In order to row a boat,
You must stay in the middle.
If you shift too much to one side or the other,
You will fall in the water.
This is also true of your life.
Whenever you are polarized in one direction or another,
In feeling,
Thought,
Or deed,
You lose your balance and progress stops.
Thus,
If you want to move forward,
Stay at the center.
If you don't know where the center is,
Stop what you are doing and feel the stillness.
So growing up in the Pacific Northwest,
In Washington State was where I was born and raised in Seattle,
And we had a lot of time spent on Puget Sound,
Which is this beautiful saltwater area that covers or is a big part of Washington State on the west side.
And so we would have this idea of,
You know,
It was easy.
You could sail a little sailboat,
You could row a rowboat,
You could row a kayak.
There was a lot of chances to be in the water.
And of course,
Learning pretty quickly with that type of,
You know,
Water experience that if you get in a rowboat and you don't hunker down and stay at center,
It's pretty likely that you're not going to be in that rowboat for too long.
So this quality of staying at center,
Staying at center,
And this also refers to our thoughts,
Our mind,
What I have been calling mind-ego personality,
Mind slash ego slash personality,
This part of us that has desires and wants to do things and really can be a driving force and in fact is what a lot of the world is being driven on right now,
Mind-ego personality.
But of course,
The mind tends to get overly excited about one idea or another.
And it can tend to get polarized really quickly,
Really quickly.
And when we find that we are polarized,
And by polarized I mean we want one thing really badly to the exclusion of everything else or we have one opinion that no one can talk us out of or we have one belief.
And part of this could be,
You know,
If you look at the political polarization right now,
Especially in the US,
But part of it is also just our own beliefs about how things should be,
Other people's beliefs about how things should be,
All these beliefs,
Right?
And the messages are saying,
The universe is saying,
Don't get so attached to your beliefs.
Just kind of go back to center and notice and rest and be and let the current of flow carry you along.
Let the current of flow carry you along and notice what's happening.
A lot of you guys who have also been around boats notice that if the wind is choppy,
Like if you're in a kayak and the wind is choppy on an open water and you're trying to get from point A to point B and the current's really big,
You know that you're going to have to work with the current of flow.
There won't be any possibility of fighting against flow that is too strong.
And this is the same if we just sit in center,
Noticing,
Awaiting answers,
Awaiting guidance and noticing where the boat is going already of its own accord.
This is how we will get there faster than if we try and fight that current or row in a direction of polarization.
Always good to think about so many opinions flying around,
You know,
Social media,
Internet have really allowed people to have their voice.
And yet a lot of the voices are super polarized.
So this is an idea of returning to center,
Sitting in the middle of that boat,
Letting the universe take you in flow and just noticing where you're going instead of trying to direct it.
