Thank you, Oprah, for being our teacher. (Where is the balance?)

I spent an hour with one of my favorite teachers this week. Well, actually it was more like 40 minutes thanks to Tivo. This was “Best Life Week” for Oprah, and a couple of episodes caught my attention.

Oprah is one of my favorite teachers for a couple of reasons: 1) She is a perpetual student, seemingly always interested in growth, understanding, and ultimately peace of mind, and she consistently challenges us to see things differently and share her journey. 2) Oprah has become one of our enduring symbols of success, yet she willingly demonstrates that she still struggles with the same seeming problems, and therefore core problem, that we all do. That’s helpful.

On last Tuesday’s show, Oprah talked about her ongoing struggle with weight. For our purposes, insert your own problem, whatever it is today, for “weight". In an amazingly open and sincere effort to conquer this “problem”, Oprah took the first step that all of us have to take. We have to simply be willing to give up the way that we’ve been looking at our seeming problem. After some fairly intense looking and consultation with Marianne Williamson and trainer Bob, Oprah recognized that what she was hungry for wasn’t food but love. Awesome. That’s the second step. Here’s where most of us struggle. What does that mean, and what’s next? For Oprah, it meant coming to the conclusion that the problem was balance. She spends so much time giving and living for others that she was ignoring herself, so she’s put herself back on the list scheduling work-out times, manicures, etc. That should indeed help….at least for a while.

So the points I’d like for us to ponder today are these:

1) We all must be vigilant against problem substitution. Because we believe the problem is here (in the world), we also believe the solution is as well. We are all very adept at giving up on yesterday’s solution (because it didn’t work) and substituting a new solution (thus seemingly shifting the problem). In Oprah’s case, we see the shift from “I want to be thin” to “I want to be healthy” – from diet and exercise to balance. Now, don’t hear me say that these things shouldn’t be pursued. If I’m heavy and I want to be thinner, there are typically things that I can do in form to change that. What I am suggesting is that we remember that not only is the weight not the problem but also that the seeming solution isn’t the new problem. We still take care of these things, because we believe that we’re here. But we also start to use them in a new way. We start to recognize that these seeming problems and seeming solutions are pointers to (reminders of) where the problem really is.

2) What is balance? From the perspective of the world, “balance” is the equalizing of competing or separate interests. Again, in Oprah’s example, she is trying to balance giving to the world with giving to herself. Certainly makes sense here. “Here” is all about this definition of balance. Everything “here” must be balanced. We balance sleep with waking. We balance the amount of food it takes to efficiently run our bodies with not enough food or too much food. We balance the amount of air we take into our lungs. We balance our relationships, our work, time with friends, speed going down the road, our bank accounts – all of it. Why? The world rests on a fulcrum of judgment. That’s what the world is. Think of the world as a see-saw. The see-saw’s purpose isn’t balance. It is set up to teeter one way or another. If I start spending more time on me, I’m spending less time on you. Eventually, the teeter totters, and I have to start spending more time with you. It’s the same for every seeming problem.

So, what’s the alternative? Using Oprah's example, until we remember that loving somebody else is loving ourselves (and vice versa), we’ll ride the see-saw of insanity back and forth loving somebody for a while then taking time to love ourselves for a while. We’ll never be balanced, because we’ll always be in flux, on one side of the fulcrum or the other. “Balance” really means equalizing. We can’t do that here. Yes, we all try, every minute of every day. We all try to figure out our own personal formula for balancing the world and achieving peace of mind, yet we can never really find it here. “Here” is always tipped one way or the other. Lasting balance will never be the result of manipulating “here” (form), because "here" always changes. Balance is the result of the changed purpose of “here” (content). Remember, the world is an outside picture of an inward condition. If we want to change the world, we must change our mind about the world – again, what that means is that we change the purpose of the world.

Balance is a decision, plain and simple. It’s the decision to give up our judgment, which really means that we don’t take our judgment so seriously (Remember, we look at our judgment without judgment). Again, it is our judgment that tells us where on the see-saw our experience is. (Is it up? Is it down? Is it left? Is it right?) When we change the purpose of the see-saw, we’ve changed our experience of it. Instead of the see-saw seemingly telling us what balance is or where balance is, we bring balance to the see-saw. The see-saw may not change, but instead of reinforcing our sub-conscious, out-of-balance decision, it now serves the purpose of reminding us that we made the decision. Now, that's helpful.

Instead of finding ourselves on the left or the right side of the see-saw and trying to figure out how to fix it, these two seemingly different forms (more of this or less of that) now serve to reflect the balance that we’ve chosen, the goal that we've set, because they share the same purpose. They’ve been equalized in content. They no longer serve the differences that our judgment demands. They now serve the sameness that undoing our judgment bestows. Now, they balance, no matter where on the see-saw they appear to be.

Again, we bring our balance to the situation or circumstance. When we bring our balance to the time-for-you/time-for-me question, we recognize that they are the same, which has the added benefit of removing the guilt from both. I can’t love you and not love me. I can’t love me and not love you. Now, we’re balanced. Now, the purpose of whatever we do is the same, and the world’s purpose is clear. Now, we know where the balance is.

PS I’m not in any way suggesting that Oprah’s quest for balance is or isn’t the result of what we’ve just discussed. There is no way to know by looking at behavior (form). What I am suggesting is that if abiding peace isn’t the result, she (we) may choose to look at what we think the problem is once again.

PPS Thank you, Oprah, for being our teacher.