We go throughout our days just struggling to get by and understanding or not understanding exactly why things happen or why things have to happen a certain way.
So today I'm going to shed light into a topic that is very touchy for a lot of people.
The topic of happiness and unhappiness or happiness and then sorrow.
And if you're going through unhappiness and sorrow right now,
I mean I feel for you.
I'm there with you.
I feel these same emotions still even after I have attained something that most have never will attain.
But because I have attained something,
I can share with you a understanding and this understanding might help you to cope with your sorrow and your unhappiness.
So let me explain to you this.
There's a story this Sufi mystic told one time.
And when I read this story I was like,
Oh wow,
That kind of puts things in a perspective that we can all understand.
But anyway,
This Sufi was asked this question,
Why can't we always be happy all the time?
Why does sorrow have to be always ruining our happiness?
The Sufi's name was Hasan.
And Hasan got into a rowboat with this fellow that asked the question.
And they started going out into the lake and rowing with both oars out into the lake.
And they were making it halfway through the lake.
And then all of a sudden the Sufi put down one of the oars and then he started paddling with just one oar.
And as you can imagine what happened was the boat started just going in circles.
And the Sufi said to the fellow that asked him the question,
He said,
Do you understand now?
And he goes,
I think I do.
I think I understand because you're not going to get anywhere with just one oar.
So happiness is one oar and sorrow is,
Of course,
Is the other oar.
So in order for you to go in a straight line,
In other words,
In order for you to get somewhere in life,
In order for you to make it through this journey we call life,
Then you need two oars.
You have to have this balance.
And when you accept this balance,
When you accept the fact that sorrow must exist in order for happiness to exist,
Then you move on in life and you learn and you grow and you mature because of it.
And something happens to you when you accept the fact that the two cannot be split up.
They are dualities and dualities in Taoism basically say that they complement each other,
That one cannot exist without the other.
It's just the universal law of the Tao.
But upon accepting this fact,
Then something else happens.
Something arises,
A sense of you arises above it and you can become centered in that awareness and that consciousness of this rising above of the dualities.
And when you do that,
You get filled with a certain amount of bliss.
And now this bliss is not an ecstatic happy and it's not a bad sorrowful sorrow either.
It's like right in the middle.
It's just this perfect balance right in the middle.
And as a surfer,
You can go out and you can try paddling with one arm.
And in the beginning,
You'll tend to pull to one side and go in circles like the guy in the boat did.
But as a surfer,
I watched other surfers growing up and you need to rest an arm for a second.
When you're fighting waves and trying to get back out into the line up,
You try to conserve your energy.
So you begin to paddle with just one arm and it slows the heartbeat down.
It gives you a chance to regain your stoke and get re-energized so when you get back out into the line up,
You take a couple breaths and you prepare yourself for the next wave that's coming.
And you don't have to be greedy about how fast you catch waves,
But what happens is when you paddle with one arm,
You learn to paddle in a certain way that it compensates for the other arm.
I know the famous surfer Bethany Hamilton,
She had to learn this too because of her incident with the shark attack.
But you can balance it out.
And this paddling with one arm is not heavy and fast and it's not slow and weak either.
It's like right in the middle.
And you can do this to go in a straight line if you do it in a certain way,
But it takes a little bit of skill and a little bit of practice.
But like I said,
It's the middle path.
It's that Taoism,
The acceptance of what's going on,
The acceptance of your situation in the water as you're paddling back out or the acceptance of understanding that you're in a rowboat and you've got one oar and you're just going in circles.
But if you get proficient at it,
You could use that oar in a certain way and find this balance in life and find this center point where all of existence operates from.
This middle line,
This very small,
Almost invisible line that we all live on.
I was married to my previous wife for 20 years.
And this relationship we had was kind of a beautiful one.
At first we had the fire like everybody else does in the beginning of a relationship and hot and heavy and it had its beauty too.
But after the fire started drizzling out a little bit,
I got into meditation at this time and started finding out about these dualities and all the understandings of Buddhism and being a Buddha or understanding what a Buddha is.
And I shifted my energy from this love-hate relationship basically.
And that's what it is when you're in a certain human love.
It's a love-hate relationship and there's highs and there's lows.
But I shifted into a higher state and my ex-wife and I never had fights anymore.
So for 20 years we lived in this blissful state and we were almost like best friends.
And I think that happens in a lot of relationships that a lot of couples end up being best friends because they're so close to each other and they share such a—they almost share the same body it seems like.
But that was okay for me and that was okay for my understanding.
