What is it, then, that balances? What is that which allows this nature -- this divided nature, this nature that works in opposites -- what is it that would permit it the peace it seeks? What is it that creates balance in a human being?
And this is beautiful. I go back to what I said at the top of the talk -- that that which creates balance is itself greater than the balancing it does. It is larger, broader, if you will, encompassing, and already exists before the opposites do. It is not thought that we must turn to for balance, but we must turn to awareness of thought to create balance. Awareness of thought is the only thing that can balance thought. Why? Because awareness -- the Light in it -- recognizes imbalance. The Light of awareness recognizes imbalance.
We've all felt those moments... How many of you had that moment where you knew you could feel it? You know, a thought pulling over here, a feeling pulling... you knew it. You could feel it. And in that moment, instead of doing what is necessary and natural for the human being who wants a balanced mind and a balanced heart -- who wants love to be their guide -- we got seduced by that thought that started telling us what we had to do, telling us how to answer that disturbance, who to call on the phone, what to straighten out.
Over and over again in those moments there is the first flash where a person senses the imbalance. They sense the onset of the negative state. They sense the rush of those thoughts and feelings that, when we are present to it, we can see (if we work), "Why are those thoughts and feelings pushing me the way they are?" Have you ever been pushed by a thought? Can a thought that pushes you produce balance? Can a negative state that's trying to pull you down ever produce balance? It can't. But something can produce balance -- that which is aware of imbalance inside of us -- the moment in which we recognize the onset of those thoughts and feelings. Here's the event; we're aware or recognize that. And then, after the recognition comes the reconciliation.
What does that mean? It means that in that moment, I turn it over to the awareness. I turn over that disturbance, I turn over that imbalance, that feeling of disturbance. And this is so hard for us to understand because our psychological grasp is so limited. When we feel a disturbance, the first thing that our nature tries to do is correct it. We must not be the ones who correct the disturbance in our own soul, because the disturbance is the effect of these thoughts and feelings -- of forces beyond themselves, by the way -- all in a certain kind of chaos, all in a certain kind of clash. And our awareness of that moment is the moment in which it's possible for us to recognize that that's going on, and then do the work.
What's the work? Come wide awake. Realize that at that moment that the imbalance that we're feeling -- that teetering-tottering tormenting thought and feeling that's trying to pull us left and right -- that we can't resolve that. We've been trying all of our lives to resolve what thought produces in us. We turn that thought, that feeling, over to our awareness of it. And that's it! We stay conscious, instead of getting caught up in the conspiracy that thought produces when first it deceives, and then drags us into its plot to resolve that problem.
This takes dedicated work on a person's part because in that moment you see what's happened... And back to the whole point of the talk is that our ability to give our attention to the present moment has atrophied. Just like muscles atrophy when they aren't used, so has our attention and our ability to give our awareness to our own thoughts and feelings atrophied. But once we understand, and we do, we can see into this dynamic. We can recognize something's taken place that's been stealing from me a balance that I'm intended to have. We're not meant to live imbalanced. We're meant to live in perfect poise. Not poise in terms of being the perfectly peaceful person, but the poise that comes with recognizing that, at every given moment, we already live within something in ourselves that has the capacity to bring balance to every moment.