What's Changing?

"The thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 30, Section III, 8:4

I was just talking to a friend who commented how everything in the world is in the process of monumental change.  My rather surprising and spontaneous comment was: "Not here.  Everything here seems to be hardly changing at all."  I think it took me by surprise as much as it did my friend!  And it gave me pause.  After all, there are a lot of outer changes in my life.  I was just blessed with grandson number four.  I just took on two new cats and a new dog here at the Sanctuary, and a new Quaker parrot may be coming, as well as another horse.  I'm making changes in my websites and the content offered there.  And I've started doing more public speaking appearances.  So what is the source of the 'nothing's changing' comment?

People are always complaining about their lives, of course.  Either everything is changing or nothing is changing... and both seem to be cause for complaint!  So what is the real issue?

A Course in Miracles explains that literally everything in our daily lives, the things we think we want and the things we think we don't want, serve only one purpose:  to keep us so preoccupied with the illusion of life, the constantly changing kaleidoscope of forms and events, that we don't acknowledge that it isn't real.  Our true Self is eternal and unchanging, the Ground of All Being... and the changing, shifting forms that come and go are mere shadows, and are falsely perceived as substance by the egoic, conditioned mind.

The more our awareness of the eternal deepens, the more we notice that there is no real difference in content in all the constantly changing forms.  The quality of all of them is nothingness... and so nothing really changes.  Forms shift and change, the furniture is rearranged, but nothing in the world of illusory forms ever really happens.  It doesn't matter if we move from one side of the world to the other... we find that nothing has changed.  Because what is Real remains in us... unmoving, eternal, perfect, and joyously serene. 

It's the Real and eternal shining in my new grandson that I celebrate.  It's the Real shining through the eyes of the animals and people in our lives that we love.  It doesn't change, even though our emotions may be in flux, and the forms and relationships may shift and change.  The Real, the Eternal, the True, the Love... no matter what we call It, THIS is always effortlessly present, and can be attended to with our awareness in the midst of it all.  This we can depend on.  This will never change.

"As God created you, you must remain unchangeable, with all transitory states by definition false.  And that includes all shifts in feelings, alterations in conditions of the body or the mind; in all awareness and in all response.  This is the all-inclusiveness which sets the Truth apart from falsehood." -- A Course in Miracles; WB 152, 5:1-3