Overwhelmed by Change, or Excited?

photo credit: Aaron Springston

Why do some people take events as stressful, while others interpret them as exciting and fun adventures? I know I’ve done both, using changes in life’s circumstances as an excuse for retreating into emotional distress, tempered with bouts of drinking. I’ve been watching a dear friend who is moving from one house to another. She has experienced some other life trauma in recent years and feels overwhelmed by this change. I watch her whirlwind thoughts dwell on the sadness and seeming impossibility of adjusting to a new place. Her fright carries over to her pets. I try to calm her, but she doesn’t want that. So I’ve been thinking about these things today, wondering how we grow into acceptance of the moment, rather than fighting to keep things as they were. It occurs to me that she feels punished by the God she worships. Looking back to a time I was overwrought by illnesses, death, and other forms of separation, I see my change in attitude began and continues with an unfolding view of God, and my expression of this all-encompassing Love. I think I’ll sit and pet a cat and ponder this for a while!

“Change is always fearful to the separated, because they cannot conceive of it as a move towards healing the separation. They always perceive it as a move toward further separation, because the separation was their first experience of change. You believe that if you allow no change to enter into your ego you will find peace. This profound confusion is possible only if you maintain that the same thought system can stand on two foundations. Nothing can reach spirit from the ego, and nothing can reach the ego from spirit. Spirit can neither strengthen the ego nor reduce the conflict within it.” A Course in Miracles T-4.I.2