Self Transformation-A Paradox

Surge Twenty Six (Advanced)

Self Transformation – A Paradox


We find there is a lot of interest among large numbers of people to “changefor the better”. Whether you call the goal ‘improved efficiency’ or ‘effectiveness’ or nothing less than “enlightenment”, we are eager to become something else than what we are now. Sometimes we have a vague picture of our goal and at other times certain well worded descriptions of the same.

In the process, we have no patience to observe and understand “what we are”. Shutting our eyes to the mess our daily life is, we are dreaming of reachingsomewhere. Is it not necessary that we begin where we are? Of special interest here is the structure of the
self – the seat of all our hopes, expectations, rears and suffering.

If the self is cleared, is any “becoming” meaningful anymore? If the very entity that seeks success (or enlightenment) disappears quietly, will questions of future prospects remain valid? Will there not be full energy in the present if the future does not bother us?

Living in the present has become an attractive idea to many spiritual seekers. When it is an idea (concept, mental picture) and we desire to be in the present, it is a contradiction right away. Deciding “I shall focus on the present” maintains the division of what I am
and what I shall do.True living in the present is where there is no “I”(to seek to live in the present).

Is it not strange that countless forms of spiritual aspiration – labeled noble desires – create and sustain a division, which is what we want to eliminate?

We are stuck when spiritual growth is a goal in our thinking. There is transformation taking place quietly when we just live every moment with total awareness.

Seek change, your dream continues; see without seeking, an awakening will happen.

Swami Chidananda

24 March 2004

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