You tell a friend you will meet her for lunch. Who – exactly – will show up – for ‘you’?
For simplicity, it is easy to say we all have the capacity to change and leave it at that. But let’s say that before arriving at lunch you saw a video of your friend brutally harming a person in your family. Your ‘self’ will be different at lunch.
Taking this a step further . . . right before lunch you decided to become a Tibetan monk. You had known the requirements and implemented them while pulling into the restaurant’s parking lot.
Is that decision to ‘convert’ enough to actually change your ‘self’? Does the amount of ‘conviction’ to change have anything to do with the actual conversion?
There is a ‘force’ of some kind, similar to magnetism, that attracts the qualities of self – ‘who we think we are’ – to our body, our essence. Some attributes are encased in steel and are so affixed they may be seen as ‘part’ of us. While others are little capricious, plastic traits that flit around and may be changed with a whim. And then, there are all the others that are sequestered between.
You have traits about yourself that you’d change in a heartbeat, and others you view as immutable. In other words, this ‘force’ is powerful for some facets of your life and weak for others.
Who, or what, determines that strength? Do we do it, or is it done automatically for us? We are asked, ‘Who are you?’ And we give a list of qualities and actions about what we believe and what we have accomplished in the past.
Is that you? Is that REALLY you?
Or . . . are you the person that ‘Convenience‘ has brought about?
The Infinite 