I did a reading once for a person who was studying martial arts and wanted to find balance. As we moved through the reading two things became clear. First that she had a concept of balance as a single point, a place to stand where she would be balanced once and for all. The second was that in this manifest world balance is dynamic, constantly moving and changing.
Bring to mind your experiences playing on a see-saw. Two people move in or out until they are balanced around the central pivot. Now imagine that you are standing on the see-saw, one foot on either side, balancing across the pivot. Only in the world the pivot isn’t standing still, it moves; back and forth, up and down. If you have ever stood on a moving train or subway you know the feeling. As the floor moves under you, balancing is an ongoing process of feeling into the movement and adjusting each moment.
In this relative world the yin and the yang are always flowing, evolving, changing back and forth into each other. Life is not a store window display, but a dance. Furthermore, the mind is constantly reaching out to engage the people and things around us. Each time it reaches out, or backs away, we loose our balance, pulled this way and that by attraction and resistance.
The Sufis whirl to let go of the world and find their center, that inner balance point; which is the only place to be and not get dizzy and fall down. If you have ever focused on an outstretched thumb while spinning around; standing still while the world moves around you, there is no dizziness. When you stop unless you go inside and find the deep stillness you will fall over.
Where is the balance point within? that deep still place that simply is? Inside of the inner whirl of emotions and thoughts, there is a fixed balance point after all. The spiritual part of you that exists in unity, beyond time and space, without the flow of yin and yang, the pull of the mind and the emotions. Reach inwards for it, drop down into it. If you don’t know where it is, ask your Self, then wait and listen. Feel the swirl of the world, of the mind, of your emotions, and then make space in the center for your Self to be present. Standing there the world moves about you and you express yourself through a dynamic outer balance, but always grounded in that inner place.
Last week I wondered why, as I wake up in the morning, I don’t take the time to feel into this inner place, to find myself and ask: how am I today? who am I today? Instead I let my mind fill up with todo lists, trying to find the external balance among all the things swirling around me in my life, but already I am off balance, lost in the push and pull of the ten thousand things. So I am letting myself take some time now to feel into myself, to give it space first, before I engage the todo lists and the rest of the world.
When you are in that deep internal balance of being, the dance of external dynamic balance flows naturally for you. Enjoy the dance.
(© 3/2011)
