Nurturing, cultivating, and attending to our individual and collective growth is what the journey of a Human Life is all about. Healthy growth keeps us feeling open, clear, energized and fresh. I doubt many of us enjoy the alternative, e.g., the experience of being stuck in a rut, caught in the same old same old, and saddled with stale lifeless patterns of living. The pandemic has brought this truth into crystal clear focus for many, if not all of us. When we’re locked into the same routine, over and over again, we yearn for something (anything) that will break the monotony.
But there is a big difference between simply trying something fresh, new, and exciting, and growing as a human being. Real Growth requires a fundamental change in our perspective; a change which transcends, but includes, our old way of experiencing the world and Life Itself. Why is this so? Because the perspectives we hold determine how we frame and relate to our own experience; and how we relate to our experience determines the quality and depth of the experience.
If we think about this for a minute, well see that whenever we try to describe to others how we have grown, it always comes down to a change in perspective. We say something like “we used to see the world like this, but now we see it like that”; and because now we see it like “that” we have changed our behavior; which is the same thing as saying we’ve changed our relationship to our experience.
In short, we Grow when we fundamentally Change our Minds.
Here is a simple but powerful example. From a dualistic perspective, one where there is the perceiving subject (us) and the perceived object (our field of experience) we believe and act as if Life is happening to us. What we experience is all around us and coming at us. We spend our days trying to navigate the maze and deal with the incoming waves of experience, both big and small. When we live through this perspective we often end the day exhausted, because we’ve put all of our energy into fending off the world that is supposedly “out there”.
By contrast, we can live our lives from a Non-dual perspective, one of innate Wholeness and Interdependent, Interconnected Being. From this perspective there is no subjective doing of anything — there is only the Happening of the Field of Being. Life is happening Through us and For us; and instead of fending off our experience and organizing our lives to avoid our pain, we can relax and ride the waves, whether Big or Small. We are Sacred World Itself, and every moment is a Divine gift, freely offered to each of us, over and over and over again — fresh, open, and with endless possibilities. When we live from this perspective we find ourselves full of energy, refreshed, and deeply grateful at the end of or day. We Go with the Flow, and the difference is nothing short of extraordinary.
So, how do we accomplish this Change of Mind? It is simple — by practicing the Non Dual perspective of Wholeness over and over again– initially in meditation practice, and eventually throughout our day. If we practice consistently, this perspective will stabilize in our minds, and we’ll find that we have fundamentally changed our lives, as well as the lives of those around us.
But there is a catch — we can’t allow our practice to become routine and lifeless. We need to bring our Whole Selves to the task, every time.
We must generate the mindset that this practice is the most important thing we could ever do for ourselves and others. In order to transform our old habitual perspective(s) we need to bring the proverbial “fire”, because there can be no transformation without an input of energy.
If we want to increase the amount of energy we put into our practice, all we have to do is raise our frequency — higher frequency means more energy. We must practice as if we are already Extraordinary Beings that are full of Love, Kindness, Gratefulness, and Generosity. These higher frequency emotions, along with sustained intention and aspiration, raise our energy levels.
As the latest neuroscience research tells us, the Mind is malleable–the neurons that fire together, wire together. The more “fire” and enthusiasm we bring to a new way of Being and Becoming (the Non-dual Wholeness Perspective) the faster the Mind will transform — and a transformed Mind means a transformed experience of Reality. Not only do we Grow, but we find ourselves flowering and unfolding our full potential — happily dancing together to the one song of the Uni-Verse. Let’s Grow together.