Living Between the Edges

 The extremes create their opposites; the wise avoid them. Find the balance in the center and you will live in harmony page  172

I, upon revisiting the article that came out of me almost four years ago,  was reminded of what I would do if my time was limited.  I was reminded, therefore, of how I really want to live Life on a daily basis.  Am I living this?:

• Accept the temporary nature of all things including my physical life.
• Look for and find the miracle of life in everything around me from the sunrise to the air I breathe. It is all miraculous.
• Honour life with everything I do.
• Find meaning by serving. Make everything I do a service to others, the world, and self.
• Smile and laugh as much as I can.
• Take a few moments here and now to stop doing and just be.
• Partake in a spiritual practice at least twice today for 20 minutes: pray, meditate, be mindful.
• Try! Commit myself to facing at least one of my fears that is getting in the way of me having the life I want.
• Make amends with someone who I have estranged from and love everyone I see.
• Write a list of all the things I am grateful for and say thank you to life!

Yeah I am living the above. 

It's good to know I am doing something right these days. :) And gratfeully, feeling the way I feel, these are  things that do not require a lot of physical effort, a lot of swinging from one extreme to another.  They are things that keep me in the here and now.  They keep me centered.

I want to talk, then, about being centered, about being balanced...about being in the Tao.

In The Tao? 

The more you can work with the balance, the more you can just sail through Life.  Effortless action is what happens when you come into the Tao.  Life happens, you're there, but you don't make it happen.  There is no burden; there is no stress.  The forces take care of themselves as you sit in the center.  That is the Tao.  It's the most beautiful place in your life.  You can't touch it[ or see it, know it, or name it], but you can be at one with it. page 171

So the Tao is that empty, hollow , unmoving, undisturbed space in the center of all Life. 

Events, circumstances, the busyness of this world, according to our minds,  is constantly swirling around it  like a cyclone ...one extreme one way leading to an opposite extreme the other way. The Tao is the eye of that storm, feeding off the energy of that storm as the balance point of all extremes. All energy, then, is in the Tao but unlike the events that seem to be  moving in a frenzy around it, that seem to be swinging away to the right or away to the left of it...no effort is required.  It just is.

Now we have a choice we can get caught up in or  lost in the swirling extremes...the going ons around us, the swinging back and forth of a pendulum...or we can sit in the center as the stilled pendulum does, as someone in the eye of the storm does and simply watch undisturbed by what is going on around us. This is true balance.  Approaching Life from here requires little effort, srain or stress. 

How do we stay in the Tao when Life is so chaotic and confusing?

We need to realize that Life is not confusing. We are confused.  

Our minds are creating an appearance of chaos. We are confused because we, as 'little me'  are constantly getting swept up into the whirlwinds of the mind.  It's like we are being blown around in that cyclone while we hold a butterfly net  in one hand and a tennis racket in another.  We try to sweep up and cling to all the things that are swirling around  us that we believe will settle us and swat away all the things that we believe will hurt us. We go from one hand to the other, one extreme to another in hope that we will calm the storm when all we are doing is increasing the intensity of  it.  So much effort...so much action is required of us to do this  and we are exhausted getting nowhere. 

It all seems so chaotic and confusing...when it is just our minds  that are confused. We just don't realize how confused we are. We see Life as creating a personal onslaught of confusion when it is not that way at all. We are  thinking it is all happening to us when we are merely confused  about our part in all this. 

In the Way, nothing is personal.  You are merely an instrument in the hands of the forces, participating in the harmony of balance. page 171

Life is not confusing.  Life is just unfolding before us as it is meant to do in order to create balance.  It is our focus on the unbalanced, on the swinging extremes that is confusing us.  All we need to do, then,  is put down the tennis racket ( stop resisting and pushing Life away), put down the butterfly net ( stop trying to fix, attain, add, cling to selected aspects of Life) and just allow ourselves  to slip into the center of the storm.  

You must reach the point where your whole interest lies in the balance and not in any personal preference for how things should be. page 171

As soon as we stop exerting effort for this or that...everything naturally falls toward the middle and we become centered. We can watch Life from there and eventually see how perfect and orderly it all is.

How do we stay in the Tao when we cannot see it, touch it name it or know it?

Imagine you are blind:

 In the Tao, you are blind, and you have to learn to be blind.  You can never see where the Tao is going; you can only be there with it?page 171

Like a blind person will do walking along a sidewalk with a cane , all you can do is feel for the edges of each extreme  and walk between them. Try to stay in the middle. As soon as you feel an edge move inward.  If you begin to feel a preference for something you erronously believe will settle you...take a step inward from that reducing the swing of that pendulum.  When you start to feel an aversion for something, take a step inward away from that edge.  

This will reduce your reactivity, your  reliance on duality and the mental, emotional and physical behaviours that result from it.  It will reduce the intensity of the storm within your mind; it will reduce your confusion and your disturbance.  It will center you and balance you. 

It will give you the ultimate clarity so you can look out at Life and see its perfection, as  you  walk right down the middle of your path,  living and breathing in the Tao. 

All is well.

Michael A. Singer ( 2007) the untethered soul. New Harbinger/ Noetic Books