We can never change; we can never stop evolving
There is no such thing as ‘change’. Nothing in the universe ever changes. There is only ‘evolving’. And no, the two are not synonymous – there is a world of difference between them. To change is to jump from one state to another upon exerting (conscious) effort. To evolve, on the other hand, is to undergo gradual, incremental development and it happens below the conscious level of mind. This difference has a serious implication in our self-development endeavours.
We never change, but we never stop evolving. Do yourself a favour — quit trying to change to no avail. You have not become who you are overnight. You are the cumulative result of all your mental and physical experiences since birth. All these experiences – what you have ever done and not done, what has ever happened and not happened to you, what you have ever said and not said, what people have ever said and not said to you, what you have ever thought and not thought, what you have ever felt and not felt, etc — have moulded you into the being that you are now (and your future experiences will continue to mould you). Exerting a conscious effort to change yourself or a trait you have come to dislike is naïve. It is like pushing against the mountain. That is why, despite our best efforts at changing, we revert back hard to where we are, to our old habits.
That does not mean we should fold our arms and let the evolution take its course. Not in the polluted social environment we are born into and brought up in. You can and should have a conscious say in the person you evolve to be.
You note, by the time you acquire critical factor to effect any alteration, before you are seven, large part of who you are have already been moulded. It is upon learning that certain part of who we are holds us back from attaining our desire that the wish to change springs. Perhaps we are less ambitious, lack in confidence, are inhibited in our disposition. Hence, it becomes your life-long assignment to alter your being into the person of your desire.
Where does one begin to evolve consciously? The first and most important step is to make truce and align oneself with the person you have become, in all its ugliness, before you ever attempt to alter it. Seek to forge communion with it. Converse with this person, not with impatience and irritation that accompanies the urge to change it, but with patience, understanding, and care. This the only way to tap into the process of evolution and channel it in the direction you wish to evolve.
An epiphanic outcome of communion with self in this regard is this: the main reason why our endeavours to change have had mixed results at best is because the desires that prompt us to wish to change are not rooted to our ideals and values, but alien desires we picked up for their symbolic prestige, such as buying a mansion, marrying a certain type of person.
You see, at our core, we have ideals. Inside our being, we have digestive system of experience, so to speak, that digests all experiences it perceives and absorbs the most humane, the most spiritual, the most essential (all the unpleasantness about you, the fear, self-doubt, and the pessimism, are the unhealthy fat that this system retains and forms over this core). That makes up our core. We feel the presence of these ideals when our actions, thoughts and feelings are in congruence with them, and we experience a sense of bliss. The master key of life is to follow your bliss.
The take away lesson is this: identify your ideals, build your goals around them, and place these goals in your consciousness. The alteration to the person of your truest desire then becomes effortless.
