Find Balance
How do we find balance between our individual will and the natural flow of life?
By living aligned with the present moment, you also align your will with the universal will, which you could call “the will of God”. You don’t have a separate will. The separate will wants to enhance or strengthen one’s sense of self. The separate will is concerned with the “me”, the “I”, the ego. But there is a divine Consciousness, the one Consciousness, there is an evolutionary impulse. What we are doing here at every moment, is to align ourselves with that.
Non-resistance is vital because as long as you are in resistance to the present moment, you will be trapped in the little egoic will. The egoic will needs to subside – that’s surrender to the present moment, and surrender to what is. When you align yourself with what is internally, it looks at first almost like a position of weakness, and it can be misinterpreted as something that prevents you from taking effective action. But the acceptance of what is, is totally compatible with responding to whatever the present moment requires. Whatever wants to be created, manifested, done, at this moment – to be aligned with that, you need to first accept whatever form this moment takes.
Single out this moment only. For example, when you are ill, you don’t say “I need to accept this illness, the fact that I am ill, that I am suffering from this” because that is a whole conceptual story. All you need to accept is this moment as it is. There is never actually an illness in this moment, there is only a physical condition. There may be pain, there may be weakness, disability, discomfort. Those things may be there, and that’s the only thing you accept. This moment is as it is now.
If you are stuck in the mud somewhere, you don’t say, “Okay, I am in the mud, I have to accept it, and here I am – I’m not taking any action because I have to accept what is”. This moment is already always as it is, and there’s nothing you can do about that. That’s what you accept. Then, action that arises has a different energy to it. The will that flows into what you do is no longer egoic. When you have not accepted this moment, the will goes against the Universe – that is what the ego does. It is negative, it fights something that it says shouldn’t be there. If you use negativity, you are trapped in ego. The “little will” has to subside for the more powerful will to flow through and deal with the situation. It creates, it is not isolated from the totality. It is one with the totality. When that operates, another word for that universal will is intelligence. It’s only when you look at a situation, completely accept the is-ness of this moment, and then of course action may be required.
Once the opening is there, through acceptance, the next step that you take will be much more powerful. There’s a Buddhist term “right action”, that can only arise out of the right state of Consciousness. You have to get out of the ego first before you can have right action. The Buddha was talking about that which flows from the awakened state of consciousness. To surrender the little will is to say ‘yes’ to the present moment. It’s not a big thing, just say yes to what is – because it already is anyway. Why complain about something that is? It’s insane, but normal.
