The Middle Way: Your Secret to Success
The Middle Way is about balance but is not as simple as adjusting weights until they are equal and then you are done. This is because the weights themselves are not constant, so, you need to pay attention to how they shift in quality.
In other words, it is less like linear pendulum oscillation, and more like a spinning disc. Fine adjustments allow you to more completely meet your needs and priorities by optimizing where you concentrate your time.
Needs and the Middle Way
Your fundamental needs do not change that much. What changes as you move beyond childhood, is the extent to which they are your personal responsibility. We often do not pay them much attention until one is neglected and we feel its absence. As long as a certain level of safe shelter, available resource, community, accomplishment, and inner evolution is occurring, all is well.
However, it is easy to see what happens if our environmental temperature becomes hazardous. Or, perhaps if we experience a restriction of food or water. What is less obvious is the physiological reaction to solitude and isolation. Or even to stagnation in achievement.
Our needs relate to the environment with which we surround ourselves. They depend on career choices, family commitments, financial pressures, and health issues. And, these may need overhauling from time to time. Consequently, it is up to you to find the sweet spot where you experience harmony by choosing what is required and eliminating what is not.
Applying the Middle Way means bringing attention to 1) Where you do and don’t need to go. 2) How you do and don’t need to feel. And, as well, 3) What you do and don’t need to think.
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