Timeless Transiency

Philosophers and mystics have realized for themselves that nothing is permanent or changeless except the law of change itself.

What is good? It is the opposite to what we consider to be bad. Can we describe or experience good without knowledge of its opposite condition? Try to realize any positive concept without consideration of its opposite! We cannot because of the law of duality, the manifestation of which is the operation of the law of change. It is the constant and permanent swing of the pendulum between positive and negative or the eternal opposites.

The law is timeless but its manifestation is transiency.

Once we have understood the law of change we can and should develop hope, aspiration, tolerance, and patience. Remember, nothing is, but everything is becoming. The severe tests and disappointments of today are actually the preparatory stages for our blissful and rewarding moments of tomorrow – if we realize and accept them as such today. The vast majority of us, lacking vision and perspective, resent and reject our negative cycles as being some undeserved punishment inflicted upon us. And so we prolong or intensify our unpleasant experiences unnecessarily. We, too, must change according to the law.

Admittedly, accepting the negative or ‘down’ side of life is not always easy. Probably it is intended to be thus, for the very unpleasantness of it give birth to hope and aspiration, visualization and planning to change conditions toward the positive cycle. We are never subjected to more of the negative conditions than we can withstand. Whenever physical suffering becomes more than the body and mind can tolerate, nature has provided us with blessed unconsciousness. When mental torment becomes unbearable, nature induces a psychological block to conceal the source of aggravation from our objective and reasoning mind. 

Take comfort in the fact that there can be no positive unless there is a negative; there is no good, except as compared with evil. How can we recognize happiness unless we have experienced sadness? We reach or attain success from what? The pendulum must swing. The swinging is timeless; the extremes of the swing are transient.

In striving toward self-mastery we would do well to ponder upon certain basic and fundamental principles. Time is a man-made invention or concept. Certainly it is a great convenience in regulating our lives so long as we do not permit time to control us. Time is relative to the situation in which we measure it. If we are waiting, it drags; if we are very busy, it races. Actually it does neither except as we measure it against our activity. 

In a similar manner we measure our happy and pleasurable moments in life as being very brief and our less happy, learning, and adjusting periods in life as being very long and tedious. They are neither except as we measure them and experience them. Our consolation is the inevitable law of change. Whatever conditions we experience – good or bad – life will change. With sufficient evolvement and accumulated wisdom we will realize that the duality of experience is all-beneficent in the long run.

If we remember that the law of change functions in both directions we shall be able to maintain equilibrium and tranquillity in our lives. Realize that the positive and negative are simply two aspects of the same thing. Monotony would be a curse. The law of change blesses us with its timeless transiency.

- Extracted from the article Times Transiency by Chris. R Warnken