The Balance Between Waking Up and Growing Up
El equilibrio entre despertar y madurar
A student describes feeling angry at self-inquiry after realizing it may have been used to avoid worldly ambitions, and the teacher responds with a teaching on balancing spiritual practice with engagement in the world.
The Balance Between Waking Up and Growing Up
A student describes feeling angry at self-inquiry after realizing it may have been used to avoid worldly ambitions, and the teacher responds with a teaching on balancing spiritual practice with engagement in the world.
I'm wondering if there is a going to the opposite extreme, in line with what you were talking about. It seems like suddenly, with all the life situations I've been going through, I realized a lot of ways in which I was doing what you were describing: going into spirituality to avoid doing things I actually wanted to be doing. Now I'm very focused on what it is I want to do and where I'm not facing what I want or have to face. I'm pissed, mad at self-inquiry, like it's all a farce. To be extreme about it. It's not that I totally think that, but there's a feeling that it's all a farce.
A matter of balance, right? And it's a problem if we're bouncing back and forth between extremes. But often, when we're out of balance, moving toward the center will feel like falling to the other side. And I think you've very recently made this movement.
Yeah. It feels like going to the other side, as if I have no interest and am doing very little self-inquiry or meditation.
Giving to Caesar what is Caesar's
I think it's appropriate. There's a saying: give to Caesar what is Caesar's and give to God what is God's. Ambition is of Caesar. The energy of ambition should be invested in the world, ethically, with high values, aligned to your deepest desires. Otherwise, you're mixing things up. The more you give that energy and put it in the right place, the more your inquiry will deepen. But let the inquiry, or the spiritual work, come back on its own. Let it blossom on its own, because otherwise you're putting the energy of ambition into a spiritual pursuit to awaken, which is just an idea you have about what awakening is. That energy is, in fact, an avoidance of putting it where it belongs, because that is terrifying.
If you align it, if you harmonize it, and put that energy where it naturally wants to go (in your case specifically, since for others the opposite might be true), then the deeper desire of knowing your true nature will bubble up naturally, from a more honest place. By honest I mean with less agenda.
The tightrope
It's just a rebalancing. Being in balance is not static. Think of the metaphor of a tightrope. It's a constant finding of the center, a constant realigning. There is no such thing as simply being in the center. It is a movement. The vibration of aligning gets smaller and faster to a point where it looks like there's no movement in a professional, but a beginner is going to be making these big swings. You could think of those swings as taking a few years, then a few months, then a few days, then a few hours, then a few minutes, then seconds. The faster it gets, the smaller the movements, until the person walking the rope looks like they're walking in a perfect line without any vibration. But if you looked at the muscles, they'd be doing a very quick vibration, constantly aligning the balance.
I'm also finding that what I want the most is itself super dynamic. You have to learn how to balance there too. At one point, if you start forming an idea of what you think you want, then you realize you also wanted something else. You rebalance. Is that a different kind of balance?
It's still a similar thing, but in that case it's a maturing toward something deeper. It has to do with a balance of your capacities and talents in the world: how you discover them, mature them, evolve them, and find a place where there's a positive synergy. That's a balancing, but it's also a deepening, in that you start to discard things that were less important. The things that are more core appear to be more stable. For you, for example, music has become a stable core interest. That's how you can tell. It's very hard to spend thirty or forty years pursuing an art if it doesn't come from a deep place. You'd be bored and done long before that. But it's very common to get into fads or more superficial pursuits, things that are curiosities you can get very passionate about. They live out their trajectory and then pass as something no longer that important. But it all adds to the process of growing, learning, and discovery.
I was wondering if you could put the curiosity for self-inquiry into that same equation, or if it's something separate, a different kind of balance.
No. If you put it into the framing of what you're interested in, then yes, it's a balance. But when I was speaking earlier about the balance of waking up and growing up, I'm talking about the perspective of where you are moving from. If we're operating and it's all about time and the future and growing and arriving, it's tipping to one side. If it's all about being in the present moment and ignoring the future and the past, we're falling out onto the other side.
Presence and time as one
The balance, when I'm in this middle, is actually a kind of not-two-ness. There's a deeper understanding: I am in presence, not running from reality, not avoiding the moment, but also embracing the movement of time and aligning with the movement of evolution. Not one or the other.
If I'm trying to be present while avoiding time, I'm in conflict with my own mind, because what the mind does is project a future.
Yeah. You're rejecting part of the present, really.
Exactly. You reject part of what is, which includes movement, a mind that predicts a future, that has ambitions, a body, a life that has a force. All of that gets pushed against.
And vice versa: if I'm avoiding the present moment and entirely focused on arriving tomorrow at the thing I want, I'm running away from what is present here now, which is probably some fear and pain, with the idea that it's going to go away when I arrive at the thing I'm running toward. They're both ways of running or avoiding something that is, saying no to something that is.
Yeah. I have it a bit more clear now.
Give yourself time. You're just starting to rebalance. Don't rush it. And don't worry about the curiosity of self-inquiry. Just let that be your hobby and do it only when you are very naturally curious.
Freedom in both directions
We should be free to imagine the future and pursue interests and desires and plan and go toward what we most deeply want in a life that is short and meaningful. And at the same time, we should be free to sit quietly and not do anything, to be in presence and be content with what is. Whichever of these two seems, on average, more difficult: that's where we need to lean into more. And that's always a balance. It might change during the day.
