The Flexible Eye

For most people, there are moments of happiness, and moments of sorrow, and the rest of the time there is the momentum of the past, or nothing.

The mind that seeks more moments of happiness outwardly (via sex, money, intoxication, distraction) can be said to be neurotic. Most therapists would agree.

The mind that looks for a permanent bliss inwardly (through the various kinds of delusions, meditations, inner awareness, dismantling of one's psyche, and so on) is neurotic in a very different way.

Perhaps the balance between the inner and the outer, being a continued effort of learning and adjusting, is the solution. But it is a dynamic solution, requiring continued effort, not something which can be formulated once and for all, and for everybody.

To have a mind which is interested in things other than itself, which finds joy in others (even things), and at the same time, which is capable of reflection and change, is perhaps most suited to a fulfilling and happy life.

To have both inner and outer goals, to want something both for oneself and for someone else, to have a healthy psyche and a comfortable home, to have love in one's heart and also to have loved ones, to learn from self-observation as well as from what others say, to have an eye which can look both within and without, to have questions as well as answers, to have lips as well as ears, to know, and to know that there is still more to know, to take delight in solitude as well as in others' company, to create as well as to consume, to be a giver as well as to be a recipient, ...

There is no ONE solution to life's problems because life is vast, and any solution which seems to solve everything is an excision, an exclusion, an escape. To live with the knowledge that there will be problems as well as solutions, that there will be suffering and sorrow and joys and regrets and attachments and heartaches and kindness and cruelty and all that, to be with oneself knowing that one is imperfect, to be with others accepting them in their mild imperfections, but to still want to be a little better, to still want others to continue their journeys to be better, while not expecting final perfection...

To understand that perfection is meaningless because one is always in interaction, that one is not an island at all, that because there are myriad hues and colors and touches and feelings and situations that one comes across there is no meaning to being a-priori perfect and thinking that one has achieved one's destiny, that life is dynamic and any label about oneself which is absolute is bound to be torn asunder by time, that an eye which is fixated, either on the inner or the outer, becomes a stone eye and goes blind.

And that sight is worse than blindness which believes it has seen it all.

An alive eye is that which keeps moving. Which turns inward at times, pops out of its sockets at something outward at times, goes asleep at times, tries on different goggles, dilates and gets wet at times, and remembers to wink once in a while...

Spiritualists have traditionally condemned extroversion, and introversion has been pooh-poohed by those who believe there is but one earthly life to live. Perhaps the solution is not a rejection of both, but an embrace of both.

To exclusively focus neither on one's own navel, nor on the belly dancer's. But perhaps, to be interested in both.