Everyone wants balance but to be perfectly in balance means that you’re also static. Life isn’t like that. Life moves. So rather than wanting balance we should seek balance. A student studying martial arts in a temple in Asia doesn’t stand on one foot and want balance, when the student loses balance it is immediately sought. Likewise, once the sensei sees that balance has been struck the student is intentionally pushed off balance and offered the chance to continue growth. The lesson is as much in the pushing as in the recovery.
In the example the student represents an individual consciousness and the teacher becomes the world. As you pass each grade you are given harder work. As you lift more weight you are given more weight to lift. As you get each promotion your responsibilities grow. When you’re single you learn to be together. When you’re a couple you learn to accommodate a family. When you’re older you learn to live with your partner in a house without kids. And of course eventually we must prepare to lose control of even our bodies and minds. This is how the sensi is like the world.
If we place this on a turning wheel it might be easier to grasp the notions of yin and yang. Rather than separate entities these are two parts of one entity, like the a wave has both a crest and trough but both things can only be experienced in unison. There is no border or line between yin and yang. This should be seen more like a pot of hot water mixed with a pot of cold water. Where they mix there is no line but they they are nevertheless two separate parts of one larger body (of water, in this case).
Now let us turn our wheel into a clock. From 9:00 until noon is when you’re grasping a concept and then growing in your ability. Noon is when you crest in that ability and the wheel continues to move forward into your new future (a new relationship, job, financial situation, whatever), but now you’re unprepared and you can feel the wheel begin to sink. By 3:00 you’re now heading toward the ground fast, you’re upside down by 6:00 and it all just seems like it’s going to crush you.
Alas, at the base of our experience we render our old selves apart and we reconstitute our idea of our new self as stronger and more capable, and we begin a slow rise. We still feel upside down right up until 9:00 again, but at least things seem to be making more sense. But 9:00 we’re back on the rise and making use of all of the lessons we learned from 6:00 until 9:00, making those critically valuable times.
Of course your life is made of many wheels at once. Your relationship wheel, your work wheel, each friend has their own wheel, your health, your habits etc. etc. When we’d say our biorhythms are high we have many wheels rising. When we say we’re very down is when they all line up going the other direction. But most of our life is a mix, which is important, because it means there’s usually some area of life we can focus on where things are rising toward better feelings.
What people want is a wheel that’s had the 3:00 to 9:00 part removed, but that wheel wouldn’t turn very far. This is why acceptance is so important. We must come into life knowing that the teacher will push us off balance. Our job is not to stop the meddling teacher, our job is to recover balance. So there’s no life skill that saves you from trouble, but there is one that helps you rapidly recover your balance.
It is important to remember that you cannot even seek balance if you’re still complaining about it not being there. The complaint period is the descent from 3:00 to 6:00, but after 6:00 we’re accepting our situation or we’re acting to change it. That is the only way to move forward. Everything else is braking fear. It’s why so many people are stuck. They’re trying to avoid the bottom part of the circle of life, but without the bottom life cannot turn.
Look at each area of your life. Which wheels are rising and which are falling? Can you sense the resistance of your suffering? Can you feel where are you slowing yourself down by preventing your spin toward 6:00? Success is not avoiding 6:00, it’s to turn through it as smoothly and evenly as you would any other time. So it is to be in the flow, full of acceptance and moving forward.
peace. s
Scott McPherson is an Edmonton-based writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and non-profit organisations locally and around the world.
The horns of a dilemma is a tough place to be. Sometimes there just isn’t a good choice, just a best choice–and what’s best is up to who you ask. If an individual feels secure then no one will make a better decision for them than they will. And there is no reason to self-hate ever, let alone because you were forced into some incredibly complex emotional situation. Hating yourself in a mirror is something a lot of innocent egos do because somehow they were accidentally taught that it’s possible to make it through life without having to make some very ugly decisions. There is no life like that. That’s what life is–a series of decisions. Some of them easy some of them hard. But regardless of which they are, they happen in the moment they are in and they are made by the person you are then. So just like other people’s views on that decision don’t matter much, neither do the opinions of later versions of you–because that person will have the benefit of the wisdom you gained from making the decision that later-you is commenting on. But you didn’t have that wisdom then so the criticism doesn’t even make sense. Every face you see has made decisions that involved pain and suffering and complication. Sometimes we will choose something painful. But that’s no reason to talk to yourself negatively. There would be zero happy people if everyone did that. If you want to live your life successfully you do not study and discuss or self-discuss your worst and darkest days. If you want a successful life you have to focus on your successes and build off those. And that’s nice, because it not only works better than beating yourself up, it feels better too. Now go have a great week.
We’ll make this easy. First we’ll look at the lyrics for Pink Floyd’s prescient song, Time. Then you can ask some exciting questions about what you’ll do with the rest of your time, and then I’ll close off with a live version of the song for those that would like to see it as well as hear it.
When I write to you it’s to slow things down. People see a quote, they like how first strikes them and they hit share or like or whatever. But that’s it. Done. Gone. Sometimes these are primary bits of wisdom that are so impressive they’ve lasted thousands of years and yet they are almost always given only the most superficial attention.