What often happens is that one of them is really hard. We might be better at pushing away everything of the future and finding some kind of calmness, but it's not a deep, natural calmness because we have to be avoiding. Or vice versa: we have to be always running a little bit, always thinking about the next thing, and we can't sit still. We should be free to go into both at any time, and from that freedom we'll be able to find balance.
One doubt that comes to me is this: in my case, for instance, it's always been a bit hard to be ambitious in the world and push toward goals. Given that it seems to have always been the hardest thing for me, why, since I was very young, eighteen or so, did I feel a need to get into these groups and follow a teacher? I don't think it was all a way of escaping from going into the world.
Do you feel that I'm saying it was an escape?
Based on what you're saying, I'm interpreting it that way. When you're balanced to the side of being afraid of following ambitions and going into the world...
It won't go as deep if only one side is faced
I'm not saying that if you're focusing on one, you're focusing on something that isn't valuable. All I'm saying is: it won't go as deep if you're only focusing on one. It will go deeper if you're balanced, and by balanced I mean you're able to not cut anything out. You're not saying no to any aspect. Let's say I'm calling it two aspects: growing up and waking up. I'm saying it will go deeper if the approach is balanced and you're not avoiding one. The whole thing requires both. Ultimate freedom requires both. Wisdom and maturity require both. But if you're only focused on one, it's not going to go as deep as if you're learning the balance. How can you walk on a tightrope if you're always leaning to one side?
Yeah, I understand that.
So I think what you're referring to is when I say it's an avoidance of the other, which means part of the energy is an avoidance. The energy of the inquiry is going to contain avoidance, and part of the energy of the pursuit in the world is going to be avoidance of the present. That energy is not going to be productive. It's like doing self-inquiry but not being honest internally with what you see, or pursuing something in the world while really just avoiding. It's going to create some form of imbalance or problem. In some aspects it's going to work in both ways; part of the energy is going to bring fruits. But it will go deeper if it's balanced.
I think I was also interpreting my past when I asked the question. I'm not really sure what I needed. I was assuming that what I most needed at twenty, when I went into this work, was going into the world, but maybe I needed both.
Waking up means facing what is avoided
The reality is that you can fully wake up now. Nothing is needed. But why don't we? Something avoids it. And the answer is also a mystery, but one aspect I can point to is: something is avoided. Face what is avoided, and it will be more natural.
Waking up has to do with facing what brings the most fear. Or, more precisely, waking up has to do with seeing what is real, and seeing what is not real as well. But if we are avoiding, we begin from an agenda to not see something.
Okay.
So you're just going to be in conflict. "I want to wake up, but I don't want to see what I will see if I wake up." Good luck with that.
The reality is that we already know, at a deep level, what we're avoiding. You could also take the perspective that what you're discovering is a peace that is not conditioned. Therefore, you should be okay with what is: with the world, with ambition, with feeling pain, with the mind being super active, crazy, anxious. Whichever of those is rejected, we begin from a condition: "I will be at peace only if my mind is calm, only if there isn't fear, only if there isn't pain." Therefore, we will not discover the peace that is unconditioned.
It seems like this is a really intense topic.
Maybe I'm intense.
Maybe it's me, but it seems really important and really cool, and maybe it touches close to fears or something.
Yeah, I get it. For you?
I wouldn't say it's new to me. I think it's been a theme for quite a while now. Just feelings that have felt very forefront for maybe a year and a half or so. Or, really, always.
The avoidance is sneaky
What you avoid, that's fire. That's the most intense possible thing. I think for me, at least, it's always a little bit surprising. I think I know what I'm avoiding, and then it's like, "Oh no, it wasn't that; it's this." It's a new discovery, because the avoidance really is sneaky. I also find it extremely exciting. It's like, okay, going forward into the unknown.
And the way it works is extremely mysterious. Only in hindsight can you look back and understand. Oh, this is how it works, I see this, I see that. Only in hindsight.
I was very emphatic about my challenge with the world from quite young. It was very obvious to me. But I also had people I trusted telling me that, for example my teacher. He said, "Your meditation is just your work, your project in the world." He said that to me for years and years. But then, when that big last shift happened, he told me, "See, you were running away from that your whole life." In a sense, I had to go toward what was the hardest for me. In hindsight, it makes a lot of sense, but it looked very paradoxical at the time. I had to go toward what was really hard and then see that the avoidance was there. I had to go really hard in that direction to come through it.
I think you were hunted on both sides. That energy or recognition was chasing you from a very young age, but you were also terrified of the world. You put a lot of your energy and priorities into the waking up. That was your number one priority, but then your teacher would say, "Okay, fine, your meditation is your worldly project." It was this constant tension. And then they both just converged in the last several years.
Yeah. I think it was eventually this balance of both being faced really fully.
Speaking up as practice
Just staying on subject: go into places we don't want to go. I don't really have a question, and I don't know why I don't feel like putting myself in the limelight, but it feels pretty intense most of the time I do.
So it's a chance for you to speak up in the group?
Yeah.
It's good to go there. There are many universally common reasons. Speaking up in a group brings up a lot of vulnerability. There's also an energetic aspect. As we move into what we want, energy moves. Or you could say it differently: as we allow energies to move us.