I keep thinking about the idea that for each person and each situation there is a perfect balance between committed action and flowing with ease and grace.
There are several implications contained in this simple sentence. It seems to me that the most important is that committed action and flowing with ease and grace are presented as polar opposites which need to be balanced carefully by the wise seeker in order to manifest success. It seems that this is suggesting that if there is a perfect balance between committed action and ease and grace, then the more committed your actions are the less ease and grace you experience. The converse also seems implicit, that more ease and grace means that there less committed action.
The more I think about it, the less sure I am that this is true. In fact, the more I think about it, the opposite of this statement might be a more accurate statement of principle; that ease and grace appear only as a result of committed action. I am sure that I believe that half hearted actions taken with a lackadaisical intention lead only to mediocre results. Slackers may say they live with ease and grace but I doubt it. I think they live in a state of ambivalence and they inhabit a world devoid of success.
I can think of a few times where I felt ease and grace in my life that were coupled with success. I had spent many years learning and practicing the art of mediation. I had reached a level of skillful mastery. From this consciousness, I was able to facilitate high conflict situations to peaceful resolution with what appeared to be ease and grace. The ease and grace only showed up after many years of dedicated and consistent work on my part. I needed to learn the basics of mediation. I needed to develop the listening and speaking skills needed for success as well as the discernment of how to apply them.
These were the outer manifestations of deep inner work that was required to fully inhabit the spiritual principles of conflict resolution. In order to achieve this, I needed the willingness to heal many of my own inner conflicts. I needed to look deeply into my relationships and my failures in those relationships and develop empathy for those I had been close to and empathy for myself as well.
This brings me to the second implication in the idea that for each situation there is a perfect balance between committed action and ease and grace. That the only committed action that will inevitably lead to ease and grace is joyful surrender. This seems like a terrible a paradox. Until very recently I do not think I even considered that surrender was ever joyous. My only experience of surrender for many years was it occurred only when I was utterly worn down by repeated failure as a result of my committed actions. When I had nothing left, no energy or will, no reserves and no more ideas, then when I was faced with no other choice, I would surrender. At this juncture, I would be steeped in frustration and angry exhaustion. My moment of surrender would typically lead to a massive dose of humility and shame. I would feel grief and deep despair, even hopelessness over my failure to succeed through my determined plan of action.
But as I write this, I am aware that it was not my plan of action to become a gifted mediator. Instead, this idea literally came to me at a time when I was desperate and at the end of my rope. I was in counseling because my life was a mess. I was waiting in my car outside my therapist’s office trying to relax from another frazzled and frustrating day. My current romantic relationship was failing, my career was sinking and I had nowhere left to turn. Out of this nowhere a still small idea popped into my head that said I was a mediator. I did not even know what a mediator was, at that time I was a full bore, hard nosed litigator.
Yet this idea was so clear that I followed up on it immediately. I surrendered everything that I thought I knew about myself and my relationships and embarked on a path of learning to resolve conflicts with love rather than arguments or power. I began letting go of the image of the man I had become (hard nosed litigator) and began opening to the unknown man I was to become (peacemaker).
This moment of surrender was calm and peaceful but I am not sure if I saw it as joyous. The friction in my life at the time had exhausted me and the problems I had created did not dissolve immediately. But ease and grace entered my life in that moment. I found out that a once a year week long training for mediators began the very next Monday. I attended it. One thing opened up after another, not always the way I planned it. Not at all the way that I had hoped things would fall together, but in the end, looking back, I can see there has been a lot more ease and grace from that moment forward than there ever had been prior to my moment of surrender.
Here is a poem I came across by the Persian Mystic Hafez.
What is the difference between your experience of Existence and that of a Saint?
The Saint knows that the spiritual path is a sublime chess game with God.
And that the Beloved has just made such a fantastic move that the Saint is now continually tripping over with joy, and bursting out with laughter and saying "I surrender!"
Whereas, my dear, I am afraid you still think you have a thousand serious moves left.
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