I grew because this person,
Not just Maria,
My ex-wife,
But everything that happened in my life excelled me to a certain point where I became a conscious,
Aware,
Centered human being.
I owe it to all of existence.
I realize this now after it happened and after I attained this centeredness,
I realized that it was everything and everyone I ever met had a part to play.
And some of it was good and ecstatic and happy and some of it was sorrowful,
Sad,
And very hard to deal with.
Losing family members,
Losing my house,
And there are a lot of things that I've gone through.
I've experienced this form of suffering,
But to my centeredness,
I feel it.
It's there.
It's conscious,
But it happens on my periphery.
And the centering I have is okay.
But the problem was is that I guess after 20 years of this,
Maria,
My ex,
Felt that maybe she needed the highs and the lows.
I mean,
It's okay because I attained,
But the other person involved in the relationship may not have attained or gone on the same spiritual journey as you.
So that's why I recommend a lot of times is if you get into spirituality,
Share as much of it as you can with your mate.
Share your experiences,
Your blissfulness,
Your happiness,
Your sorrow,
Whatever you're going through.
Don't leave the other person out.
Unless it comes to a point where that person just can't grow anymore,
Where they're not ready to grow yet.
And that's going to happen in life.
There are certain people that you're going to come across and you may be married to them,
Or they may be family members,
Or you never know what relationship is going on.
But some people are just not ready to take that leap into the centeredness.
Because what's happening is you're leaping from an ego center,
From a mind center,
And you're shifting to a spiritual center.
And I'm not saying that's the feeling center.
The feeling center is closer to the spiritual center,
But your actual spiritual center operates from the heart.
Because that is the,
Basically,
Center of the seven chakras in your body,
Too.
It's this center point.
And it's a leap up from your intellectual body.
It's a higher form of evolution.
And taking that step is very scary for a lot of people.
A lot of people get frightened and revert back to whatever mentality they came from.
Or maybe they may revert into a lower body,
Into the emotional body,
To try to cope and understand what's going on with you.
But you're at a point where you're ready to grow.
That you're ready to be centered.
So Maria went on and basically we ended our 20 year relationship.
She fell in love with another person.
And I told her,
You know,
The best thing you can do in life is stay with love.
If the love between you and I has ended,
Then that's just life.
It's been beautiful and I thank you for everything you've given me.
And of course I was sad.
And I dealt with the sorrow and I dealt with the breakup.
And the thing is that a centered person,
When they do something like that,
They do it totally.
If you're hurting and the end of a relationship hurts,
Then you have to let it go.
But that doesn't mean hold it in and repress it.
What that means is that you have to feel it to its totality.
So basically I got out on top of a roof one day and I was by myself and it just hit me all at once.
And I just cried and I cried and I cried until I couldn't cry anymore.
I shed every tear that I had for this person and I let it all go.
Because it wasn't until I did that that I was able to start to heal.
And we have losses in our lives.
We lose our children,
We lose our parents,
We lose our friends and our brothers and our sisters.
Everybody has their time.
But like I said,
If you follow the path of the centered person,
If you become the centered person,
Then you'll move on.
Life goes on.
And that's the beauty of life is that it does go on and you realize the centeredness.
You live in your totality.
You get through your experiences.
And then what happens is the book closes and the chapter ends and you close the book and you say,
Okay,
Well that was a beautiful book.
That was 20 years and it was a great 20 years.
And then when that book closes and you matured and you've healed from all your wounds,
Then you're able to move on in life.
And basically all I did was I said,
You know,
God,
I love the essence of a woman.
I love a woman being around me and sharing life with me.
And I think that's beautiful.
And maybe that's what human love is all about,
These relationships.
And what's so beautiful about human love is that it's a step in the direction of the divine.
Divine love is a next level,
A higher form.
And when you start meditating and you become centered and you raise your awareness and you start experiencing this divine love,
You'll understand that human love is just a step up.
It's not to be condemned.
And I know a lot of priests do condemn lust or love,
And lust is basically the first step of the ladder,
So don't condemn it.
You grow from it.
But you mature past it.
And then most people who start off a relationship with lust,
It develops into love.
But you can help that love develop into a higher form of love.
Divine love is beautiful,
But there's more than just divine love.
It goes higher.
It goes into dimensions that are—love basically is the center of the heart and the center of existence within you.
But you've got three more chakras to go.
You've got more to evolve into,
And more to understand,
And more to grow into.
So all that's waiting for you.
All that's there.
