Imagine you’re looking at a spectrum, a line representing two extremes.
On one end, you have complete austerity, whatever that means to you. On the other, you have complete indulgence.
Or, perhaps, on one end you have deeply blissful highs, and on the other you have crushing, depressing lows.
It’s tempting, is it not, to think of The Middle Way as a kind of compromise between the two.
“Yeah, have a little chocolate cake, just not too much.”
From the perspective of living in the extremes, the middle way can look like a kind of luke-warm, dad-joke, have-it-both-ways compromise you sigh your way into after you get your first real job.
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However, I am purporting here and have directly experienced: that’s not all it is.
And in fact that’s only the most surface layer, the what it looks like, in the same way that a plastic rose can kind of look like a rose, but really they are nothing alike.
Back to our initial image of the spectrum, it’s as if from one perspective yes, this middle way is, indeed, in the middle of two points.
But then the perspective shifts, and this third point is actually on another plane altogether.
From this new perspective, it’s not a “middle point” at all. It is something else entirely.
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There’s a depth there that you cannot fathom. (I can’t either.)
There’s a holding of opposites — where either/or breaks down, not for lack of intellect but for sudden uselessness of the map of logic itself — that you cannot fathom.
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So, how to find it, to get to know this depth?
For lack of any more detail, try this one on: Follow, listen to, your heart is step one. Step two is vital: now act.
Whatever that heart-wisdom says “do,” do that. That thing stirring in your guts that you know calls you, perhaps terrifyingly so: that. It’s secret work, and it’s extremely, and only, personal to you.
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LB
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ps if you’ve been a reader of mine for a long time, you may recognize this post from my previous blog at dynamic alignment bodywork page. I’ll be having a look through some of my favorites there and re-posting here over the next little while, along with new content as it arises. (If you’re an old reader and you have any favorites from that site, please shoot me a line and let me know! I like hearing what especially resonates with people. Thanks.)