It loops around our wrists as Bob and I hold hands while he sleeps. It runs through the center of this situation. I trust that the Divine has brought us all to this exact point in our lives, together, and we will walk through this, with no expected outcomes other than we will walk together in faith and love and joy and peace. I am not demanding that anything has to be a certain way. I am allowing life to unfold and being present with it. As I journey with Greg and his dad, I am feeling for the center. It is there in your relationships, in your diet, in your business activities. All things move quietly through that center balance. There is an invisible thread that passes through everything. If you have no preference, if the only thing you want is to remain centered, then life unfolds while you simply feel for the center. I loved this section in Chapter 18: “When you stop being confused, everything becomes simple. In reality, I am the one who is exhausting, confused and out of balance. When I am swinging from extreme to extreme, life is exhausting, confusing, out of balance. And I am always present, always there, as it unfolds.
Lived with such awareness and such simplicity, life indeed becomes simple as it unfolds in front of me. This is the path that brings me such peace and joy. If I start to go off center, I can return, as often as I need to. Or I can let go of what rises up, immediately, and stay centered, stay present. If something happens….a car cuts me off in traffic….I can swing to an extreme and react from that place….and stay in that agitated place for an unreasonable long time. It is to stay centered, balanced, at rest within. To walk the middle way is to stay in a space with no energy pushing me to the edges, to the extremes. How long can a pendulum stay at rest? Forever, because no forces are moving it out of balance. How long, Singer asks, will a pendulum stay at its outermost position? Only a moment, without continued forces moving it. It’s not easy to maintain, without massive effort. If I starve myself for days, I am apt to swing the other way just as far, and overeat when I finally give in and eat. If you pull a pendulum one way, it will swing the opposite way just as far. If it is pulled 30 degrees to the right and released, it will swing 30 degrees to the left. Trying to maintain the extremes takes massive amounts of energy, energy that isn’t available then for living a joy-filled, abundant life. Or I can find the middle way and speak when I feel compelled to speak and have something worthy and uplifting to share. Another example I thought of would be, I can never speak….I can talk all the time.
The middle way would be to eat, when the body says it is time to eat, and to eat something that sustains and nurtures the body. Both extremes can’t be continued, without disastrous results.
For example, one can never eat….or eat all the time. Writing of walking the middle way, Singer gives examples of living life at the edges, at the extremes. It was perfect, listening to this chapter, thinking about Bob and life as I drove. Chapter 18 is called The Secret of the Middle Way.
This is a great book and comes close to touching other teachings from great people, there is no science here, just a path which I believe is the way and only way to follow, you can try many other things, medication etc and keep searching for that cure, but the cure is to stop searching! listen to what Michael says and you will see a difference.īe patient, it will take time, weeks, months, years but you will all of a sudden find yourself in a powerful place of positivity and confidence.On my way to Arkansas this morning, to spend time with Greg’s dad in the hospital and allow Greg to go get some much needed sleep, I listened to The Untethered Soul, by Michael A Singer, on Audible. If your in a bit of a crap place, just try adopt some of his teachings, just for 24 hours and I am pretty confident you will see a difference, even the slightest but over time old habbits will die and new will be born. Michael doesn't speak about specific symptoms, more just topics as a whole and this is how you need to treat any anxiety, stress or worry. I have read A LOT of books that cover this subject matter and I feel this is the best overall book that just cuts to the chase. I overcame a real bad batch of anxiety a few years ago and it raised its ugly head again recently, I have worked through everything but the final and worst symptom is just my constant racing mind with intrusive thoughts and all sorts of things.