Find­ing Sta­ble Ground

© Alexan­der Yakovlev | Dreamstime.com

The Idea of Balance

One of the key wierd­nesses of the 80s and 90s was what was called “lift­ing off.” Peo­ple with too much time on their hands tended to get immersed in all kinds of ‘spir­i­tual’ stuff, move­ments, etc. Or, they went off to ashrams, retreat cen­tres, or train­ing places, hop­ing to fig­ure them­selves out—

but really, what they wanted was a way to be so spe­cial that they could get away with murder.

My favourite exam­ple was a woman who had been receiv­ing coun­selling from a guy who had been a teacher at Find­horn, a real New Age Cen­tre. She was highly in lust with her car­pen­ter. She came for coun­selling, but her clearly stated inten­tion was for me to “fix her affir­ma­tions.” She’d been send­ing the fol­low­ing “up to the cosmos”:

“I want my hus­band and chil­dren and my carpenter’s wife and chil­dren to accept and sup­port my hav­ing a sex­ual rela­tion­ship (soul­mates with ben­e­fits, I guess…) with the carpenter.”

Ther­apy didn’t go on for long. I think, basi­cally, it was over when I said, “You can have what­ever you are will­ing to pay for. So, go have an affair, if you choose. How­ever, I sus­pect the spouses might not nec­es­sar­ily go along.”

She insisted that there had to be a way for her to have her cake and eat it too.

Not very grounded.

Ground­ed­ness is all about acceptance

The rea­son peo­ple come to me is sim­ple: they are not OK with some aspect of their lives, and they want my help to change the exter­nal thing. Or, there is some aspect of their inter­nal the­atre that they hate—an emo­tion, a way of being, that they dis­agree with, and want changed.

It’s a hard thing for them to accept that the first step in our work together is that we start from where the client is—by accept­ing that “the way it is, is the way it is.”

In my book, This End­less Moment, I use the idea of learn­ing to pad­dle a Kayak as a way to describe this. There really is only one way to pad­dle, to bal­ance, and to direct a kayak. There is only one way to turn into an eddy, and one way to leave. If you tip the boat the wrong way, it will flip right over, and quickly. So, a wise per­son gets instruc­tion on the way to pad­dle a kayak.

Once you’ve learned the basics, you can impro­vise, and add your own lit­tle quirks and stunts, but all of them will fall within the basic “how to pad­dle” rubric. You will never be able to lean the wrong way enter­ing the cur­rent, and not end up upside down. No mat­ter how spe­cial you think you are.

Spe­cial and a dumb move gets you a mouth full of water.
Every time.

The rules of bal­ance are always the same. You miss, you fall over. So, the accep­tance we teach is accep­tance of the “rules of engage­ment” for living.

Here are a few “accep­tances” that are “sim­ply so”

• How you are at your core can­not be changed—your emo­tions, your default world-view, your base­line mood—all are “you,”
• The peo­ple around you are exactly as they appear to be—what they do is who they are.
• The mind-work we teach (and is inte­gral to zazen) is obser­va­tion. The goal is to accept the mind’s chat­ter, dis­trac­tions, and games, and with accep­tance, to find the still­ness that exists between thoughts.
• No one is com­ing. There is no sav­iour or res­cuer to ride in and make it all better.
• Ground­ed­ness is work­ing from exactly where you are, with pre­cisely the tools you have, now.
• Demand­ing that oth­ers and the world do it your way is futile and a waste of time.

I could go on for hours.

Here’s the key:

Bal­anced liv­ing is about set­tling in, and find­ing your­self. As you self-explore, you’ll find resistances—emotions you don’t like, parts of your body you judge or want to ignore, past expe­ri­ences you dig up and scare your­self over.

If you are ungrounded, you will want to:

• pull away
• resist look­ing at, or even dis­cussing the issue
• dis­tract your­self with some­thing “fun or chargy,”
• make your­self uncom­fort­able, and then blame some­thing exter­nal for your discomfort

To be grounded:

• move toward the dis­com­fort, and explore it fully
• be open and hon­est about what is going on, what you fear, and what you want
• stay focussed on the feel­ing, and do not dis­tract yourself
• stay with the dis­com­fort, while open­ing your­self, phys­i­cally, and emo­tion­ally, to addi­tional stim­u­la­tion of the issue, body part, or thought you are set­ting your­self off over.

Your body will tell you what to work on—places that are tight, uncom­fort­able, hyper or hypo sensitive—there are signs of “what’s up.” Body­work will help you to feel your feel­ings, and bring them into acceptance.

Accep­tance is not surrender

Most peo­ple spend eons fight­ing against their natures, and demand­ing things change—without effort, and ‘just because…’ Thus, most peo­ple die stuck and miserable.

Ground­ed­ness is land­ing on the firm foun­da­tion of who you are, accept­ing this as the base­line or start­ing place, and mak­ing other, more pro­duc­tive choices.

Next week, the ground­ed­ness of relating.