Daily Meditation: Sunday, September 8, 1996

If you think about it, an analogy could be drawn between …

09/08/1996

If you think about it, an analogy could be drawn between some circus acts and the victories human beings must win in their inner lives: taming lions and tigers, making bears and elephants dance, jumping through hoops of fire, juggling, flying whirls through the air and then catching each other in the nick of time, walking a tightrope, and so on. And let us take the tightrope walker as an example: in order to keep his balance he moves forward with his arms stretched out or holding a long stick horizontally. He has to adjust his position constantly by leaning a little to the left, then to the right, a little higher, a little lower. And this is exactly what human beings have to do, because life is like a tightrope and if they want to prevent themselves from falling, they must continuously add a little here, take away a little there, so they keep their balance. Our centre of balance is located in our ears and symbolically wisdom is linked to the ears. Indeed the wise are those who are able to keep their balance, who can maintain this equilibrium, who can repeatedly redress the situation. And see, the expression ‘redress the situation' means exactly this; in life things have a tendency to lean too much in one direction or another and there is always a balance to be restored.