Finding Balance

There’s a curious dance between letting go of control and taking responsibility for our life. So often, ego’s are trying to control while avoiding responsibility. Or taking responsibility for what it can’t control. Balance comes with letting go of control while taking responsibility. That may sound contradictory.

We want to disentangle from the attachments that bind us to our experiences. This allows us to complete what is unresolved and put down our burdens.

Stepping into the transcendent helps let go of those bindings and integrate the unchanging in our life. With that, we gain the clarity to do what we know to be right. This is correct responsibility.

In letting go within, we learn to bring that forward into our daily activity, allowing what life brings us and letting nature unfold. We can then deal with it as it is, resolve what arises, and move on.

Sometimes, people try a bypassing approach, avoiding action to avoid consequences. However, this stalls progress and can lead to problems. It’s also culturing inertia rather than healing and transformation.

We need to take action, to do what needs to be done. This includes work to support us and actions that take care of our body, our family and community, and that resolve our burdens.

Sometimes, less refined laws of nature can become more prominent. Life can seem harsher or more chaotic. Then we have to take greater care not to let them dominate.

Fighting them doesn’t work and may actually reinforce those that feed on that coarse energy. Instead, we use our attention to feed what will bring balance.

If we’re not caught in ours or the collective dramas, we know what is right and what we need to do. It’s not rocket science.

Doing what we know to be right, enjoying, maintaining a reasonable routine and diet, getting enough rest, and balancing work and play.

I see a lot of commentaries on our current circumstances full of anger, fear, and confusion. Some speak of paranoia in the collective but express it in the next sentence. Clearly, this is a process of getting more conscious.

“Know to be right” isn’t about browbeating, concepts and rules, or making a mood. It’s about tuning in to the intuition, using your discriminating intellect, and observing how you are responding. Not to control, but to be conscious.

Doing what we know to be right is dharma. Dharma is that which sustains. A balance of allowing and responsibility supports dharma.

The analogy of dyeing the cloth comes to mind. To colour a cloth traditionally, we dip it in dye, then bleach it in the sun. This bleaches much of the colour out. We then repeat this process until the colour is fast.

Too much time in the dye of meditation and the cloth can rot. Too much time bleaching in the sun of activity and no colour is gained. The technique is an alternation of meditation and activity. The steps of progress in balance.

We transcend, then act, then repeat. This is the art of action.

As the Bhagavad Gita (2.48) puts it:
“Established in yoga, perform action.”

As the Yoga Sutra (2.35) puts it:
“In the vicinity of yoga, hostile tendencies are united in harmony (eliminated).”

And the Rig Veda (10.191.3):
“…united are their minds while full of desires. For you I make use of the integrated expression of knowledge. By virtue of unitedness and by means of that which remains to be united, I perform action to generate wholeness of life.”

What we gain in meditation gradually moves forward into all areas of life. With a little attention, we change habits and culture balance throughout. Then the flower of enlightenment can blossom in the mud of our doing. 🙂
Davidya