Pulled in Two Directions

Q: I feel quite torn between fully living my life, including all of the ordinary human activities, and devoting myself completely to enlightenment and the deepest truth.

A: I would simply suggest that it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Give 100% to life sometimes and give 100% to enlightenment sometimes. That will allow you to experience both of these aspects of life fully. Eventually, you will find they aren’t separate. But as long as you do experience these aspects of your life as separate, then just alternate between moments of giving yourself totally to the juicy, alive experience of being ordinary and human and moments of giving yourself totally to the experience of not knowing and possibly not even existing as a separate being. There is no contradiction, so you don’t need to stop yourself from doing one or the other.

When you feel torn between these two aspects of life, that is an opportunity to notice the confusion or the feeling of being pulled in two directions and to give yourself 100% to that. It is in giving 100% to our experience that we can see the whole truth of it. The antidote to any difficulty is to experience it fully. You don’t need to figure out ahead of time what the right thing to experience is.

It is in this willingness to experience the many dimensions of your experience and existence that you become able to distinguish and understand the entire range of your experiences. You don’t have to get rid of anything, but you can find out more about everything.