In middle age, one gets tired of the involuntary round trips between the two ends of the see-saw. It slowly dawns on us, if we are alert, that the middle ground is the best. To our surprise, that middle ground is not the gray compromise that we feared but the place of ecstasy and joy. The great visions of the religious world- are based on a sublime sense of symmetry and balance. One cannot stay very long in this middle place, for it is a knife-edge, outside space and time. A moment of it is enough to give meaning to long stretches of ordinary life. India warns that if one touches that place for more than a short time one will lose one’s orientation and die. There is small danger of this to most of us, however. Better suited to our Western life is the concept of standing in the middle of the teeter-totter with two feet planted so we can balance easily. This is not a gray compromise but a strong and balanced life…..Robert Johnson
to dare to be with contradictory impulses may be the deepest work of our lives….to test duality, to wring out the kinks of existential pain, to allow paradox….monsters under the bed and sharks in the sea never find us but taunt us regardless……we are whole (because of) in spite of our split selves…..
Cutting through spiritual bypassing means turning toward the painful, disfigured, ostracized, unwanted, or otherwise disowned aspects of ourselves and cultivating as much intimacy as possible with them. To do this, we inevitably will have to deal with our numbness, approaching it with as much care as we can. If doing so seems to break our heart, we are on the right path, even if we are on our hands and knees. For when our heart breaks, it doesn’t shatter; it breaks open, expanding to include more and more. What spiritual bypassing would have us rise above is precisely what we need to enter, and enter deeply, with as little self-numbing as possible. Instead of trying to get beyond our personal history, we need to learn to relate to it with as much clarity and compassion as possible, so that it serves rather than obstructs our healing and awakening. Spiritual bypassing is not something to eradicate, but it is something to outgrow……Robert Augustus Masters
In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labor by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.
…..Dylan Thomas
