The Art of Staying in Balance

I had the same thought Vinay had when I read "That's why only friends can become enemies. You cannot suddenly become an enemy unless you have first become a friend." I don't buy into that. It bugged me so much so that I had to find a resolution to that before I could really get into the rest of the passage. Sometimes passages become sentences (eg, prison sentences). Some spirtual words are carelessly put out just to prove some other point. And it makes me stuck and can't move through the passage. In my experience, the friends that become enemies were never friends at all. I think Osho would himself say that those kinds of friends are the ones we never got to know, ie, we "fell in love with an illusion". I think the more useful aspect is to note the times I have started off as enemies with some people. Just started off on the wrong foot. But one day, they 'll surprise me with some un-forseen kindness and then I get reminded why we should never throw anyone out. And with familiarity and understanding some level of friendship happens. Some of those words can become mental traps. Enemies are enemies and friends and friends and change can come. But that's not the point, the point is to know the "karma" behind it. How did it result? Do you need to know how it resulted? What do you want from the result? Do you want anything at all? That answers Judy's question. My opinion is that you shouldn't strive for one mode of being alltimes. Sometimes you need momentum. Sometimes you need to stay in the middle. You need to learn when you need what. We'll always be growing if we choose to learn how to (as one of the other meditaton reminders) reminded us to "time shift" as well as time manage. The times that I'm born to seems to demand that we go go go. But then I get a nice meditation reminder that the clock don't always need to move, I can reset it whenever I want if I choose to let it stop. It's not a question of "good" or "bad". It's a question of when to choose what's useful When it comes to 4th noble truth where the 8-fold path lives I was told that we can replace the word "Right: with "skillful". Skillful Understanding Skillful Thought Skillful Speech Skillful Action Skillful Effort Skillful Livelihood Skillful Mindfulness Skillful Concentration that makes me think more of a mental tool set and reminds me the need for "Practice" as opposed to "Discipline". These are just words and we make our own existence from them, right? So maybe to stay in balance we need to think about being centered as well as moving and growing? Maybe I need to learn to move through passages as opposed to being sentanced into convictions :-)