How to Face Life's Changes

"We all must deal with major changes in our life: in our work; in our close relationships; with the people or colleagues around us who change, appear, or disappear; with unexpected and unwanted new circumstances; with our financial situation; with sudden or lasting illness; with all kinds of loss; with aging and physical changes; and finally, with the approach of death. Major changes can be highly destabilizing for our lives, and often we are not happy about them but would have preferred that things had stayed as they were before. We cling to our memories of the past and to the thought "if only it hadn't happened!" What we need to realize is that constant change is an important part of the divine plan. It is not meant to hurt us, but quite the contrary: change comes to us intelligently, intended to help us grow, aiding us to develop greater inner strength. Are we ready for such inner growth toward our true potential? Change, in other words, is a positive event which is indispensable: it is like a wise, though often tough, teacher in the school of life. Would we, the students, ever learn and evolve without it? So how can we deal with life's changes positively? How do we face great personal change in our lives, which, perhaps, are now completely different from the way they were before? How can we find inner security in times of worldwide change, when our entire planet is unstable and insecure? How do we learn to smile at all that change? That's exactly what the following thoughts from Yogananda will help us understand. He explained that this whole world is like a huge movie which Spirit (the Eternal Consciousness, or God) projected on the screen of space. Its constant change has a dual purpose: to entertain and educate us. Yogananda explains: "God continues to act in order that all his deluded children may know that this universe is only an ever-changing cosmic motion picture, not to be taken seriously but to be accepted as an entertaining and educational spectacle." Change is inevitable, and our future will certainly bring about major changes to the whole planet. Yogananda sometimes remarked, quite casually, that in the future, mankind would see innumerable changes in its way of thinking, living, and behaving: a change toward international and inter-religious unity, interplanetary travel, and countless new ways of dealing with reality. Life won't remain as it is now. We have already seen major changes recently in our society, but perhaps they are only the merest beginning. Let's calmly prepare for them, applying the ancient yogic teachings"--