1991/06/03

How to stay right-side up?

"There is always a tension between your wish to grow in the spiritual realm and your responsibilities to the physical. That is where balance comes in. Tip too far towards either and you ‘lose your balance’. Once your preoccupations drive you off centre, you may then have to face a time of instability before a new sense of self-centredness manifests itself.
"Balance can't be something you just practise in your meditation. Your quiet time merely balances up all your loud times! Your goal must be a 24 hour a day dual-awareness. Try to balance yourself within all the ego-validating hurly-burly and excitement of the day — which forms part of the conservatory in which you are grown. However, to lapse into airy-fairyness would be equally unbalanced.
"If you arrange a loan with a bank, your first repayments consist almost entirely of interest, but during the period of the loan the balance alters until your final payment is only capital.
So like the arrow your life: the early part reaches toward heaven (or what the natural mind supposes to be heaven) striving to lodge itself in the world’s highest place: but the arrow of those who are to escape the mundane cycle doesn’t lodge. Its trajectory turns inescapably back to the earth, and at this point, if you are wise, you realise you must embrace what is inevitable and so be freed the disappointments that follow illusion — and you find it possible to cherish the experience of descent for all the same reasons you enjoyed life’s glorious forenoon. And so all is made whole, the cycle is complete and you are released."

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