Imagine a country path in spring. On one side of you, a tangle of brambles, thick and unyielding. On the other side, a strip of bare earth where everything has been cleared away.
And underneath your feet, a soft trodden path that has been walked for hundreds of years.
Neither side calls you. The path simply is. And it knows the way.
The first thing the Buddha taught after his enlightenment was the Middle Way. He had tried both extremes. He had lived as a prince surrounded by everything money could buy. He had lived as a wandering ascetic, starving himself almost to death. Neither one set him free.
What freed him was the path between.
I think about that often, particularly when the world feels noisier than it should. Most of the loudest arguments I see, in politics, in spirituality, online, on television, are people standing at one extreme and shouting at people at the other. Both certain. Both incomplete.
This week in council we were discussing how we manage weeds on our roads. One side said spray everything, get rid of them, problem solved. The other side said spray nothing, ever, do it all by hand. Both, when you really sit with them, are unworkable. We do not have the manpower to weed a county by hand. And the environmental cost of spraying everything is not something we should be willing to pay.
So we are left in the middle. Looking for the least harm we can do with the resources we have. It is rarely tidy. It often disappoints both sides. It does not give you a clean story to tell.
What it gives you instead is a quieter sort of honesty. It asks, what is true here, even if it is awkward? It asks, what can I actually live with?
I have come to think the Middle Way is one of the most underrated tools in a hard life. Not as compromise, although sometimes it includes that. More as a practice of refusing to be flattened into one extreme just because it is easier to live there.
When you find yourself facing a difficult choice, slow down for a moment and name the two loudest options.
Then ask what is in between them.
Sometimes the middle is the answer. Sometimes it is not. But the act of looking for it almost always softens the choice.
Where in your life are you currently stuck choosing between two impossible options?
And if you stepped back from both, what might you see that you have not allowed yourself to see yet?
This week, I will look for the middle way.
When I started recording guided meditations, my most popular that actually got listened to was a deep sleep meditation. So I thought I would do a sleep meditation to mark the 100th meditation on my podcast. Please enjoy.
Inner Peace Meditations EP100. A special sleep meditation with a quiet nod to spring. The Garden for Deep Sleep. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Stillness in the Storms EP165. 8 Billion Minds. Why Meditation Doesn't Work for Everyone (And What You Can Do About It). Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Spring has finally arrived in Cornwall, and I have been watching the flowers this week.
For a long time they were tentative. A few brave ones poking out and then ducking back. As if they were testing the air. Asking, is it safe yet, is it really time?
This week, they have stopped asking. They have just bloomed. Confidently, openly, as if to say, we are here, we are ready, we will not pretend any longer.
It struck me how often the spring of our own lives is held back not by the weather, but by the asking. We wait for permission that no one is going to give us. We wait to be certain. And then one day we stop asking, and we just bloom.
Whatever you have been holding back this week, perhaps this is the week to stop asking the air whether it is safe.
Be gentle with yourself this week.
The Middle Way is not a soft option. It is a brave one. Walking it is what wisdom looks like in real clothes.
Much love, Steven
Thank you to everyone who supported me with a coffee recently: Suzanne, Maria, Michael, Tiffany, Ellen, Kathleen, Edyll, Nicola, Jess, Lynette, Linda, Laura, and Yavuz. And a special thank you to Jane, who has just marked one year as a monthly supporter. It means more than you know.
And there are a few others, there are anonymous, and those on Insight Timer.
If you would like to support, listen to the podcast, or just say hello: stevenwebb.uk