Oriental approach on managing the change

In the last blogpost we started investigating the Oriental wisdom on mental health by explaining the holistic approach including the trinity of body, emotions and mind. We had some more detailed descriptions of the first two, so let’s move on to the third component.

The third level is about our mind, our thoughts and our personal beliefs, including our everlasting, indestructible divine part which is not bound by time or space. Some say that the most difficult challenge of a human being nowadays is that we believe our thoughts and emotions to be absolute reality. If you consider in a very complex situation with your thoughts racing and emotions rising and falling that a day ago, a week ago or a year ago you are not feeling this way, you were not thinking this way and more probably in a day, or a week or a year, you will not be feeling and thinking the same as you do now and still you give very high importance to what your thoughts and emotions are in any given moment. Don't be mistaken, I'm not saying to disregard them, I am just saying that this is not the whole truth, this is not the only and definitely not the absolute reality we have and it might mislead us in our decisions, if we rely on them as the only truth.

If we return to our main topic on change, it is interesting to see how most of us human beings have a natural tendency to resist change and the funny part is that actually the only permanent and stable thing in this ever changing world is change itself. We can say that there was change, there is change and it is sure that you can expect that there will be change. So the question is not how to prevent change and how to fix and glue things to the status quo to keep us safe, but rather how can a person adapt to change or even more so how can we deliberately invite the change - which is necessary - into our lives.

Oriental Wisdom is very helpful on this behalf as well, because studying these systems will help you understand that the changes in general are not random at all. These changes are systematic and there is a well described and understandable paradigm behind it. I think truly understanding this paradigm would be beneficial for a lot of people, because in reality most of the time what we are afraid of is the unknown.But if we understand the “mechanics of change” we understand that chaos cannot actually happen, because there is an order in how change happens, there are rules which can be applied. And at the end of the day this, in fact, makes change kind of predictable. For most human beings predictability is essential to some degree, it makes our life easier, it soothes our fears and worries, it gives us the feeling that we know what to expect. 

A systematic approach also helps us understand that nothing is permanent even the worst situations will pass as well as the best ones. In old times when humans were more close to nature change was a natural part of their lives and some of the main principles were not necessary to be explained, for example that life is cyclical on so many levels. Nowadays, for a woman at least, I think it is easier to grasp the cyclical nature of things, because we are intrinsically tied to one. The other more obvious cycle which still every human being follows is the daily cycle or the cycle of the seasons. Naturally, there is so much more to consider, but let's first take something easier to grasp, like daily cycles. Each person has a specific rhythm within a day; some are more alert in the morning, while others are rather night owls. Depending on how you live or what you work, you can respect your own rhythm or you need to disrespect it, because being a night owl and working from 9 in the morning is not very fortunate for you. And it would be hard to be productive in the morning for a night owl anyway. 

But we can refer to the cycle of the seasons as well, which we are a bit farther away from as modern people and being far away makes it harder to adapt to the changes actually happening in any level of our environment. Oriental Wisdom says that if you are in alignment with nature, then you are aligned with the Universe and you are in alignment with the changes. So a very hands on approach to adaptation to change will be first to adjust yourself to the seasonal changes. In the following blog posts I will guide you through each season's main ideas, changes and activities to highlight how you can align yourself. And the good news is that the more sensitive you become to your environment the easier you will be able to sense the need for change in your personal life.