We are created to know ourselves not by what we think about, but to know ourselves within God's ever-present, perfectly changing Life. The challenge for us is that we are habituated to thinking about ourselves and deriving a sensation of ourselves based upon the images that we consider.
What happens to us when we feel the blows in life? In those moments when Life is actually trying to bring us a completely new character, the opportunity is refused because we meet it with an image of what is "supposed" to be. We think that life has sent something to hurt us because we feel the impact of the change, and at the second of impact, we feel pain. The pain that we feel is not because things changed, but because our mind has identified that moment with a certain image that is counter to how we want life to be. We are struck by our desire, and we push away what is really nothing more than an invitation to change ourselves by taking part in a turning point.
Wherever we are, we are in a universe that is never not turning -- even though we can't see it. There are resonances, vibrations, forces, energies, things that are never not moving around us. And when the universe turns, we are intended ourselves to turn with it. When God's life moves, we are intended to move with that Life. The purpose of that Life is for us to understand our life in it. But we don't understand our life in it because we sit outside of it, trying to figure out what to do with what we call "change."
If we want to have a life awakened in Real Life, we must use the turning points in a new way. We can use the changing we see to bring ourselves into God's life. There is no moment in which we can't see with our inner eyes that things are moving. Without trying to find a position by which to understand the movement, we can live with it, let it talk to us, let it change as it would change. Then we'll begin to go through what it means to have an awakened life, which means that we are that in which all these changes are taking place rather than just a series of sensations or changes as we are at present. In a sense, one is all these changes and yet something that is totally changeless, because one can let all the changing take place, watch it, and be brought to life through it, to live in it without thinking or fantasizing about it.
There is no moment in which the whole of the turning of the universe isn't producing a corresponding turning in the soul. That corresponding turning is part of the Great Turning. One's life within that turning is what it means to be in true relationship with God, which is what Love is -- the whole of relationship with change, not just selecting what changes to make in order to find something that we call "love." This is the difference between a man or a woman who looks at life, and when change comes, they feel the blow, versus understanding that no matter what it is that is taking place, it is part of a seasonal movement. It is part of the Grand Change by which we begin to recognize at long last that we are both this infinite and ever-changing movement -- both what we call the "good" and the "bad" -- and we are the unchanging awareness within it.
Use the moment. Let what you see changing bring you to awareness of the changing it is producing in you, and become the observer. Learn what it means to watch, and you'll see something that will help you understand why this life need not have fear in it, and why you are intended to discover for yourself God's Life in you through Him.
