Walking the Tightrope

Don't indulge too much and don't renounce too much. Don't be only in the world and don't escape out of it. Go on keeping a balance. When you feel that now you are falling into too much indulgence, lean towards renunciation, and when you feel that now you are going to become a renunciate, an ascetic, lean back again to indulgence. Keep in the middle.

On the road in India you will find boards saying 'Keep to the Left' -- in America you will find 'Keep to the Right'. In the world there are only two types of people: a few keep to the left, a few keep to the right. The third type is the very pinnacle of consciousness. And there the rule is 'Keep to the Middle'. Don't try it on the road but on life's way keep to the middle: never to the left, never to the right. Just to the middle.

And in the middle there will be glimpses of balance. There is a point -- you can understand, you can feel it -- there is a point when you are not leaning to either extreme, you are exactly in the middle. In that split-second suddenly there is grace, everything is in equilibrium. And that's how one can serve God. Remain in balance and it becomes a service to God; remain in balance and God is available to you and you are available to God. Life is not a technology, not even a science; life is an art -- or it would even be better to call it a hunch. You have to feel it. It is like balancing on a tightrope.

Keep to the middle. Keep continuously alert that you don't lose the balance, and then everything will take care of itself.

If you can remain in the middle, you remain available to God, to his grace. If you can remain in the middle you can become a Hasid; you can become a receiver of grace. And God is grace. You cannot do anything to find him, you can only do one thing: not stand in his way. And whenever you move to an extreme you become so tense that that very tension makes you too solid; whenever you are in the middle, tension disappears, and you become liquid, fluid. And you are no longer in the way. When you are in the middle you are no longer in God's way -- or let me tell you it in this way: when you are in the middle you are NOT. Exactly in the middle that miracle happens -- that you are nobody, you are a nothingness. This is the secret key. It can open the lock of mystery, of existence to you.

~ Beloved O.s.h o

The Art of Dying

Talks on Hassidism

Chapter_3: x Walking the Tightrope