meditating on the middle

had an interesting revelation last night while singing at kiertan here in county. i have been thinking a lot lately about going for my phd and whether or not that is a good idea - if i really want it or not. my revelation came to me in the form of a medicine wheel. i thought about how the aspects of the self - mind, body, spirit, heart - are all present in all people, but that quite often we get 'tagged' with one or two of them as the aspects in which we excel. for example, i have been given such great feedback on the mind - school, problem-solving, creativity - people point these out to me regularly. second to that is body - sports, fitness, physical accomplishments. when you get lots of support in specific aspects of your life you tend to lean on those for self-worth and continued praise. what can end up happening is that you miss out on developing the other aspects.

so what does life do? eventually as you get older things start to even out. you get some feedback that demonstrates you need to improve on one of your weaker aspects...or perhaps you realize that you are missing something. for some people a seminal event occurs that creates a paradigm shift - an athlete becomes paralyzed or one has a near-death experience. when something like this happens a person is pressed to reshape their life and lean on new aspects that before was underutilized.

the vision i had of this process was one of a distorted circle. the circle is divided like a medicine wheel into four parts. the aspects of self represent the four directions. each person is born a perfect circle though nature, nurture, environment, and inner-self eventually lead for some aspects to contract while others expand. my circle would have an oddly-shaped protrusion in the mind aspect. the body might also be stretched. the heart and spirit would either be unchanged or even caved in. it's been easy to keep it that way, but slowly things press either in or out, trying to make me a circle again.

there are common phrases and ideas that touch on this topic. the first thing that comes to mind is the 'diamond in the rough.' a diamond needs to be polished and cut to be considered complete and valuable. diamonds with oddities and protrusions are not worth that much. another phrase is 'well-rounded.' clearly this one fits very nicely into my thoughts. it not only implies that a person is thought of well if he or she is multi-faceted but takes on the circle as a symbol for a complete being.

so coming back to the phd. i realize in many ways that i am not as interested in pursuing it as i thought i was. i feel drawn to improve some of the other parts of me. as we moved from song into our meditation i chose to meditate on the middle - pulling and pushing myself around so that i can 'circle up.'