Imagine yourself sitting on a surfboard in the middle of the ocean. The landscape is outstanding. More beautiful than anything you’ve ever witnessed in your life. The nature is all around you. The sky is a deep blue, the light of the sun warms your heart, birds fly above your head and fishes swim under your feet. You’re completely immersed in beauty and obviousness and pure simplicity. You belong there, you have no doubt about that. You belong in this landscape as much as the blue of the sky, the warmth of the sun, the wings of the birds and the fins of the fishes.
Slowly the wind starts to rise and the waves to grow. You witness your surfboard moving with the waves. The more the waves grow, the more your surfboard moves. You can feel that you’re about to get carried away. You’ll soon have to do something in order to stay afloat.
Well, what do you do?
Do you try to calm the wind and ease the waves? Do you try to control the ocean?How crazy does that sound? And yet. This is what some of us do. This is what I did for a long time.
I believed for a long time that I could balance the external landscape of my life, that there was a right set-up for me in order to hack happiness and purpose. Exactly like finding the solution of a complex equation with several unknown factors. And I worked hard for that.
I worked hard to find the right place to live, the right job to do, the right intention to set behind the right job to do, the right friends, the right man to date, the right identity. I’m a perfectionist. It had to be just right and check many boxes I had unconsciously set in my mind. As you can imagine, I never succeeded.
Exactly like when I adjust some students in a yoga class. When I tell them to bend their knee a bit more, they would lose the openness in their hips. When I help them to bend their knee while keeping their hips open, they would tense their shoulders up. When I could find balance in one area of my life and ready to move onto the next, I would lose a bit of what I had found. It was an endless, very frustrating and very exhausting game.
While I was looking for the magic solution to my complex equation, I felt like I was sitting in the waiting room of my life. I was sitting on the sand waiting to learn how to control the ocean. It didn’t feel unsafe or unstable, just dull, like I was in a constant state of expectation, not knowing when I would find what I was looking for, but somehow convinced that eventually I would and keeping on waiting. I could have waited my whole life.
I wanted to be smarter than the ocean, and the waves, and the wind, and make them comply. I wanted to be smarter than life. Not because I believed that I was, I couldn’t possibly be, but because I believed that it was the only way for me to protect myself. If I could control the landscape and all its components, I could remain safe.
Most people in our society choose to rely on their surfboard instead. And that’s the second option. They don’t necessarily live a life that feels right but more a life that feels secure. They spend most of their time working hard, earning as much money as they can, in order to buy a very solid surfboard, some super advanced technology, with deep anchors, that they believe would not only keep them safe but also happy.
They build this little house on their surfboard, with a waterproof roof, beautiful wooden furnitures, they recreate a whole world just for them. They even go as far as buying a tank with some very rare species of fishes they use as pets. They’re somehow so immersed in their illusion that they’re not even close to realize that there are actual fishes living right there under their feet.
This is a sound choice but not foolproof. In case of gigantic storms, deep anchors or not, they get carried away like anybody else. Gigantic storms can look like: getting fired, having an accident, losing someone you love, going bankrupt, getting sick, enduring a worldwide pandemic, and so on.
That leaves us with our final option. If surviving in the middle the ocean is not about controlling the waves, nor about waiting on the sand, nor about buying yourself a super advanced and solid surfboard, then it is about learning how to surf. How obvious does that sound? Riding the waves that are in front of you, receiving each one as a gift, being so balanced on both of your feet that you can enjoy them with ease and peace.
In my little scenario, as you probably already figured out, the ocean is life. The surfboard is your humanity. And you is you, your soul. In other terms, to live your life fully and happily, the more obvious and effective way is to learn how to be super good at being a human.
You don’t need the right external set-up, you don’t need a fancy human identity, you need to become super badass at navigating your humanness. So that no matter what life throws at you, no matter how high the waves are, you remain balanced.
External balance doesn’t exist, it is not a thing, it is merely a symptom. You only appear balanced on your surfboard because you’ve learned how to surf. It comes from within. External balance is only the projection of internal balance.
