Changing the World

Changing the World November 10, 2016

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We all want to change the world, in one way or another.

Some of us want to reform the economic system or the justice system. Some people are motivated to clean up the environment or help others. Some of us want to solve grand, worldwide problems. Others focus on their own families.

We all see something that could be better and want to help accomplish it.

We share the belief, deep inside us, we are here to make a difference.

Even the monks I know, spending their time praying and reflecting, see themselves changing the world. They provide a safe place to learn silence and openness. Their prayers and quiet guidance help people change and grow in insight.

The most significant change they make in the world, though, is how they see it themselves.

Their quiet contemplation gives them time and space to experience the world in new ways. Frustrations and disappointments can be transformed into new ways of seeing. They realize their actions in the world grow from their perspective on how it works. How they relate to the world, the changes they make, are shaped by their understanding.

We all realize the world is more than just how we see it ourselves. We receive our experience of the world through our own metaphor of how it works. Our expectations, assumptions, experience shape how we anticipate the future. We spend our lives learning to see more clearly, letting go of metaphors.

As we learn to see the world differently, we change the world in which we live. We change the world every day, opening ourselves to new worlds beyond it.

What is your metaphor for how the world works, how it needs to be changed?

How will you change the way you experience the world today?

[Image by Dragon781O]


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