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Last week I wrote about Yin Yang bal­ance, and how this occurs in the body. This week I’m car­ry­ing on with the theme, and using two illus­tra­tions of balance.

The Yin Yang sym­bol is so famil­iar that we don’t actu­ally see it.

Or, we see its shape, and miss its essence. So, look again. What is ele­gantly cap­tured above is per­fect bal­ance. It’s not a mat­ter of one or the other — it’s both/and.

And then have a look at the divid­ing line between the colours, curv­ing along the mid­dle. You could see that line as the Buddha’s Mid­dle path, or Way. This is the path that moves away from extremes. One way to think of it is to pic­ture a river. One bank of the river is chaos, and the other is rigid­ity. The mid­dle of the river, where the flow and action is, could be thought of as flex­i­bil­ity.

Last week I made men­tion of my first 32 years, and my exces­sive “yang-ness.”

I thought of another illustration.

I learned to play golf when I was 12. My dad was a pretty good golfer — he shot con­sis­tently in the 80s. Me, I had trou­ble break­ing 100. I had a wicked hook, and spent a lot of time extract­ing lost balls from the rough.

I’d read the books, and I’d watch videos, and all I ever saw was what you could call the hand posi­tion cor­rec­tion for a hook. In other words, rather than tak­ing a nor­mal grip on the club, you’d repo­si­tion your hands so as to “cor­rect” the club face. Using a con­torted hand posi­tion for 20 years, I could shoot mid 90s.

Some point along the way, Dar started mess­ing around with golf (not her favourite activ­ity — she played so as to hang out with me.)

I had no clue how to teach her, so off we went for lessons.

We got a female golf pro, which I thought was inter­est­ing. I can remem­ber won­der­ing, in advance, how she saw golf — how her approach dif­fered from mine.

She asked me to hit a ball. I choked up on the grip, and hit a mini-hook about 100 yards with a 5 iron (a club you should get an aver­age dis­tance of 150 years with.) She then said some­thing inter­est­ing. “Fin­ish your swing, and hold it.”

I’m think­ing, “Odd request, but she’s the pro.”

So I did. She walked up, and started fid­dling around with my stance. The first thing she did was take the club from me, and hand it back. She said, “Take a neu­tral grip.” I blanched, and began to explain about my slice. She raised her hand.

“How has cor­rect­ing your hand posi­tion done in terms of straight­en­ing your line of flight?”

“Hasn’t helped much, but…”

“Hmm. Maybe you’d want to try some­thing new…”

So she con­tin­ued, twist­ing my body, my hand posi­tion, the place­ment of the club. Remem­ber, I was still hold­ing the posi­tion of the end point of the swing…

She said, “Mem­o­rize this body posi­tion. Good. Now swing again, and stop, so you’re posi­tioned like this.”

I did and she cor­rected. Again, and again, until finally, maybe 50 swings in, she smiled.

“Tee one up.”

I did. I got into my “stance,” and imme­di­ately rotated my hands.

“Stop!”

I looked up, puzzled.

“Neu­tral hand posi­tion, and end the swing the way you learned.”

“But… I’ll kill some­one over to the left with my hook.”

“Nor­mal grip, fin­ish the way you’ve learned.” How Zen!!!

I swal­lowed hard, swung, and fin­ished. I watched in amaze­ment as the ball sailed straight out, about 130 yards.

After those lessons, I began to reg­u­larly break 90.

The point? In order to achieve bal­ance, you have to

1. stop doing what doesn’t work, and
2. start doing what does.

And it helps to have some­one to “adjust your pos­ture into the fin­ish position.”

Com­pas­sion

OK, another illustration.

Let’s imag­ine some­thing bad hap­pens. Peo­ple in gen­eral tend to react in one of two ways:

• exces­sive yin, or
• exces­sive yang.

I’m dig­ging back decades for this story, to my time in the Ministry.

Young cou­ple, I’d mar­ried. I got a call, and learned that their infant had died of crib death. Dar and I were away, so it took me 2 hours to get there. I walked in, to the fol­low­ing scene.

The mom and dad were stand­ing in the mid­dle of the liv­ing room, look­ing dazed and blank. On one side of the room were sev­eral peo­ple weep­ing and rock­ing. On the other side of the room was a hud­dle. They were talk­ing end­lessly. They’d walk over to the par­ents, and say stuff like,

• “It’s all for the best, he’s with the Lord now.” Or,
• “Thank God you’re young. You’ll get over this, and you can always have another.” Or,
• “Buck up. Tears aren’t going to bring him back.”

(You wouldn’t believe some of the crap I’ve heard at Funeral Par­lors. My “favourite”: “Doesn’t he just look like him­self!” No, he looks dead. Yikes.)

