Thursday, July 14, 2011

Balance is over-rated.

If you've been reading my blog lately you may have noticed that I am not very balanced. I seem to go from the depths of hell into the heights of heaven, sometimes within a day. If I pray, meditate, and stay in my heart and in the present, usually I find myself grateful and joyful. If I listen to scary thoughts from my mind--Oh my, God, how can I survive with no money??--then I find myself despairing, angry, and feeling hopeless. Let's face it. I'm not enlightened--yet. I don't even know what that means really, since words of enlightened masters cannot convey their experience. So I fall off the razor's edge so to speak. As long as I keep inquiring within and not blaming others or my circumstances, all my experiences serve.

Of course I would like to be comfortable, which I guess is what balance is all about. You are not swinging from one extreme to another: You are not terrified and despairing; But you also are not ecstatically blissful. How unbalanced is that? Really, you can only feel joy to the extent that you are capable of feeling suffering. Most people stay in the superficial realm, never going too high or too low. They are not enraged, they are merely impatient and frustrated. Hello? What do you think lies beyond that superficial frustration? They are not terrified of death, they are merely anxious all the time and running constantly. What do you think lies behind that anxiety? Everyone who is running non-stop is trying to run away from death. The only way to heal is to go to the source, and to go through the depths of all the feelings. Our fear is that we will stay stuck in hell. In truth there is a trap door that leads to freedom from there.

Society would have us stay balanced so that we can be functional peons. We can be unhappy, as long as we still go to work and don't hit rock bottom in despair. Hitting rock bottom might wake us up to actually healing ourselves. We can be content as long as we aren't wildly, passionately, ecstatic over life. After all, who can work in an office doing spreadsheets if they are wildly and passionately in love with life? Nope, you can't control ecstatic employees. So Society's response to any extreme is to medicate it. It's fine if a herd of compliant zombies is created as a result. They will tow the line and follow rules, no matter how insane the rules are.

I ask you, have any of the great men and women led balanced lives? Or were they driven to work non-stop at what their passion was, forgetting to eat and sleep? There is plenty of time to be balanced when we are dead. So let's forgo the antidepressants--unless there really is a serious chemical imbalance, which is unlikely--and face our fears and challenges. If we are depressed something is not working in our lives. We are betraying ourselves by either being in a loveless marriage, or by doing soul-deadening work, or by listening to others instead of our inner voice. So let's get to the source of our pain, heal it, and move on to joy. I for one am willing to meet death and terror to be free. Are you?

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