In and Between Two Worlds

by Guy Finley -

The Great Balancing Act:

I receive many questions concerning how to achieve a proper balance between physical and spiritual longings; how much time should be spent working on one's higher, interior life, versus running around and doing what life demands as a result of being in this world.

For those of you who want to learn a little more from a different perspective on this question, here are some thoughts to ponder.

Life, in the broadest sense of it, both spiritually and materially, is an expression of an eternal descending and ascending set of forces: "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"--the principle of expansion and contraction, light and darkness, ascending and descending archetype ideas then brought into physical creation.

The descending forces are what give rise to creation as it "falls" from one level into another, constantly dividing. This is the force of manifestation,and it moves from within to without.

Two Forces Acting Within

It is what essentially "does" in the man, with him just identifying with its movement and--in a matter speaking--choosing what this energy will manifest itself into through whatever his immediate environment and conditioning dictate.

This force (in conjunction with unconscious imagination) promises completion through whatever is subjectively created. Of course such "completion" is impossible because the force itself is a divisive one, providing only temporary satisfaction, at best.

What this means is that, as a rule, sleeping man is always identified with this exteriorized sense of himself and has virtually no awareness of his interior life and accordingly, the ascending force within it. (Think of the prodigal son as an expression of these two forces acting within and upon one being.)

The task of the individual who would awaken is to be present to both of these forces at once; he needs to be aware of his interior life and its native longing to ascend, to return home; as Whitman would say,

"the central urge of every atom to return to its source."

 

Attention and Awareness

In order to be present in this way, to this eternal presence that expresses itself through these twin forces, one's attention must be properly divided between the world of a descending will that always wants to go, do, pursue, manifest in some way -- and the world within him that is capable of being aware of this movement and that remains present to itself within itself rather than becoming caught up in the sensation of being identified with some new creation.

So you see it's not a question of doing or not doing, but of placing one's attention and awareness within that presence that doesn't "try" to balance one's life according to some idealized spiritual state; it (this presence) is perfect creative balance itself.

One must work. We are created to create; but when we create for the sake of producing any sense of self-formulated identity, we create in vain and suffer the inevitable consequences of seeing the truth of it.

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