Central to the enlargement of consciousness is the acknowledgement that the constancy of life is its impermanence. Indeed, transiency is the expression of the life force itself. As Dylan Thomas expressed the paradox, ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower is my destroyer.’ The same energy that ignites natural energy, like the fuse of a stick of dynamite, feeds on itself and is consumed. Such evanescence is itself life. The word we have for that which is unchanging is death. The embrace of life, thus, requires the embrace of that energy which feeds on itself and is consumed. Not to change is contrary to the life force, is death.

James Hollis, Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places