Tag: balance

Up and down

Posted on by philipdodson

It’s amazing how we do not see the patterns in our mind of expectation and disappointment, the high followed by the low, the up and the down, we carry on. Yet if we lived in the present moment, where there is always calm, free from thought, we can live a real-life free from the pain of the mind.

These words from exactly a year ago explain more:

We are almost swamped with positive affirmation advice and always have a positive attitude and so on. We have a glut of positivity memes and posts, we have a fake happy-clappy veil thrown over everything so that when the negative things occur, we seem to melt in despair.

Yet every positive has a negative somewhere. Our moments of pleasure-seeking will come with a negative. There are ups and downs. Yin and Yang

We neither have to fake joyous, cartwheeling happiness on a continual basis or look for the misery in everything. We do not need to feed one or the other.

If we choose to accept what is, whether positive or negative and simply be, then there is always inner peace and joy, even when bad things happen. The more we resist one thing or the other and fight it, the harder it is to accept. We end up constantly seeking pleasure as if to block out anything that might be bad, deny bad things, hide from negativity.

We need to see beyond the mind’s labelling of things as either good or bad, negative or positive. Some of our greatest learning and inspiration often arises from what we label as bad.

Labelling leads to addiction and the greater the addiction to short-term pleasure (AKA happiness) the greater the opposite will be when it occurs.

There are cycles in our lives constantly, with ups and downs, we can not always have up and therefore we can not always be positive, but if we search within and stay away from the mind, we can always have peace which can be permanent if we choose.

Finely balanced ecosystems 

Posted on by philipdodson


I watched a video yesterday about the amazing effects that had occurred due to the re-introduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park. How, not having wolves there for so long had led to a complete imbalance that was destroying vegetation due to no predators for the deer, which in turn meant less trees, less birds, less beavers and so on.

Within 6 years of their re-introduction there were quiet stunning effects, the deer stayed out of certain areas so that the habitation came back in everything.

As humans we do not realise our impact that our decisions have on the natural habitat that we are a part of and this is a great success story, but there are many more disastourous stories.

The interesting thing too, we have our own ecosystems and we are even less tuned into them than the natural ones, well maybe the same, as few are tuned into the natural ones either.

So, cuting back on sleep, or starting eating something new, or changing exercise or a whole variety of different things can seem tiny or of little importance, but over time they will lead to much bigger changes.

Just one extra biscuit a day could lead to diabetes in 5 years, walking less each week could lead to obesity in a few years and so on. 

We have an ecosystem that needs respecting and finely balancing.

Life is made up of small things that amount to giant leaps over time. However, smaller things are harder to spot and easier not to focus on.