Alyssa Skyes

Change 

Change and Identity

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After my experience in Two Seconds of Eternity, I received a comforting clarity in the way I understand our life experience, and the many questions that come from the subjects of ‘form and the formless’ seem to come up for me at every turn.

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Recently I have had 'change' on my mind and wrote a piece called “Why All Form Must Change” here. And today I am still thinking more about change, identity and being, as well as what their differences are.

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Every form carries the history of its own becoming, for everything comes together and falls apart, one particle at a time. In time, which is to say ‘in change’, that history continues in reverse, as what came together begins to come apart.

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Creation lives in continuous motion. It is an ongoing dance in which the formless continually expresses itself through form. Things begin, become, accumulate, change and then begin to pass away, each holding its character for a time before giving its pieces back to the dance. Almost as though each form enters, gathers itself, has its moment, and leaves to be cast anew.

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If everything composing me changes, what makes me continuously me? What is being, what is identity, and what is life?

To remain identifiable as something, its parts do not have to remain the same. A river remains a river even as its waters continually change, so long as the pattern of flowing waters continue there. A tree remains the same tree while continuously shedding and exchanging matter with the world around it. Our identity does not reside only in the particular particles that compose us, but in the continuity they create and hold for a time.

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It would be easy to say, “It is simply life. While a form holds life, it holds an identity.” But life and identity are not the same thing. Life exists in forms we never individually identify at all, while identity can continue after life has ended.

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When a body has un-become and the particles that once composed it have scattered into new formations and identities, its former identity does not necessarily disappear with them. It may continue in memory, in words, in creations left behind, in anything capable of summoning that particular identity again.

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Human identity is particularly intense for us because we experience ourselves from within. We are not merely identified by observers, we possess memory, reflection and an awareness of our own temporary continuity.

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We come together atom by atom, bite by bite, inch by inch, accumulating the history of a life as we go. Then the movement begins to change directions. The body begins its unbecoming, but identity does not always vanish on the same time line. It can remain recognizable in other forms, carried for a time by other minds and other matter.

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So where does an identity actually end? Does it end when the form that held it comes apart? When the last memory of it disappears? When nothing remains that can summon it again?

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How much continuity must be lost before one identity becomes another? Maybe identity is simply recognizable continuity created through change.

We are each an ongoing act, a fluid performance within the tiny and grandiose movements of creation: becoming, being and unbecoming, while the pieces that compose us for a time continue on. Forever in movement, forever expressions of the many possibilities that change brings through form.

Identity is a singular act, the kind that cannot be while formless, for the formless is everything and it is nothing; it cannot be defined. Identity emerges when possibility takes a particular form for a time, becoming something identifiable amongst all the possibilities of what could be.

“Only here, within form, can singularity be experienced or known at all, for beyond form there can be no division.”

If these writings resonate with you, you may enjoy the book  Two Seconds of Eternity, where they are explored more deeply.