Consider something, old friend. Everything you have ever known through your senses has changed. The body you arrived in has changed—and one day it, too, will be gone. The child became a youth. The youth became an adult. And the adult keeps changing before your eyes. Thoughts change. Beliefs change. Desires change. Moods change. Emotions change. Relationships change. The face in the mirror changes. The world around you changes. Even the person you once believed yourself to be has changed countless times. Yet we spend much of our lives clinging to these passing appearances as though they were permanent. Perhaps this is the first great illusion: We mistake what is passing for what is permanent. The ancient sages looked deeply into this mystery and posed a remarkable question: If everything I can perceive is changing . . . what is it that knows the change? Change itself can be recognized only against something that remains. You know the clouds are moving because you perceive them against t...
Consider this, old friend. The mind will always remain the mind. Its thoughts may change. Its inner weather patterns may shift. Its moods may rise and fall. Its beliefs, desires, fears, and expectations may change. But beneath all this movement, the mind continues to operate within the same familiar context. Like a pendulum, it swings endlessly. From past to future. From pleasure to pain. From hope to disappointment. From positive thoughts to negative thoughts. From wanting to having . . . and back to wanting again. And we spend much of our lives trying to control the swing. We replace negative thoughts with positive ones. We exchange limiting beliefs for empowering beliefs. We attempt to transform sadness into happiness, fear into confidence, and dissatisfaction into fulfillment. And perhaps, for a while, we succeed. But consider what has actually happened. We have changed the contents of the mind without stepping outside the context in which those contents arise. We have simply chang...