When we say reality is impermanent and always changing, we mean it is an unbroken flow, constant movement in which each moment invites our participation through three phases.
First comes Brahma, the fresh spark of appearing, the birth of "now." Then Vishnu, the holding, the breathing-out of the moment, where life is lived and participation happens. And then Shiva, the quiet ending, the unclenching, the clean release of what just was, so the next moment can be met without residue. To welcome the new Brahma, a new moment, a new creation, is to carry no attachment to what has passed and no grasping anticipation of what is coming, but simply to be with what is.
Every thought, every action, every sound moves through these same three movements of becoming, abiding, and dissolving. With moment-by-moment attention, participating fully yet not clinging, you begin to move with the stream rather than against it. In that pure attention and non-identification, the sense of separation fades. You are no longer a distinct "observer" of the three stages but their very expression. This is enlightenment, merging with reality as it is, atma dissolving into paramatma.
But when you identify with, grasp, and "stamp" an experience, you create stored memory impressions that trap you in the cage of the known. These impressions are then triggered by external stimuli in new moments or experiences, and you mistake them for something known or familiar. This is how karma operates. It traps you in old, repetitive patterns and habits. You create a residual "someone" who claims the moment, and that residue makes the flow feel repetitive, like a loop, a pattern, a cycle of becoming. The cycle breaks only when there is no trace of possession left, when you do not merely follow the movement, but become the movement itself.
This is what we call being in a flow state. When we make this flow state permanent through the practice of attending to the present moment, it leads to an enlightened state. This stage comes only when nothing is held, when the moment is fully lived as Vishnu, fully released as Shiva, and welcomed again as Brahma, without attachment, without anticipation, until there is no trace of a separate self resisting the current.
Not you moving through reality.
Reality moving through you by becoming one with it.