How can we tell if we are following the path that we’re meant to be on? I’ve come to believe it’s a matter of listening within. When we follow a practice, there’s a stage where we begin to recognize a state of balance in ourselves.
The first taste of this for me came after returning from the ten-month course at Sherborne. I had to resume “normal” life and find my own rhythm for inner work. This included sitting to do morning exercise by myself instead of with a hundred other students and Mr. Bennett radiating his baraka. But over time sitting by myself, or with just a few, became part of my life. I learned to value the state I entered with this work of attention and how it affected my day.
At some point I began to have the sense of a balance to life and encapsulated my understanding of this with the phrase, “being in the right place at the right time.” Sometimes it felt like the proverbial razor’s edge, at other times like an inner loadstone, attracting what I needed.
Losing the Path
When I am out of balance, life has a discordant quality.
For instance, I may have a timeframe in which to get sapling trees out of my garden beds, but I wander from one little house-hold task to another, never getting outside. As the window of opportunity narrows, my anxiety increases, and I begin to sense I am out of balance with myself.
When I sense this discordance, I see it’s time to re-set. Can I let go of worrying about the saplings or do I need to gather my intention to do the task? Sitting and coming back to myself, asking what truly needs to be attended to, helps. Weeding saplings may sound trivial, but it’s this practice of paying attention to my inner state and how I am relating to the world that tells me if I’m on track or not. Maybe today is not the day to attend to the garden. If I make the right choice, things fall into place. If I don’t, obstacles continue to arise.
Recognizing the Greater Path
If I am to open myself to something greater than myself, I need this same sense of balance. I need to recognize a resonance in myself, but not with thoughts. It’s a knowing with the part of myself that is not ego. Listening within and sensing balance tells me I am on the path. Staying on the path takes vigilance lest I fall asleep and wake up in the woods.
And when the obstacles arise, how are they then seen and battled with — it’s the same fight as before, isn’t it? How would it be different other than there is more tasks or more difficulty that has entered by perceiving a “wrong choice.”
There is resistance in every task before us. Seldom to household tasks not bring us in front of it. Thank God.
Jimmy the Celtic Bear…