Change

[dwai]

I've been thinking about Change for a while now. We all recognize on a subconscious level that change is inevitable. The only thing permanent in this transactional, phenomenal world IS Change.

 

So how do we recognize when circumstances are changing? How do we adapt ourselves to change? Do we fight change or accept it? Do we even have a choice? 

 

I want to look at these questions one at a time, though they are interrelated. 

 

How do we recognize when circumstances are changing?

 

Change can happen suddenly or sneak up gradually, but recognizing things are changing is a matter of awareness and intuition. For folks who cultivate/meditate, there will be signs ahead of any significant event. But the question is, can we recognize it? 

 

I will give an example. In the fall of 2019, I started sensing a very distinct shift in energy that is hard to describe. It felt like over a month or so, a lot of static energetic noise had been introduced into my environment. Not literal noise, but enough disturbance in the field (or "force" - to borrow from the Starwars mythology) that it alerted my subtle intelligence. I spoke with my close friends and teacher about it - but I interpreted it as a profoundly personal change. Of course, what happened deeply affected me, but it also affected the rest of the world.  By developing our subtle powers of observation (via meditation and internal/energetic arts), we can prepare ourselves to better sense change as it beings to manifest.

 

How do we adapt to change?

 

One of the things about change is that our natural inclination is to resist it. Why do we resist it? Because of a few factors -

 

1. Fear of the unknown - we don't know the outcome of the change. 
2. Endowment Effect - In management theory, there is a term called the "Endowment Effect" - we value things we have more than those we don't have. In a sense, this is also driven by fear, but the fear of losing what we have, which looms larger than the potential of gaining something that we don't have. Therefore, we prefer status-quo and therefore resist change.
3. The "sunk-cost fallacy" - A cognitive bias that can lead us to make illogical decisions - tends to include sunk costs for forward-looking decisions. We might consider a change in progress, look at what we've already expended in time, money, and/or energy, and decide to follow through with it just because we have already "sunk" our resources into it. This can be summarized in the "FOMO" category. 

 

So what we need to do to adapt to change, IMHO is to establish a distance between ourselves and our circumstances. If we spend time regularly doing some self-introspection and have a good handle on where we stand in life in terms of our profession, finances, relationships, and so on, we would be in a much better situation to adapt to changes that might affect them.

 

 

Do we fight change or accept it? Do we even have a choice? 

 

Being aware of what is changing and whether it will be beneficial will help us decide whether to fight the change or accept it. But then again, we must ensure that we don't succumb to some of the cognitive biases I shared earlier. Change can be a good thing. Only we must develop the perspective and vision to recognize it. Fighting change is not always futile and/or instinctive resistance. Sometimes it is necessary. For example, if someone develops a disease that can be treated, they should pursue the treatment and become better. We can't just accept that we are sick and not do anything about it. Acceptance doesn't mean inaction. We are primed for action only when we accept a particular situation/fact. Then the central question becomes, what action to take? 

 

 

[Barnaby]

52 minutes ago, dwai said:

Acceptance doesn't mean inaction. We are primed for action only when we accept a particular situation/fact.

 

I think this is key. It's only when we fully accept change and its inevitability – and thus let go of the fears you mention – that we can judiciously select the course of action that circumstances require.

 

54 minutes ago, dwai said:

Then the central question becomes, what action to take? 

 

And this is where the Yi Jing enters the equation, no? 

[old3bob]

the tides of change are not central to our being if we have an anchor in the unchangeable.