Change is difficult for the ego. Ego wants stability, sameness. We believe that our sense of self cannot find or keep its mooring if things keep shifting. But the fact is that reality is always a shifting ground. And our consciousness, our awareness, is more like mercury—very slippery, very fluid, easily changing and flowing. – The Unfolding Now: Realizing Your True Nature through the Practice of Presence, ch. 14
You begin to realize that the inner experience doesn’t change that much whether you’re in Paris or Boulder, Kathmandu or Berkeley, whether you’re eating dinner, seeing a movie, or being the first person to land on Mars. The sense of yourself becomes so profound, so deep, so substantial, so significant, that the whole external situation—the environment and what’s happening in it—feels somewhat ephemeral. External changes now feel like little things that may or may not affect the inner unfolding. They may be interesting or exciting, dramatic or challenging, but the interest and the excitement arising from the soul’s unfoldment outshine any feelings that external reality alone can generate. The sense of presence and contentment, with its unlimited possibilities, is so much more beautiful, so much more vivid, so much more interesting and exciting than seeing the most exotic places on Earth or succeeding at the most challenging tasks. – Spacecruiser Inquiry: True Guidance for the Inner Journey, Epilogue
When you’re working on yourself, you’re like this car you don’t know anything about. You don’t know anything about yourself. Something goes wrong. First you judge that it’s bad and then you try to fix it by doing this or that. You have no idea how this is connected to other things in you. And, as I say, the situation is worse because you’re riding in the car and you say it doesn’t feel right. It’s clunking; it doesn’t go fast enough. Something about it is not right. What should you do about it? Take it to a mechanic to change the spark plugs, put a new engine in it, or buy better gasoline? You have a Rabbit. It doesn’t go exactly the way you feel it should. Finally somebody tells you that maybe you should get another kind of car. A BMW. You get the BMW. “Ah, that’s more like it. More solid. Smoother.” Right? But after a while, it’s not exactly right either. You begin to be discontent with the car. Now you could trade in the BMW for something else. But suppose that the issue here is not to change the feeling by doing something about the car. Maybe the feeling you’re after will not come from a car. Maybe the feeling you’re missing, what you call happiness, will arise only if you are flying in an airplane. So the change that needs to happen is not to change your car to make it better, or to change it from one brand of car to a different one. Maybe you need an airplane. – Diamond Heart Book Two: The Freedom to Be, ch.7
I am not interested in changing people. I am not here to change you or to make you feel better or happier. This does not mean I am against change, nor that there be no change. We do not focus on the change itself, because you can focus on change only from your old perspective. The best way to go about this work is to explore the truth. If there is going to be change, the change will come from the truth itself. I cannot determine it; you cannot determine it. The truth itself, reality, will determine it. – Diamond Heart Book Two, Ch. 7