And I know you're probably wondering,
Like,
Why should I trust what this guy is saying,
This Doug guy?
I mean,
Who is this Doug guy?
And I would simply say that maybe in a way I'm asking you to trust me,
But there's a thin,
Fine line between what I'm asking you to do and what really goes on in life.
So all I ask of you is,
I share my stories with you.
I share my experiences of my personal life,
Because I feel that in that personal life,
Like I explained,
It helped me to evolve.
It helped me to grow and helped me to develop into the person that I am today.
But maybe if I share those things and help you or give you a courage to try yourself some of the things that I mentioned.
Try diving into love and feeling these emotions,
These highs and lows,
And then learning to maybe go past those things and develop your love into divine love.
I mean,
It's better if both persons can take that journey together and stay together through the journey.
But when it comes to climbing mountaintops,
And this journey is a trip to the mountain,
When it comes to climbing mountaintops,
You'll find that you can carry less and less with you.
You can take less and less with you.
You can't carry someone else on your backs up there.
You have to do this journey alone.
That's just the way existence is,
Is that each one of us are born alone.
Each one of us,
When you have an ego death,
You're alone at this point too,
Because you can't carry any weight.
Any extra weight will stop you from having your own self-realization.
So you might ask,
Well,
Whatever happened to Maria?
Well,
Maria and I are still best friends.
That part,
Even though the one aspect of the relationship ended,
We still maintain a good relationship and we help each other out as much as we can throughout life.
I give her spiritual advice and she helps me with other things that I'm dealing with.
And we're still friends.
And that's the beauty of life,
Is that when one relationship ends,
It doesn't mean that you have to be enemies and you have to hate each other.
That's very,
I guess you could call that immature,
But if you raise your energy,
You'll realize that you should always stay with love.
And that's a tantric principle.
Like I told Maria,
When she met the other fellow and started falling in love with him,
I told her,
Stay with love.
That's more important.
Love is more important than me trying to hold on to something that doesn't live anymore.
It becomes a dead thing.
And holding on to dead things is not the way God intended us to live.
He keeps creating something new and other new things are bringing new people into our lives all the time so that we have these chances.
And these chances are what helps you move forward in life and you gain the courage by being centered.
You gain the courage by practicing awareness.
So I ask you to experiment with life.
Experiment with what I say.
You don't owe me anything.
And I certainly could understand if you don't agree or if you don't understand what the things I'm sharing with you.
But find the courage to experiment with it.
And if it works for you,
Keep listening to me.
I'm here to help you grow and help everyone else climb that mountain.
Get to a point where I give you enough courage for you to climb it yourself.
Because it's an enduring trek all the way up to the top.
It's higher than Everest.
The mountain of existence is higher than the Mount Everest.
It's so beautiful of a thing to take in and do is to climb and experience this climb.
And once you get to the top of the mountain,
Then it's another whole thing that goes on because there's not a lot of room up there.
God's up there maybe and Jesus may be up there and maybe a few saints,
But there's not a lot of room.
So then you have to ask yourself,
What do I do?
Do I stay up here?
And that's a beautiful thing in life is that your choice is to stay up there or you could choose to come back to the valley as I have done and share your experiences of this mountaintop.
And then what's cool about life is that there are so many different paths up that mountain.
When you get back down to the bottom,
You may choose a different path because you don't want to take the same path right back up.
You take a different path or you create a new path and you make a new journey to the top of the mountain and a whole new experience and it's beautiful in itself.
And this could be done ad infinitum.
The choice is always yours and that's the beauty of life.
So I hope this tract helped you to understand why we have to have the dualities in life.
There's so many different dualities,
Love and hate,
Happiness and sorrow,
Good and bad,
Hot and cold,
But they all complement each other.
As soon as you accept the fact that everything works in unison together to help you to grow,
To help you get through this Tao,
This life,
This beautiful essence that we call life again.
All right,
I guess I've talked enough.
I love you guys and thank you for listening to me.
My name is Douglas Gromins and I've got probably close to maybe 100 tracks here on Insight Timer and if you get a free moment and you're not doing anything,
Listen to some of my other tracks.
I try to make each one insightful or I actually don't get the inspiration to talk about something until I feel the spark inside of me to share a certain topic like this love,
Hate or happiness and sorrow topic.
I was just talking with a friend yesterday about it and it reignites something in me that helps you to grow and expand and experience this higher essence of life.
So anyway,
Thank you again for listening to me.
Aloha and Namaste to all my beautiful friends.
Take care.
Bye.
