Life's Balancing Act

"Look everywhere with your eyes; but with your soul never look at many things, but one."

-- V.V. Rozanov

Be aware of your environment; be in touch with God. It's that simple. Really. Your eyes are your means of being present in the real world -- right here, right now. Your soul is your conduit to the eternal -- always here, always now.

If you feed your eyes with the phantasmagoria of life, but forget to nourish your soul, you will soon be overwhelmed by it all. If you tend to your soul, but ignore the life that blossoms before you and all around you, you will become deeply irrelevant. 

As in all things, the trick is in the balance. The word that comes to mind, when I think of visually partaking in as much of the world as possible, is "wow!" When contemplating the One, the syllable that best captures the process for me is "ah." To balance, to harmonize wow and ah -- that is our challenge.

I hope your day is filled with amazing sights! I hope your soul is engulfed in underlying Unity. Today, and each day, may the dance between the many and the One unfold within you and around you, always in perfect harmony with the Uni-Verse.

Order

"The world is not to be put in order. The world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order."

-- Henry Miller

The economy is in a tailspin, the environment is threatened, and Notre Dame is no longer a powerhouse football team -- what the hell is the world coming to? We all want to put the world back in order. Well, actually, most of us want somebody else to put the world back in order. Simple truth: It ain't going to happen. And the primary reason it ain't going to happen is that the current state of affairs is the exact order necessary, the only order possible, for this particular place and time.

Sure, things will change. And, depending upon your perspective, they will get better or worse. And that, too, will be in order.

The world is always perfect just the way it is. Not perfect in the sense that it is the exact way you think it should be, but perfect in the sense that it is the only way it can be. And if you want to work to change it, you will produce your best results by harmonizing with it first.

What does harmonizing or being "in unison with this order" mean? It merely means that you accept reality rather than battle it. You relax into what is and in so doing open to whatever may be. As Lao Tzu recommends, you flow with, rather than swim against, the Tao.

It's simple but not easy. Harmonizing requires that you give up all prejudices, judgments, thoughts, and beliefs that are not aligned with reality. Thoughts like "people should be kind" or beliefs like "companies need to respect the environment" or judgments like "Charlie Weis sucks," must all be jettisoned. Sure, you may have such thoughts, but don't attach to them, define yourself by them, or try and make reality conform to them.

In fact, the best thing you can do to be in unison with the implicit order of existence is to sit down and shut up. As you sit there, all the thoughts and emotions, all the beliefs and judgments, that fight against what is, will arise. Let them, and then let them go. The more space you create within your mind and heart, the more harmony you will find.

So, today, quit yer btchin'! Intuit the order of the Universe rather than rail against the supposed disorder. Experience the Unity while still respecting the diversity. The world won't magically change, but perhaps you will.