The Impossible Question

While most people accept that life is change, very few regard that changes can be for the better -- instead of the inevitable worse -- and if they did, then there wouldn't be so much resistance to change, so much fear, anxiety and trepidation.

But we are conditioned to believe that change even for the better, must be at least painful and arduous -- rather than alleviating and ultimately eliminating the pain, and being easier instead of more difficult and complicated.

However, that is not a necessary component of change -- but the price the controlling few think to exact, in order to let the uninitiated into the promised land.  That is the kind of hazing that takes place in every society, to keep the few (elite), the few -- because if everyone could have it so good and easy, what merit could they have over the others?

That is not essential to change -- but rather the rearguard action of those who will soon be last in the coming societal upheaval and transformation.  The vanguard of society, has already moved on -- in creating the new  and not just repeating the old -- as though those incantations, can prevent that progress and evolution to the unrelenting better.

That is the very nature and movement of life -- to seek the better.  All forms of life do that -- because it is in its best interests to do so, and that which is not successful, will perish -- to make way for the successful.  That is what one needs to understand about life -- that if one isn't getting better, than one is getting worse, and even hoping to stay the same, is getting worse, because all of life is improving -- whether one wants to or not.

If one is constantly adapting, re-creating oneself to the challenges of each new moment and time, then one is always at their best -- until one day they are gone -- but not deteriorating for half their lifetime, as many in contemporary life presently experience -- along with so much fear and trepidation.  But if they can continue to keep growing throughout life, then there is no dying and deterioration but only actualization and fulfillment of all the days of their being -- which is living in the eternity of each moment.

And that is the promised land and not only a life in the hereafter -- where supposedly, one gets to live that life in another.  If this life is only a preparation for the next, then there is no better preparation than living that life in the present one.

That is entirely possible -- to do directly and presently -- what one thinks they have to do the opposite to achieve -- because of a societal conditioning, to make everything difficult and complex -- or how could the few (elite), remain above all the others?  So we need competitions to ensure that there will only be one winner -- and all the others, losers -- because that's how we are conditioned to think necessary, so that there isn't a level playing field.  Some must be worse -- even if we have to create a way for them to be so.

So one asks, "Is it possible for everyone to get better -- and how is that possible?"

What Are People Doing Wrong?

Many people say they want to change, but everything they do, reinforces the way they are -- and so they remain so.

Nowhere is that more true than it is when people say they want to lose weight -- while maintaining that their favorite pastime is eating.  That is the obvious problem.  One has to develop another pastime besides eating -- and not simply exercising so that one can eat more. 

Even when they do go to gyms to workout -- they choose a style of working out, that allows them as much inactivity as possible -- which is to choose an overheavy weight, perform five repetitions of that movement, and then take the next ten minutes to recover for their next set.  In the meantime, they are commiseerating with others of the same problem, that it is very hard to lose weight -- even exercising, but it sure has worked up an appetite, that they now feel fully justified in indulging.

Their entire lives is one of indulgences -- and that becomes the way they are, quite visibly and palpably. There just can be no other way -- but the truth, of how they live.  So when they go to the doctors, as they frequently must do, there's a whole litany of ailments -- caused by the way they live, and everything they do, and do not do -- that cannot be hidden or erased.  That truth is manifest -- and not what one would simply like it to be, in spite of everything they do -- that makes it so.

One has merely conditioned oneself to that denial of reality -- and what is -- and no amount of wishful-thinking, will make it otherwise.  The task, is to align the reality with what one would like to believe, until they areone and the same, and not fragments of every half-truth one wishes to believe.  The result then, is an integratedhuman being living in that one reality -- and not the many fragmented ones that is the reason for their mental illness and disintegration, decline and demise.

A life in increasing integration -- which means oneness, is a life getting stronger, more efficient and purposeful, while that which disintegrates, is losing its cohesiveness and sense of direction, to become better as a result of knowing its purpose for being and doing, and not increasing its randomness of activities and behaviors that overwhelm those sensibilities.

Death and dying, doesn't just happen -- but are the result of one's behaviors, as much as those designs and desires that foster growth and vitality.  So just doing anything -- in any ol' way -- will not be sufficient, to attain the precise outcomes one hopes to achieve by practice -- of doing the right things.  And how does one know that? The results are usually obvious -- and have been for millions of years of evolution, that there is a reason it has to be this way -- and not to be aligned with that reality, makes extinction imminent.

One still has to be the best one can be -- despite the welfare and Social Security, that says we don't have tobe, as all the margin of safety we need.  For life surely, at that level, is guaranteed at the minimum, and not the maximum of what it can be -- beginning with one's baseline health and functioning.  That is mental as well asphysical -- and beyond that, firing on all cyclinders as a complete and fully-developed individual -- which means to be indivisible, and unfragmented in every way -- so as to be a total human being.

And that is what is now possible, in an age of affluence -- instead of just eating and consuming more -- because that is now possible too.  But those were the solutions for an earlier time -- and regressing to the caveman, is not the extent of human progress, and its highest form and achievement.  

The thoughtful and creative people of any time, are focused on the frontiers of these developments and different possibilities -- and not just a return to the good ol' days, when life was brutal, short and nasty -- as the ideal of how it should be.  And that is why history and patterns repeat themselves -- in thinking there cannot be a liberation from this past, and chain of suffering and torment.  But it means having the insight to see that possibility -- and not just accept the fate everybody around them says they must.

That is a huge part of the aging dilemma -- as people don't know how to live their lives beyond the brutal, short and nasty -- but to assume and accept that fate, because they cannot imagine and create any other -- because nobody taught them how.  That is what they had to teach themselves.  That -- is the meaning and purpose of their life.