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October 5, 2016 at 12:49 pm #117272PeterParticipant
My experience of change is that it is something that happens very slowly and then all at once as we don’t tend to notice all the little culminating causes until an effect is experienced
And that no matter how much things change everything stays the same which might sound like a paradox but I don’t think it is.
I once asked a phycologist the question, Can we Change? I assumed that he would node and say of course we can but he didn’t. He suggested that we might stretch unless there was a traumatic experience impacting our cognition but not really change.
I thought about it. I’ve changed jobs, friends, locations, thinking, beliefs… I’ve done a lot of changing, but have I changed
My answer like the phycologist was no. I’ve stretched but the way I experienced the change remained, once everything settled, the same. Though everything changes my experience of the change, how the inner I/me observed it remained pretty much unchanged and that it was the inner experience that made the difference in my experience of change.
When I attempt to observer the observer I notice that the filters in which change was experienced were not my own. What I mean is that I feel they were created early in life before having the awareness of decrement. (Nurture and Nature = Fate)
That the capabilities of how we will be able to experience our experiences are pretty much set by the time we are five. Worms Write ONCE Read Many programing filters that we spend the rest of our lives trying to understand and undo. To stretch with the inevitable retraction.
(Nurture and Nature = Fate? The observer noted that free will to change was possible but that it was very difficult to exercise. As above so below as below so above, we are influenced and we influence however the former is more likely)
It might sound as if I have given up and stopped striving for growth… I haven’t. To be candid I suspect that is also something I don’t think I can change. But my experience of change is different now, if difficult to express.
I strive to stretch and experience change but without expectation… perhaps it’s a kind of detachment… (I suspect after reading that last statement that my expectation of change was a magical hope that I’d wake up one day and be someone else.)
Anyway I’m interested in hearing about other people’s experience of change. Do we Change?
October 5, 2016 at 1:40 pm #117281LacyParticipantNoh, I on the other hand think we constantly change. Our cells, our thoughts, our ideas, our goals, our experience.
If you are asking a psychologist – neuroplasticity is a science that has proven that yes – a personality can change. Much the same like we train to dance, practice to thrown and catch a ball, work on a better handwriting and so on – we can change how we think, how we feel, how we behave – I think that is also the whole point to buddhist lifestyle as well.
Humans are extremely adaptive beings. We very often NEED to change in order to survive.
October 5, 2016 at 1:49 pm #117282PeterParticipantThat life requires the sacrifice of life we latterly change with every breath we take yet we don’t generally experience that as change
I agree that we change objective measurable qualities quite often however it seems to me that our experience of ourselves that makes those changes (assuming we don’t identify our sense of selves with our thoughts, ideas, goals…) changes very little.
October 5, 2016 at 2:22 pm #117287noritParticipantI asked a therapist this and they said yes, as long as someone is open to changing, and works to do so, that anyone can change. I think (hope) this is true, also. I would very much like to change into a better version of myself.
October 5, 2016 at 8:42 pm #117308MikeParticipantThere is a famous quote by
Heraclitus: “There is nothing
constant except change.”
Every experience we have
changes us in some way.
Our personalities, bodies and
minds are constantly evolving.
There’s a book, Counter Clockwise,
that discusses how a change in
scenery (older music, newspapers, etc.) made people look and feel
younger – and do things they thought
they were too old to do. Ellen Langer
wrote the book, based on a Harvard
psychology experiment. You should
check it out or Google it. It’s
very interesting. -
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