The Balance of Waking Up and Growing Up
El equilibrio entre despertar y madurar
A student explores the tension between pursuing worldly ambitions and deepening self-inquiry, and the teacher describes how true freedom requires not avoiding either side of that balance.
The Balance of Waking Up and Growing Up
A student explores the tension between pursuing worldly ambitions and deepening self-inquiry, and the teacher describes how true freedom requires not avoiding either side of that balance.
I'm finding that what I want the most is super dynamic. You have to learn how to balance there too. At one point you start forming an idea of what you want, but then you realize you also wanted something else. You rebalance, and that feels like a different kind of balance.
It's still a similar thing, but in that case it's a maturing toward something deeper. That 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. It's a balancing, but also a deepening, in that you start to discard things that were less important, and 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 without it coming, on some level, from a deep place. You'd be bored and finished long before that.
But it's very common to be 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 important. It all adds to the process of growing, learning, and discovery.
I was just 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.
If you put it into the framing of what you're interested in, yes, it's something that's a balance. But when I was saying earlier about the balance of waking up and growing up, I'm talking about the perspective of where you're moving from.
The two sides of imbalance
If we're operating and it's all about time, the future, growing, and arriving, it's tipping to one side. And if it's all about being in the present moment and ignoring the future and the past, then we're falling out onto the other side.
But when we're balancing in this middle, there's actually a kind of not-two-ness. There's a deeper understanding: I am in presence, not running from reality, not avoiding the moment, and also embracing the movement of time, aligned with the movement of evolution, rather than stuck on one side 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. There's movement, there's a mind that predicts a future, that has ambitions. There's 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 only aligning with arriving tomorrow at the thing I want, I'm running away from what is present here and 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. Both are saying no to something that is.
That makes sense. It's becoming a bit more clear.
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, to 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, not do anything, be in presence, and be content with what is. Whichever of these two seems, on average, more difficult is where we need to lean into more. 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 about the future and finding some kind of calmness, but it's not a deep, natural calmness, because we have to keep avoiding. Or vice versa: we're 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 be in balance.
One doubt that comes to me is this: in my case, for instance, it's always been hard to be ambitious in the world and push toward goals, to really go into the world. If that's what was hardest for me, and it seems to have always been the case, then why, since I was very young, around eighteen, 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 that I seem to have been balanced to: afraid of following ambitions and going into the world. It seems to be the hardest thing to do.
Both sides matter, but balance goes deeper
I'm not saying that if you're focusing on one, you're focusing on something that's not 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, somewhat non-arbitrarily, there are these two aspects: growing up and waking up. I'm saying it'll 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. It's like asking: how can you walk a tightrope if you're always leaning to one side?
Yeah, I understand that.
I think what you're reacting to is when I say it's an avoidance of the other. That's what I mean when I say it's not going to go as deep, because part of the energy is an avoidance. Part of the energy of inquiry is going to be avoidance, and part of the energy of 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 internally honest with what you see. Or pursuing something in the world when you're really just avoiding. It's going to create some form of imbalance or problem. In certain aspects, both paths are going to bear fruit. But it'll 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 needed most at twenty, when I went into this work, was going into the world. Maybe I needed both.
What avoidance costs
The reality is that you can fully wake up now. Nothing is needed. But why don't we? Something avoids it. The answer is also a mystery, but one aspect I can point to is that 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, basically. 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.
Unconditioned peace
You could also take the perspective that waking up is discovering a peace that is not conditioned. Therefore, you should be okay with what is. You should be okay with the world, with ambition, with feeling pain, with the mind being super active, crazy, or anxious. Any of those that are rejected become 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." And therefore, we will not discover the peace that is unconditioned.