Change, Transformation, and Becoming

As You See, So You Will Be

Have you ever wondered about what it really means to grow? Here’s what I think. Change, transformation and becoming are three very different things, and we’re stuck as a world because we’re confused about them.

Let me begin with karma, no, not the the hippie-dippie notion that the West thinks it is, “good things happen to good people”. Karma means: as you see, so you will act, think, know, be. There is the beautiful old tree across from the cafe where I write. If I see a dead resource, then I chop it down. If I see a living thing, maybe I will treat it with respect. If I see an ornament, maybe I will treat it with respect until my greed to chop it down overtakes me. And so on. My karma, my possibility, is already in me in this way.

Now. How do we try to grow in this age? We try to stop karma — all the above — from operating. But no one can stop karma so simply, because karma is blindness, and you can’t stop a blind person from not seeing. I’ll give you a simple example. The wealth of minorities in the USA is reaching zero. Slavery and segregation “ended”. And yet little has changed. Why is that? Of course segregation and so on are illegal, but all that has happened is that whites quietly refuse to do business with, live with, share with, invest in, minorities. Maybe not you, but generally. I don’t say that to blame or shame. Only to explain. That’s karma — whites just don’t see minorities as fully American, so they exclude them, and in that gap, society itself is breaking down, even for whites.

And yet. America’s obsessed with “change”. Innovation, growth, “becoming better”, and so on. Obsessed with change — but not a damned thing has changed. Karma can’t be stopped. As you see, so you will be — always. “Change” is just another way of hoping: if I alter the external world, maybe I can stop karma. But life doesn’t work that way, because minds don’t.

How can you change your karma, then? You have to change how you see. Again, karma means as you see, so you will act, think, cognize, relate, plan, hope, be. Change how you see, and the rest will change effortlessly. If I see the beautiful old tree as a living thing, I will never chop it down. Now my karma has changed. So true difference is transformation, not just change: a profound difference in how we see. Transformation means: we learn to see new qualities in subjects and objects.

I am going to take you up to the highest level of seeing to make all that clear. At that level, everything is in everything. This is what the ancients called “suchness”. You are in the smallest blade of grass, and the greatest mountain, and they are in you. How could it be any other way? You feel this deep in your soul when you walk upon the mountaintop, and you only know it because when you stop thinking so hard, then you experience the truth that there is an observer in you who is creating the “greenness” of the blade, the “hardness” of the mountain, and so on, which is to say that you are those objects. All things are precisely equal in pure being, because all things are qualitatively infinite, possessing all qualities — you can think of it as “clear light”, which is how the Buddha referred to final reality — and that is why all things are one. You can think of this in quantum terms, too, where probabilities only resolve when an observer is there to perceive an object.

That is why there is only happiness when you reach this state of final reality, pure being, whether you call it nirvana or brahman or God or anything else. You are at home where everything is in everything, because now you know the impossible, beautiful truth that Rumi called “the beloved”. It is everything in everything, and it is also you.

And yet. The big problem in the world today is that that horizon of everythingness is shrinking. We don’t see everyone in anyone anymore, do we? We only see tribes, groups, cliques. Black, white, Christian, Jew, and so on, one set against the other. We are reverting back to simple-minded, ugly ways. We are turning away from seeing everythingness, suchness, truth. That is the ugly fact of today, and it’s why the world feels so grim. We are divided from the profound beauty of ourselves.

So what is our responsibility, then, those of us who are attuned to all this on some level? Is it to shout and scream and politick? I don’t think so. Remember karma? You can’t change any of the above just by venting.

Our only work is ever to transform how people see, which is what becoming is. You become yourself when you see more truly, and seeing more truly just means seeing more of everything in you, and you in everything. Go ahead and think about it. If you don’t see yourself in anything or anyone, you can’t love, dare, create, give, can you? The more you do, the more you can, right? Exactly.

So becoming means getting closer to a level of seeing where everything is in everything. Maybe even for you the idea that a blade of grass is in you and you are in it is too much for you. And yet you know that you are in the people you love, and they are in you. You are in the places you love, and they are in you. So on some level, you see this way already. The only question is to what degree, how far the horizons of suchness in you extend.

The truth is that we’ll never live in a world where all people have reached the level of awareness where everything is in everything. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever. So there will be politics, strife, conflict. Politics is just spiritual ignorance by another name. So I think that the job for those of us who are attuned, aware, awake, isn’t to shout and scream, to get angry and shake our fists. It’s just to help people become.

We don’t change worlds by acting at the level of karma. We change worlds by acting at the level of awareness. That is transformation. And we change people, which is all that worlds are made of, when we bring them closer to everythingness. That is becoming. Becoming is our natural way. We are always longing for it. To see ourselves in everything, and everything in us. That is all that love really is. Our first job is to express it.

Umair
September 2017