Beyond Duality

I remember a time when I was a young soccer player. I definitely had fulfilled the ten thousand hour rule of play time - the supposed cutoff point when you really get good at what you do. There were games when there was magic in the air. I remember one games when I scored 6 goals in one single game. But then I also remember other games, the times when nothing really worked, or when I was afraid to get injured and shied away from a hard collision.  So deep down inside I was afraid that I wasn't really cut out to become a professional soccer player. As I went to university I pretty much stopped playing altogether and never looked back on that decision from there.

I was young at that time. I had not yet discovered the lion inside of me. Today I know that at some moments when you are afraid you feel the fear and do it anyway. I also know that there are moments when you feel like loosing but with a surge in will-power you turn this thing around single-handedly. After all, this is what made Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan so powerful. The hunger to win and the will-power to make it so. But then, all that drive comes with a price attached. With so much yang energy you will find broken China somewhere. In Tiger's case, it might well have been his admission to get treatment for his sex addiction, in Michael Jordan's case it could have been the ego rant during his hall of fame admission speech. Whenever you will yourself to the top, chances are there is a price to be paid somewhere.

Do not get me wrong, I am not judging, I am not criticizing, I am just  observing. Every star will experience some imbalance along the way just as every ordinary citizen may question why exactly he is not up there in the limelight. There is no "right" way of living your life, there is only your way. We all are on a special mission. Just as the Bhagavad Gita says, "Do your dharma, however lowly it may appear, and leave the dharma of others to themselves, however prestigious it might be."

Discover the duality in everything, the yin and yang at work. There is a Way that shows you how to be superb at what you do without incurring any karma, without experiencing any yin and yang. Just understand that "superb" is in the eye of the beholder. Fame is something that a spiritual path traveler learns to be indifferent about. The public might still see a yin and yang at work in your life story, while you may tell your story very differently. Along the Way there is no duality, there is only meaning that somehow makes perfect sense. There is only "it is as it is", and somehow what is is good as it is.

Ivy

Have you ever see Ivy grow? When you see a house covered in Ivy you think to yourself, 'this must be the fasted growing plant on earth', yet, when you actually plant a couple of leaves you see how glacial the progress is. Ivy is growing exponentially. It takes a whole year for a leaf or two of Ivy to multiply to four. A year later you see eight, then a little patch and after a few more years the system just takes off and you have to limit it's expansion if you don't want to drown in Ivy.

Life is often an exponential process. When you build something, invest all your care and attention and even if the project doesn't take off, if it just stagnates, behind the scenes the wheels are turning. It is your love and care that provides the nutrition. The system is building the foundation to secure the expansion. So please be patient, in the famous race between the  tortoise and the hare, the tortoise often wins.