Life Is in a Constant State of Flow, One that Changes Direction Slowly
You cannot change this day! You cannot change it, because it is the natural consequence of your previous actions. Life resembles a river that constantly flows. You could also think of it as a large moving ship that takes time to make course adjustments. When you try to force your life to change direction suddenly, you will fail and cause damage and difficulty for yourself.
Alas, people always try to change immediately. This is why they are confused about what they feel today. What they feel now is the result of past actions, and any action they take now cannot change their present perception. They then think that any action they take now is useless. It’s like a morbidly obese man walking into a gym and exercising to the limits of his body. After this intense workout, he looks in the mirror at his unchanged body and comes to the conclusion that exercise is pointless. Life is in a constant state of flow, one that changes direction very slowly.
But you can change today!
You can, because even though what we feel now is the result of past actions, our reaction to it is determined by our present will, our karma. Karma is any kind of action under the control of will. These willful actions affect the flow of time, starting with the willful action and the person responsible for it. The way to really change the flow of life from negative to positive is to endure the present time and change our interpretation of it.
You cannot change the same things by always giving the same reactions. First, you must relieve yourself of the expected reactions and transform them into wiser ones. For example, nobody likes to look at an obese body in the mirror at the gym, yet that fat is the consequence of past actions. You must therefore endure it, and rather than feeling sad about it, you should transform it into a motivational tool. The exercise you did today may have been painful, but it won’t change your looks straight away. If you endure the pain the next day, and the days after, your positive willful actions will start to show results. Once you start to see these results, when you feel your body becoming healthier, you will take more pleasure in exercising. Every passing day, the exercise will become more enjoyable. The right action, which you once found so difficult to practice, will gradually become less challenging for you. In this way, your life will slowly turn in a new direction.
Of course, losing weight is not the only issue here. I merely used it as example to explain how we cannot shift our lives so suddenly, but we can change our attitudes straight away, and this triggers a gradual change in direction. We experience many things in life, and many are not as easy to comprehend as a flabby belly. Karmic consequences can sometimes be so mysterious that we cannot understand why we’re suffering. We struggle, attacking those around us in an effort to get rid of the pain. But whether it’s a weight issue or mysterious karmic consequences, nothing actually changes. It doesn’t matter if we do or do not have an answer, meaning, or reason for what we’re experiencing right now—the only thing we must do is accept it and endure it. Next, in order to change it, we should start with the correct actions, even though they will not change anything straight away. This decision in itself will change how we feel right now and start a shift in direction for our river of life.
Be careful with your actions. Watch over them. You may take pleasure from an unsuitable action you take today but not pay the price immediately. Eating that big slice of cake today may have been a source of pleasure right then, and it won’t cause you to become fat straight away, but making it a daily habit will. Likewise, enduring some painful exercise will not suddenly turn you into an athlete, but consistently exercising will. Just remember, you can enjoy the pleasure of a wrong action now but pay the price later on. These wrong but pleasurable actions create a debt of unhappiness for the future. That’s why living a wholesome life depends entirely on you taking the right actions. Do not allow the wrong actions to permeate into your heart, even when they come with the illusion that you can own them without a price. Invest yourself in good actions. As you take such good actions, you’ll start to see their consequences. You will achieve a prosperity, happiness, and wisdom in life that you could never attain through bad actions.
