High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘Balance’

Sooner or later in every climb you come to the rocky places.  The smooth path turns rough and offers you its challenge.

This seeming trial is a sign of your worthiness, intended to reveal to you how much you have learned.  Welcome it.

Watch how bright your attention becomes, how alert you can be, how much detail you see.  Notice how agilely you gauge each step, placing it just so, finding your balance.  Observe your trust in yourself growing with every step.

This path is meant to free you from your fears, to let you see that you are wiser than you knew.

“Grandpa?” Billy asked when they came across the tree that the beavers were working to fell, “How do they do it?  How does a beaver know he can topple something so big?  How does he know which direction to carve, and how to make it fall so it lands in the clearing?”

“Instinct,” said Grandpa.

“Instinct?” said Billy. “What does that mean?”

“It means they just do what their insides tell them to do, Grandpa answered. “It’s sort of like following your hunches.

“The beaver’s just swimming along, and all of a sudden he gets a notion that he should go chisel his teeth on a tree.

“He stops thinking about what he’s going to have for lunch or what his sister said yesterday that made him mad, and he just gets all quiet and waits for his insides to pick out the right tree.  Everything inside him just gets into a kind of balance, and then out comes his answer. “

Billy thought for a minute.  “It’s sort of like knowing when to swing the bat when I play baseball,” he said.  “You just let everything stop and pay attention. Then wham! You hit the ball.”

“You got it,” said Grandpa, gazing at the beaver’s tree.  “It’s all a matter of balance.”

“It’s kind of beautiful, isn’t it, Grandpa?” Billy said.

“Yes it is,” Grandpa agreed.  “Yes it is.”

“Happiness is not a matter of intensity, but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.” ~ Thomas Merton

The trees shine up from the creek’s surface, their castaway leaves laughing on the ground and floating merrily on the water.  Beneath my feet, they crunch as I walk.  The earth, in the afternoon’s heat, smells of autumn, and crickets sing.

Today is the Autumnal Equinox, when day and night stand in balance.  Here in the woods, it feels holy, as if the earth, poised on the cusp of the new season, is pausing at the end of its long summer sigh before it gathers everything in.

There’s a stillness about things, almost a watchfulness.  I can feel the last of summer settling away.  And in the far distance, I imagine I hear the high whistle of winter winds as they ready themselves for their part in the dance.

All things contain each other.  In every grain, the whole tells its dynamic, ever-evolving story.  The up merges with the down; the inside blends with the out.  And in this moment, this precious instant when the earth balances between seasons, I feel the harmony and order of it all, and it tastes of unending happiness.

Today, for the first time in weeks, I got to walk in the fields.  As I rounded the bend that yielded the first glimpse of the back 18 acres, my heart leaped with joy.  The goldenrod was in bloom!

A field full of goldenrod is an amazing sight.  For me, it’s at once the golden crown of summer, given in celebration to mark its last days, and the first grand sweep from autumn’s palette. The intensity of the color takes your breath away, and you can’t help but be happy walking through it.

I call these season-spanning the days the golden days.  And how fitting, I think, is their color.  It’s the hue of balance, of the golden mean, placed between summer’s rampant growth and winter’s rest, between the sizzle and the freeze.  Everything’s nearly at its peak of maturity and fullness . . . the plants in the fields, the leaves on the trees, the spring’s generation of deer and rabbits, beaver and raccoons.  And the goldenrod shouts “Bravo! Well done!”

Time seems to pause, here at the year’s zenith, as if to give us the chance to take in the wonders the season has wrought before it passes away.  Soon it will crescendo into harvest time and painted leaves will dance and fall, bringing the play to a close.  But here, in the golden days, we have this chance to look about us at the magnificent abundance and to gather it with gratitude and gladness into our hearts.

I was reading about the concept of balance when I came across two quotes.  The first, by Trappist monk and poet Thomas Merton said, “Happiness is not a matter of intensity, but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.”

I thought about that, about the calm, deep center from which happiness arises.  Although it splashes and ripples and sparkles with joy when it bursts out into the world, the core of happiness, its wellspring, is indeed a beautiful point of perfect harmony and balance.  It’s the state where genuine mindfulness takes you, the perspective that allows you to perceive the world’s glorious rhythmic order and grace, and to feel its reflection in your own being.

But how do we find that spot in the midst of the upheavals and stresses life brings us?  The second quote I found, from science fiction writer Frank Herbert, held the clue: “There’s no secret to balance,” he said.  “You just have to feel the waves.”

What put the two quotes together in my mind was the memory of a wonderful poster I saw years ago.  A laughing, white-bearded guru in a soaking wet gown was speeding down the edge of an enormous wave on a surfboard, his arms outstretched, hair flying in the wind.  “You can’t stop the ocean from flowing,” the caption said, “but you can learn to surf its waves.”

That’s what Herbert was saying.  The key isn’t in pretending the waves don’t exist, or in trying to stay on their crests, but in staying centered as you ride them.  It’s in understanding that the surface of life’s ocean is a turbulent affair, where highs are followed by lows that give way to new highs.  Gladness is followed by sorrow that gives way to another round of gladness in wave after wave after wave.  Happiness is allowing yourself to feel the peaks and troughs with your whole being so you can glide with them in harmony, centered in your awareness that it’s all just the rhythm of the ocean’s flowing dance.