Why Change Only Happens in the Now

Why Change Only Happens in the Now
By Gilbert Ross • Jan 4, 2019 •

I hate to break it out to you but you have never changed and will never change in your whole life. You are changing now. Change, like any other process in the universe, only happens in the present. It is fully and freshly alive in this present moment. It doesn’t have echoes and it doesn’t make any plans or projections whatsoever.
What about our intuitions or personal experiences of change? What do we make of them? My mind is pretty sure and convinced that I have changed throughout the years and not by a little. My biology is clear evidence to that as are my thoughts and ideas, albeit less visible or tangible for that matter. I can conceive the difference between states in time and deduct that there was some form of change or development, perhaps even a spice of evolution, going on.  Things are in constant flux and always changing, are they not?
Well, yes and no. They are constantly on the move and changing but only within the present moment which is a bit of a head-scratcher and a paradox since the passage of time is crucial and inseparable to the concept of change…at least for us humans. So how can change only happen in the present and, more importantly, what does it tell you about your own personal change and growth and the changes that are happening to our world right now?
 
Getting unstuck from the conventional concept of change
On a mundane and human level, the perception and reaction to change is an odd and funny thing. We both desire and fear change, sometimes at the same time,  and even stranger, for the same reason or thing.  We always hope some of our life situations, or rather perceived life situations, change, improve, free up, unf&ck themselves, or move forward.  At the same time we kind of have a deep, visceral fear of change, specifically out of our comfort zones and into the great unknown. Simply put, we have a neurotic relationship to change and we can’t get out heads straight about it.
Why not try to re-examine and play a little bit with the concept and see if we can knead it into something more meaningful, or perhaps weirder, stranger but one that could resonate with, and tingle a little, our higher perception?
Let’s start from the conventional understanding of change in science, art and mythology. If I remember text book Science correctly, change is defined as the difference between two states or points in space (hence distance) over time, which essentially is a definition of speed. The difference between two states can be measured in terms of energy or information.
Looking at deeper metaphors of change, all cultures have recognised and associated change mostly with movement and age. The movement of celestial bodies, associated with the seasonal changes in nature and the never-ending cycle of birth, growth, ageing and death. Hence, apart from the obvious concept of cycles, change is deeply associated with Man in relation to the Cosmos.
 
The Cosmic Dance
In other words, change can also be seen as a cosmic dance where energy and information are exchanged between forms (states) in relation to an observing field of consciousness, whether singular (you) or collective (us). Both Science (especially Quantum Physics) and Art might to some extent agree on this view whether wholly or partially.
What if, for argument’s sake, all possible states in the Universe have ‘already been’ played out? Which is a linguistically wrong way of saying that all possible states have always been there and will always be. Let’s say that everything is already there for simplicity’s sake. All the possible states that could ever be possible. There is you as a 91 year old alongside you as a teenager, all at the same ’time’ or ’no time’ really. Bear with me just another minute.
So playing along with the idea above, it might appear that there is no change in fact. Everything just IS already and all that is ‘changing’ is the information created by a consciousness putting it’s attention on one state or form after another. It’s another way of saying that nothing really changes except fields of awareness interacting with each other through space and time and through form. Would this be a tenable concept of change even though it goes against our perspective and first-hand experience?

 
Can you Spot the Difference?
Well let’s break it down the idea a little bit further.  Let me ask this question: “When you perceive change, are you sure that things actually changed outside of your experience of them?”  or in other words “How sure are you that change is a process that happens independently of someone observing it?”. Now this is pretty much the same mind boggler that comes out of Quantum theory – which in laymen’s terms says that there are many quantum possibilities alongside each other but that these possibilities collapse into one as soon as someone observes it in the present.
The concept of change, I believe, could be reframed in the same way. There is no real change outside of a conscious observer/s at any moment. In other words, change does not happen outside and independently of you. Change is a difference in information relative to you by observing different states or forms in space and time. We can also extend this idea to say that, you co-create change by observing and interacting with your reality and other fields of consciousness.
 
You are a Driver of Change
OK all nice metaphysics, you might say, but how does this notion lend some practical wisdom to my everyday reality? It helps immensely. First of all, the more you contemplate the idea that you are a co-creator of change and not a passive victim of it, constantly struggling to keep things from falling apart, is liberating and down right empowering. The more you accommodate this idea in your everyday reality, which is another way of saying, etching it in your subconscious belief patterns, the more it will empower you.
Another implication of this idea is that conscious awareness is a driver of change. If you want positive and transformative change in your life, you need to step out of your unconscious patterns and conditioned body-mind. Don’t forget that your unconscious patterns will still drive change because your subconscious mind is still reliving, reinforcing and focusing on those stored patterns but in this case you would be creating change unconsciously by focusing on the wrong cues in your ‘outside reality’.
How about creating change consciously through awareness? Going back to the idea that change is an exchange of energy or information between two states or forms (whichever rings better to your ear), observed by a field of consciousness (you), we come to the notion that it’s all pretty much in your hands, or in your thoughts really. Change, in other words, can either happen to you, if you want to play the victim card, or you can co-create it by taking responsibility and stepping into who you really are – a creator and driver of change.
Welcome to the Quantum Machine
Let’s see this in another way. The Universe and its possible realities unfold themselves through you. There is a Universal field of consciousness from which all the individual fields of consciousness and possible quantum realities come out from or unfold. Realities upon realities and infinite possibilities. The one you are experiencing now is only one of them. To unfold possible quantum realities, the Universal field of consciousness needs ‘processing power’. The network of interacting fields of consciousness and minds, including your own, provide this processing power for possible quantum realities to unfold and become manifest. In short, you are a quantum processor and a tuner. Whatever you focus your conscious attention on, you create by giving new inputs and variables to let’s call it, the ‘universal quantum machine’. This is not the same as saying you are a machine or a cogwheel in a machine. You are a sacred part of the whole and the whole is a part of you.
 
But let’s get back to the concept of change. As weird as it may sound, change, from this perspective, is your individual field of consciousness putting its attention to things and feeding back this information to the Universal field, where a new quantum state, one out of an infinite number of possibilities, will unfold in the present moment. In this sense, change is not some state of affairs happening on their own but rather your own consciousness selecting (consciously or unconsciously) a possible state from the universal field according to how you experience reality, your expectations, your beliefs and your interactions with other fields of consciousness (co-creation). What you feed back in, becomes a state that you experience in the present moment and so on in a constant feedback loop. Change, in other words, is just your field of awareness creating and experiencing this feedback loop in the now.

Thanks to: https://soulhiker.com