"You need both magnificence and insignificance to steady and stabilize each other. Then you can move fluidly with the ups and downs of daily life.
The words of another modern Indian mystic, Sri Nisargadatta, point at a paradoxical truth.
Love tells me I am everything.
Wisdom tells me I am nothing.
"You know this truth intuitively, although you may never have considered it relevant to your happiness or peace of mind. When you're in love, don't you feel like you are everything? All the distinctions between you and your loved one seem to vanish. You're just alive, happy, and at peace with the deliciousness of the world. Ahhhh, love! Nothing can disturb you when you're in that state.
"On the other hand, when you wake in the dead of night and find yourself gazing out the window, dumbfounded by the gazillions of stars before your eyes, it takes your breath away. In those moments, you know you're just a tiny drop of life in a mysterious universe — insignificant and nothing at all.
"These two experiences are available to everyone — without exception. Nisargadatta goes on to say, 'Between these two, my life flows.' Have you ever entertained the prospect that your life flows between being everything and being nothing — back and forth, again and again? Most of us haven't. Nonetheless, it's a stunning and rather obvious possibility.
"Instead, we believe our lives flow between fighting and making up, hating and loving, fearing and daring, loneliness and companionship, imprisonment and freedom, avoiding pain and clinging to pleasure, feeling like somebody and nobody at all."
