Why resist transformation?

It’s not as simple as saying that people are afraid to change. That would be the same sort of cliche that you’ve heard before, the same as me saying “change is the constant”, or “carpe diem”. It is not change that people are afraid of, it is losing their illusion. An illusion they don’t consciously know they have built to entrap themselves in the “safety” blanket of their identity. 

Transformation is a direct attack at taking away this blanket, at taking away identity. We’ve invested too much into an idea (An idea!) of ourselves not to feel the total disaster at even just the prospect, the thought, of seeing it taken away. Having to start over is a blow, and our biology cannot allow us to consciously take a blow if we can avoid it. It’s rational. And rationality hurts people when transformation comes along because while transformation is not abstract–it’s very concrete, with steps, and tangible outcomes– it is not rational in most cases in the sense that it rips apart identity, leaving room for a new one–or ideally, no fixed, “flowless”, stunted, inflexible identity.

We think identity is fixed. That we are how we are. That it stops there, or that after an age we accept the state of being that we find ourselves in now. If we are happily mystified by that life we make no effort at transformation, and when we are unhappily mystifies by that life, we also make no effort at transformation and instead continue to play the same games, act like the same hero everyone else follows in whatever mythology our culture (that we randomly were born into) follows. Failure ensures, suffering, insufficiency, etc. And we can blame our childhood, our life’s circumstances, parents, bullying. We seek out a therapist, as a child seeks his mother when he lost in a supermarket. Of course, in many grave cases there are real biological and physical barriers some people face preventing them from doing certain things. But even that! Even “certain things” is an illusion in itself–usually, it is those very people most beat by circumstance, or by biology, that transform, because they have to. 

And this ties in perfectly well to something else that needs mention about the resistance to transformation that transformation is usually triggered against our will, by external events. And the very best part, then honest part, is that, “external events” are often, if not always, planted long ago by ourselves. We are the architects of our own ruin. (No! No! How could this possibly be? It is rational. It makes no sense. And to that I would say; “Ah! So you still think you’re in control when you are not. Not when you are on auto-pilot, when you rely on the world. You’ve been a good person, and now you’ve been punished for it. Explain that. Resentment follows; how will you recycle the bruised up corpse of your previous illusion? By entering into a new illusion?) 

Every temporary solution, every lie, every “sin” feeds this seed of your future grief, it leaves you confused when transformation imposes itself upon you. “I didn’t see it coming”, “I don’t know why she left”, “I don’t know why I lost the money”, “Why the company failed”, “Why I’m depressed”, “Why I’m alone.” and so on and so forth. It is all coping. An unconscious way of saying “I turned a blind eye to my own lies”. And naturally you feel tricked. By the world. By him. By her. You are never to blame, an innocent dove, the symbol even of justice, purity itself. 

And that is why people will resist transformation also. Because they think they are awake when they are not. People are not in control. They run on automatic. They are unconscious. Maybe this is the same way as saying they believe in the illusion that is their current life, I repeat myself. The title of this easy is surely “Illusions”. 

P.S. just wanted to add a short phrase about freedom; that we are deeply confused about this state of being, to be free. We use it as a marketing tool, a billboard to showcase our personality, that we are free, or that we seek it in our lives. And yet the ones who want more freedom are the ones who have little of it. Do you think they know how to get it? It’s like the poor man seeking wealth he is afraid of to escape his current world. Accessing freedom being escaping the illusion of one’s identity. And it’s another way of looking at the refusal to transform. That at a fundamental level, people need a father, a God, an authority, an ideology, a religion, to permit them to do what they want. They do not trust themselves because they do not know who they are. I do not know who I am. Say it. Say those words out loud and hear the echo into nothingness. That is all of mankind, and so we need mom and dad, in all its other forms, in institutions, to feel like we are walking on steady ground. We cannot possibly be so crazy as to touch moving sands. That is not the man talking, that is the ape in us who does not see the world beyond the enclosure of his mind now become prison; fear the escape from freedom and you shall be safe. Love yourself, others, the world, and you will never fear again the necessary escape from a world that does not know you–your own construction of this beautiful, endless world, of opportunities, of lost soul craving to be found and to be loved and in turn to feed you.