Activity

Blackboard

Life is this great big blackboard, and on it you write all the things that you do.

We all have an inner and outer world; how do we tune into the inner self to stay balanced and calm amid the hustle and bustle of everyday life?

After being inspired to expand their awareness and walk the path of higher consciousness, people can lose motivation. Modern society has so much stress and rush – relieved by endless distractions – that a consciousness-based lifestyle seems out of joint. Meditation retreats may show a stark contrast to all this hustle and bustle, but when you come home, the pull of everyday life can feel inescapable.

Look at yourself today. How much time and effort will you expend on the duties and demands of work and family? How tired will rushing around make you? How much will you long for a distraction to take your mind off everything? In practical terms, this is what the pull of “real life” means. The mind is filled with the noise of constant activity just to keep up with everything. By itself, a meditation session or two isn’t enough to counter the pull away from inner silence and self-awareness.

In the world’s wisdom traditions this obstacle was fully recognized. As long as the restless mind has existed, it really doesn’t matter if someone lived in ancient India at the time of the Buddha or today in the middle of a noisy city. The traditions of sages and teachers have offered a solution, which can be called the “pull of the self.” When you attune yourself to this inner magnetism, as it were, you can maintain your inspiration to grow and evolve over years, decades, and a lifetime.

The pull of the self means reorienting your attention from external situations, but that doesn’t imply that you ignore the outer world or resist it, either. To ignore is a form of denial. To resist strengthens the hold of what you are trying to push away. Instead, I’m talking about a new relationship between two worlds, the one “in here” and the one “out there.” Think of this relationship as a sliding scale, a line with two end points.