Like trees, our physical body is changing. It’s born, grows, stabilizes, declines, and will die. But what about ‘this,’ in which our awareness of these facts is arising? Various names have been designated as pointers to ‘this’ — concepts like God, Pure Awareness, the Unconditioned, Pure Being, or the Great Mystery. These concepts are pointers to the ineffableness that comprises our unchanging essence.
Suffering arises when we refuse what’s changing. It’s never the event that causes suffering, but our attachment, aversion, or feigned neutrality to it. What’s astounding is to realize that suffering, attachment, aversion, and neutrality are changing movements within a vaster background of unchanging essence. When we’re willing to shift attention from foreground to background, we realize ‘this’ that’s always present, but all to often ignored and forgotten.
So what happens when we relinquish attending to the ever-changing foreground movements of our body, senses, and mind -— to sensations, emotions, and thoughts -— and instead turn our attention to realizing ourselves as the unchanging, which has no defining characteristics, is outside of time and space, is never in need, yet is one of the most vital inquires we can make during our lifetime.