So, I am tak­ing mod­est lib­er­ties, but that really was the pic­ture. Yin on one side of the room, yang on the other. Why?

Most suck at deal­ing with what are con­sid­ered “neg­a­tive” expe­ri­ences or emo­tions: death, acci­dent, nat­ural dis­as­ters — anger, grief, depres­sion. There is a reluc­tance to sim­ply “be” with this stuff — the yin peo­ple want to hide or escape , and the yang peo­ple wan to fix it or triv­i­al­ize it. In general.

So, I watched for a minute, then went over and hugged the par­ents, and said, “I am so sad. We need to talk. Let me clear the room.” Both par­ents looked at me, smiled a bit, and nodded.

I kicked every­one out. Me, doing yang — I still knew how!

I then turned to the par­ents, and walked them over to the couch. I sat them down. I knelt in front of them and said, “I have no words, no pat answers. I do have two shoul­ders.” They both col­lapsed onto my shoul­ders, and they sobbed for a while. I shed some tears, too, while remain­ing present and aware.

They wound down and looked up, and their eyes were much clearer. We then were able to talk, to com­mu­ni­cate, and to design the funeral service.

Com­pas­sion means being with some­one else, right where they are, with­out being intru­sive, and with­out back­ing away.

It’s being “right there.” So, no clos­ing your eyes, no drift­ing off into la-la land. Right here. Right now.

Com­pas­sion is not com­ing up with answers or expla­na­tions, (yang) or get­ting lost in your own imag­in­ings (yin.)

In a sense, it’s going inside and access­ing your feel­ings (which are there because of some­thing sim­i­lar you have expe­ri­enced — I can’t feel another’s loss, but I can res­onate with their loss by access­ing my losses.) You also access your mind, not for expla­na­tions or pat answers, but to pay atten­tion. My mind gives me lines like, “What do you need, right now, from me?” Or, “Here’s a Kleenex.” Or, “Would you like a hug (to be held?)”

The dis­ci­pline is to resist rush­ing in to fix the other (you can’t) to explain (you can’t) or to pull back out of fear, or to dis­solve into a pud­dle. Just be here, now. Balance.

To learn this, we often have to lean in the oppo­site direc­tion. I remem­ber learn­ing to turn into cur­rent in a kayak. It’s like rid­ing a motor­cy­cle — you lean into the turn, even though that seems “wrong.” With kayaks, you actu­ally expose the bot­tom of the boat to the current.

So, yang peo­ple need to prac­tice yin ways of being, and vice versa. The ever elo­quent Dar­bella described it this way, as she wrote about a Haven experience:

“Prior to attend­ing the Come Alive, I saw myself as a per­son who chose not to con­nect to peo­ple around me. In fact, I believed I could make myself invis­i­ble within a group sit­u­a­tion. I felt very iso­lated and alone — even in a group sit­u­a­tion. In the past, being shut down was a com­fort­able place to be. I spent a lot of time there — alone. Although I chose to expe­ri­ence life fully with Wayne — could be open and hon­est with him — could com­mu­ni­cate with him from my heart — could share with him how I felt in my body — could truly be me — I chose to see myself as a per­son unable to share in a sim­i­lar way with other peo­ple. A fear of rejec­tion kept me iso­lated in my own safe, com­fort­able space. I was aware at a cog­ni­tive level that I had begun to change the way that I related to peo­ple but my inter­nal pic­ture of me remained stuck in the old view of isolation.”

“In my com­mu­ni­ca­tions over lunch [one day], I shared my inter­nal pic­ture of myself of being a per­son who does not con­nect with other peo­ple. The reac­tion to that one was great dis­be­lief. I actu­ally heard what peo­ple were say­ing and I was amazed. This did not fit with my inter­nal pic­ture of me. By the time I returned after lunch, I was aware that I had made an inter­nal shift in the pic­ture of me. I now saw myself as ”me emerg­ing“ — a per­son who can con­nect with oth­ers. The energy vis­i­bly flowed in my body.” Read the whole story here

Just a sug­ges­tion. Go to Dar’s archive, start at the top and read her arti­cles. She’s bril­liant (I know. I’m prej­u­diced…) and says all of this in inter­est­ing ways!

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Make Con­tact!

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Go to the top of this arti­cle, click on the title, and leave a com­ment or question!

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Work­shops, Retreats!

Dar­bella and I can help you to find a new, vibrant, rich path. We offer day-long and week­end events —just you and us—and we will work with you, to be the change you want to see.

Read about it here:

Day-long Inten­sives
Week­end Residentials

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5. Non-Habitual Liv­ing and Being

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