Tag: change

On Love

Posted on by Marko

Love is not a binary state, it is a process with no boundaries. We don’t fall in or out of love, we feel more or less connected to someone. Love is a shade, not a colour.

Love is not exclusive to romance – it drives every relationship, regardless of its nature. You cannot control love, nor does it respond to your will and needs. Love happens naturally, spontaneously when you don’t try, when you surrender to the moment and the person before you, and only if they do the same. No intentions or objectives, merely an open-hearted presence.

You don’t love everyone with the same intensity, but if you feel a connection with them, then you do love them. Acknowledging love is not shameful. It doesn’t make you weaker, nor is it a risk one takes. Expressing your feelings – your love – through genuine thoughts, words, and actions is a strength – an act that honours a relationship. It is needed to sustain love, to renew it from moment to moment, and prevent it from becoming a habit.

Love ebbs and flows. We change, and that will reflect on every relationship. Change should not be feared – it is universal, and drives life itself. Choking your own growth for the sake of preserving a relationship is not love, it is dependence. It may preserve a structure of a relationship but its essence, the love that underlies it, will be gone. When an ebb does come, it represents an opportunity for renewal, which allows relationships to evolve and never fall into static habits.

Karmic Detanglement

Posted on by Marko

Who we are today is the result of our past actions. As much as we want to change overnight sometimes, we can’t. There are too many strings anchoring us to our personal history. Thoughts we’ve thought and acted upon, routines we’ve developed and cemented through repeated steps, identities we’ve built based on our values and ego.

The past cannot be changed but that should not be the reason for us being stuck in it. We, separate from our past, have the capacity to change, as long as we realize it’s a process. To change is to detangle ourselves from our former actions. That means recognizing and owning what we’ve done, no matter how inconvenient, painful, or guilting it may be. By taking responsibility for our former actions, we weaken their power over us, and make space for new ones – new ways of thinking, seeing, and doing things. The accumulated karma of our past dissolves, and along with it the cause that effected our identity.

With time, we build new values that redefine who we are. We change, as we should, as everything in the universe does. Change is a natural process fundamental to our personal refinement.

Superlatives: Inferior Identities

Posted on by Marko

My best friend, my finest work, my greatest belief etc. – grandiose, self-identifying statements with self-pooring effects. When we label something as being of the highest order, we place a limit on our potential, others, and the world, as we perceive them. When we tell ourselves such narratives, we interrupt the ever-unfolding journey of life and feel like we’ve reached a destination. Comfort and security of accomplishment set in, and the spark of life, the curiosity and hunger for the unknown, for exploration and discovery, wanes. In short, we see less and correspondingly get less.

When we use superlatives to describe our relationships, we create attachments to people, activities, and things – not as they are, but as we perceive them to be. When we attach ourselves, we are less likely to try something new. We depend on, and often demand, a standard as prescribed by our superlative. A best friend should do this and that, and if they don’t, something is wrong. A finest work communicates that I can’t do any better. A greatest belief is one that reduces the beautiful relativity of individuality and the universe down to subjective absolutism.

Make and explore connections within your slice of the universe, but don’t make them your roadblocks. No matter how ecstatic and happiness-inducing an experience is, it is still part of a process of highs and lows. In fact, we must have lows to experience and identify highs, but there is no limit on their height, unless you assign it.

Mind-Heart

Posted on by Marko

Our minds are essential to practical life and establishing the familiar, as well as our relationship to it. But beyond practicality, a mind, left unbalanced, can also thwart life because it is uncomfortable with change. New information about the world or self challenges the mind’s subjective reality that it worked so hard to create and understand. It’s a threat to mind’s established identity. In short, the mind wants what is, not what will be. It wants what is familiar, labeled or labelable, not unquantifiable possibilities or change. Some of the most intense suffering we endure in our lives is psychological, stemming from change and our attachments to what was.

Since life is one continuous process of change, and our society puts disproportionate emphasis on our mental abilities, it is crucial that we balance this harder part of ourselves with a softer one. I call it the heart, others call it something else, but they point to the same emotional intelligence that penetrates labels, and gives numbers and theorems meaning beyond their formulae.

Our mind separates us from our surroundings through differentiation, our heart unifies by seeking interrelatedness. A heart wants change, evolution, growth, even if it means pain in the short-term. It’s fiercely driven by curiosity, a passion to discover and connect. It leads us to new worlds and realizations, pastures for our mind (and us) to feed on and grow from.