The Secret of how to Change

Once he’s completed an inventory of the negative effects of modern civilization on the planet, Al Gore’s summary insight in An Inconvenient Truth is that

Old Habits + Old Technology = Predictable consequences

while

Old Habits + New Technology = Dramatically altered consequences

Gore notes: We exercise our technologically enhanced power in the thoughtless pursuit of age-old habits, which are, after all, hard to change.

Dramatic changes in agriculture, medicine, industrial production and transportation have brought unbelievable improvement in the quality of life for those few of us on the planet fortunate enough to live in the developed economies. In the space of a couple of generations we’ve extended lifespans and vastly increased material wealth.

Our new technologies, combined with our numbers, have made us, collectively, a force of nature. We like our pharmaceuticals; our automobiles and low cost airlines; the web; television; exotic resorts and gourmet dining options. We strive to add more of these enjoyments to our already comfortable lives. Those in positions of executive and political power have no limit, or shame, in their desire to increase their net worth. The captains of industry (Gates, Trump, Welch, Lay) and those who control the levers of political power are role models of excess for the masses.

Yet where is the consequent dramatic change in human understanding?

Gore’s book and movie highlight the urgency of the planetary emergency. The suggestions abut what every individual can do to help solve the climate crisis are all wonderful. But are they enough? Where’s the evidence that we exhibit the necessary understanding of the larger, long-term, implications of our individual actions? Where’s the evidence of foresight in a civilization whose systems are white sticks, knocking walls?

Old habits die hard. Change is tough. The secret of how to change is not to resist the old habits but to embrace new ones that render the old obsolete, as has been noted by the Western-born Spiritual Adept, Adi Da Samraj:

True change and advanced human adaptation are not made on the basis of any self-conscious resistance to old, degenerative, and subhuman habits. Change is not a matter of not doing something. It is a matter of doing something else — something that is inherently right, free, and pleasurable. Therefore, the key is insight and the freedom to feel and participate in ways of functioning that are right and new.

The tendencies and patterns of your earlier adaptations are not wrong. They were appropriate enough in their own moment of creation, and there is no need to feel guilt or despair about them. Likewise, efforts to oppose and change them are basically fruitless. Such efforts are forms of conflict, and they only reinforce the modes of egoic “self-possession”.

What is not used becomes obsolete, whereas what is opposed is kept before you. Therefore, the creative principle of change is the one of relaxed inspection and awareness of existing tendencies, and persistent, full feeling orientation to right, new, regenerative functional patterns.