By becoming one with Spirit, we are not negating the world. We cannot negate the world because it is also Spirit at the collective level. What we negate is the grand illusion of our own separation from Spirit; the illusion that our affections, our possessions, and our social connections are the only reality that we need to care about.

This is a fundamental shift of perception. Instead of looking outward our gaze shifts inward. In our daily life we value things that we can see, feel or touch. We value things that give us comfort. We value relationships because they make us feel secure. But what is hidden beneath the surface is the center of our greatest potentialities. What is hidden is Spirit whom we search outside all our life and never find. Deep personal change takes us on to the path of discovery and provides a clear map of how you can get there.