Everything Changes, Except This: The Unchanging Truth of the Now
Look around you. Everything is in motion, in flux. Seasons change, children grow, technology evolves at a dizzying pace, and even the "you" reading this right now is subtly different from the "you" who started. As the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously said, "You can't enter the same river twice." Life is characterized by constant change.
Our minds, in an effort to make sense of this ever-shifting reality, often categorize the world into dualities: good and bad, happy and sad, fast and slow, pleasure and pain. This duality helps us navigate, compare, and understand. But in this dance of opposites, is there anything that doesn't have an opposite? Anything that is truly constant, truly unchanging?
The Singular Reality: The Present Moment
The answer lies in the very fabric of existence: the present moment.
Unlike everything else, the "now" simply is. It doesn't have an opposite because it is the singular, eternal reality. Think about it: the past exists only as a memory, a story we replay in our minds in this very moment. The future exists only as a thought, a projection, a plan we formulate in this present. Neither the past nor the future has any tangible reality outside of the "now."
When we dwell on past regrets, angers, or even nostalgic longings, we pull ourselves out of this singular reality. When we obsess over future anxieties, fears, or even exciting anticipations, we are also extracted from the only moment that truly exists. This perpetual tug-of-war between what was and what might be is a primary source of our distress.
Beyond the Shifting Surface: The Core You
Just as the water in a river constantly changes while the river itself—as a geographical entity—remains, so too do we have an unchanging core. We change, we grow older, our bodies transform, our experiences accumulate. Yet, at our essence, we are still the observer of our thoughts. This is a crucial distinction: we are not our thoughts.
Our mind is a powerful tool, generating thoughts, ideas, and narratives. But too often, most of us mistakenly believe that our thoughts are us. This identification with our mental chatter is what we call the egoic mind. It's the "I" that constantly seeks to define itself through comparison, judgment, and external validation.
The ego's primary agenda is to pull us away from the now. It thrives on pulling us into the past—what was, what should have been—and projecting us into the future—what will be, what might be. It loves to label and judge everything: "good," "bad," "right," "wrong," "success," "failure."
But these tactics come at a cost:
Labels change as our perceptions shift, limiting our understanding and creating rigid boundaries where none truly exist.
Judgments obscure reality and limit our wisdom, preventing us from seeing things as they truly are in this moment.
Emotional attachment to times that don't actually exist (the past and the unknown future) creates unnecessary drama and profound suffering.
Of course, it's perfectly fine to plan for the future or learn a lesson from a past experience. But the key is to do so without drama, without getting emotionally entangled in what isn't happening now. The past is gone, and the future is not yet known.
Lifting the Veil to Peace and Wisdom
When you learn to lift the veils of this addiction to incessant, ego-driven thoughts—when you quiet the constant noise hurled at you from within and without—something profound happens. You become peaceful. Your wisdom grows. Your relationships improve because you interact from a place of non-judgmental awareness rather than reactive, egoic impulses.
You discover that in the focused present and aware moment-by-moment living, much of what seemed to matter simply doesn't. Your inner being becomes like a deep lake, where the ripples or even storms on the surface don't disturb the tranquil depths below.
The ultimate freedom and wisdom come from recognizing the unchanging nature of the present moment and the true, aware self that observes it all. This profound realization is the path to "end suffering and unlock your understanding of everything."
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