Change isn’t just inevitable. It’s constant.
And yet a huge amount of mental energy goes into trying to hold reality still—trying to predict, brace, manage, and resist what’s already in motion.
The strange part is that the attempt to control doesn’t actually control anything. It mainly reinforces a familiar loop: me, what I want, what I think I need, what I’m avoiding.
So the real question isn’t whether change will happen. The real question is what it costs to fight the flux.
Change Is Constant. So Why Resist It?
Why do we resist change?
Do you ever really look at this? What the cost is of resisting change?
Change is not just inevitable. It’s constant.
Whatever this is—this reality, this appearance, this kaleidoscope of non-dual experience—it’s endlessly fluctuating. Endlessly in flux.
So what is the cost of trying to resist that?
The Cost of Resisting Change
In one sense, resisting change doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t affect the flux.
The seeming separate self-structure that feels like it’s managing everything doesn’t affect reality. It doesn’t affect the unconditioned at all, of course.
But it reinforces the thought loop of me: what I want, what I think I need, what I think is coming, what I think I am avoiding.
It’s a thought loop. That’s all it is.
The belief that we can resist change isn’t necessarily conscious. It can be unconscious—an unexamined belief.
But the belief “I can resist change” is one link in the chain of the self-referential thought loop.
If there’s anything uncomfortable, it’s the self-referential thought loop.
If there’s any way we can truly define suffering—unsatisfactoriness, dukkha—it is the self-referential thought loop.
[Possible clarification needed: “dukkha = self-referential thought loop” is presented here as a functional definition within this teaching.]
It’s inherently uncomfortable.
Why?
Because it feels like it’s apart from everything.
The Unconditioned and the Illusion of Separation
The unconditioned is everything. The unconditioned is boundless.
The unconditioned has no limit. It has no outside. It has no other. It has no inside either.
It’s not relegated to anything discrete or distinct, or fixated or imprisoned. It’s not relegated to anything.
It’s just the unconditioned.
[Possible clarification needed: “unconditioned/unborn/undying” is used as a non-dual pointer to immediate reality, not a philosophical doctrine being argued.]
And the feeling of being apart from that—though it never even happens—we never really are apart from anything—still shows up as a signature.
When the sense of a me, a separate self, gets momentum in the thought loop—thinking, thinking, thinking—it starts to pick up the signature of separation.
But it’s an illusion.
There’s no actual separation. There’s no actual distinction that says, “I’m here and that’s out there. I’m inside and that’s outside.”
You will never find a concrete place that holds that separation paradigm as a structure.
Looking for the Impossible: Control Through Resistance
So instead, what we do is look for the impossible.
We look for proof that we can control.
And we control by resisting endless change—endless flux.
There’s a huge irony here, and it’s not just an intellectual irony. It’s a felt irony.
When we think we are in control in this way—when we think we have control by pulling back, by being separate, by anticipating and believing we can choose through the paradigm of separation—we convince ourselves that’s what we want.
It feels like that’s what I want. What I’m interested in.
But it isn’t.
The Fear Built Into “Being in Control”
Because it comes with angst.
It comes with anxiety that things are going to be out of control.
As soon as we believe we’re keeping things in control, we have an immediate psychological fear that they’re going to become out of control.
Maybe we notice it early on. Maybe at some point we forget we’re doing it to ourselves.
And we just keep doing it. We keep convincing ourselves we can control in this way.
And the irony is: even though it feels like what we want, it makes us feel uncomfortable and out of control.
It also seems accurate in some way. We can talk ourselves into believing it’s actually happening.
When the Loop Stops, Everything Settles
But what’s strange is that when the whole thought loop of separate self—me and mine, me and mine, me and mine—constantly chasing what you think is going to make you happy…
When that stops, everything settles.
And it does settle. It gets very settled.
When everything settles, you realize it’s not like you’re out of control.
It’s not like there’s a you apart from anything.
And apart from that metaphysical description, it feels joyous.
It feels like freedom.
It is freedom, because you’re free to be everything now—free to be, in a sense, what you always were.
Or reality is free to be what it is—what it always was, what it could only be: unconditioned, unborn, undying.
[Possible clarification needed: “unconditioned/unborn/undying” is used as a non-dual pointer to immediate reality, not a philosophical doctrine being argued.]
A Fundamental Correction: Choice, Doership, and Flux
From that non-perspective—because it’s not a perspective—there’s a rightness.
You can tell there’s been a correction. A very fundamental correction in the perception of choice, the perception of doership, the perception of agency, the perception of being able to resist change and resist flux.
And you realize all you ever wanted to do was be the flux.
Because you always were. And you always knew you were at some level.
So there is an irony here that’s very felt.
But it’s also like so many things with awakening: it’s the kind of thing you’re not going to get ahead of time.
Understanding what I’m saying won’t satisfy you.
The satisfaction comes from going through it—going through the process.
The satisfaction comes through unbinding. Thorough unbinding. Vulnerable, thorough unbinding.
That’s where the satisfaction comes. That’s where the clarity comes. That’s where the freedom comes.
And then it will be clear.