We learn tons of things at school but we don’t learn how to be good at being human, what it even means, where to start. We’re being taught all these ideas of who we have to be. A good girl, a responsible man, a selfless citizen, a caring child, a serious student, and so on. We learn early on all these adjectives we need to identify with. What we don’t realize is that when we identify with being good, we develop the capacity of judging what is not.
By definition, balance is to be found in the middle of two opposite entities. The balance between good and bad is not good. It is where good equals bad. Which means that you won’t be good, you’ll be in a place where good and bad don’t exist anymore. This is what we call non-duality.
The exact same thing applies for every parameter we tend to identify with in life — as right and wrong, kind and mean, busy and bored, strong and weak, surrounded and lonely, worthy and unworthy, accepted and rejected, spiritual and material, light and shadow, loved and unloved, and so on. The list is endless.
Opposite parameters imply one another. Good implies bad and bad implies good. Right implies wrong and wrong implies right. If there is no right, there is no wrong. Right can only exist in you if wrong is in there too. You can only feel lonely if you’ve already experienced how being surrounded feels like. You can only feel busy if you know how being bored feels like. You can only feel yourself as an individual human being because you’ve interacted with other human beings that were not you.
Finding balance is not about choosing one side, it’s about finding the place where both sides are equally true and cancel one another. When you integrate that both opposites already live inside of you, they naturally dissolve. You won’t feel the need to be right or good or connected anymore. It won’t matter. You’ll just be you.
This is why when movie and series characters are really well thought and executed, you can equally relate to every one of them. Because they all exist inside of you.
Does being you make you good at being human? Yes and no. It’s the first step. When you release these ideas of who you have to be, you discover that there is a whole world living inside of you.
Did you ever feel like you knew exactly where you wanted to go but somehow couldn’t get there? Or like you wanted very opposite things in the same time? Did you ever feel like you were about to go in one direction and somehow felt pulled in the opposite direction? Or like, while you knew exactly what you needed, it felt really scary and unsafe?
Your human identity is made of many different parts living together. Those parts come from past versions of you, future versions of you too, memories, ideas, culture and education, beliefs, dreams, and so on. Each part of you has her own story, her own voice, her needs and wounds. They all went through different experiences and express themselves throughout your life. They’re all different and in the same time, they all made you, they make exactly who you are right now.
It is very common to shut down some parts of us we don’t understand, or relate with, or feel ashamed of. And usually in this case, the part that doesn’t feel heard anymore will find other ways to get some attention. Panic attacks are a very good example of that, or any kind of tensions in the body, or diseases, or simply unease and unbalances.
When you struggle to find balance in your life, it doesn’t mean that you need to change your life, it means that there is an unresolved conflict happening inside of you. One part of you wants something when another part wants something else.
Imagine you’re the coach of a basketball team. You like my sport scenarios? If one of your players is injured, it will be more challenging for your team to win. Now, if one of your players is injured, and another one is scared of the ball, and another one only plays because his father forced him to, and another one plays solo, and another one doesn’t trust you. Well, good luck.
Your job is to get to know each one of your players, understand who they are, where they’re coming from, what they need, why they play and to build a winning team.
This is it. This is inner balance. Inner balance is receiving and bringing together each and every part of you as a whole, as a functioning and aligned entity.
There are many different ways to get to know the different parts of you. You can create your own way, as long as you allow each and every one of them to exist, have some space and express themselves freely. You can visualize them, talk to them, write them letters, dance with them, whatever works for you. Just make sure that you listen.
The parts of you that need the most attention are the ones that are scared and wounded. They usually work super hard to protect you from experiencing what hurt them in the first place. Start there.
Next month, I’ll write about how each and every part of you can be categorized in three famous archetypes — that are your inner child, your inner feminine and your inner masculine.
Until then, I send love to each and every part of you equally.
Enjoy your surfing lessons,
Camille
In two weeks, I’ll answer your Dear Me questions. You can ask spiritual questions, advices, share about some experiences you’re dealing with, or anything that is passing through your heart and mind. Questions are totally anonymous.