Life turns up the heat, then drops us into chill. One moment things feel so urgent and important, the next we are frozen in doubt. The highs and lows can feel never-ending - they are so intense and so convincing - so it’s hard to imagine there’s anything peaceful or steady beneath them. This article is about how we are never as far from balance as it seems. We're always only ever just a few degrees away from home.
We often think in opposites: hot/cold, light/dark, good/bad, success/failure, happy/sad. We try to avoid one end (cold, dark, failure) and chase the other (warmth, light, success). But everything we experience in this world - light and dark, health and illness, joy and sorrow - is really just movement along the same line - the same continuum - there are extremes on both sides and varying degrees in between.
That is the very nature of duality. Two, not one.
You can’t have warmth without the possibility of cold.
You can’t chase success without fearing failure.
You can’t long for belonging without fearing rejection.
And because we have this amazing ability to think - we constantly live in a story about what we are experiencing. Thought is always creating a narrative, so the thoughts that are constantly appearing create a constant fluctuation.
And wherever there’s thought, there’s movement. And wherever there’s movement, there’s fluctuation. Which means fluctuation is not a problem - it’s just a very normal part of life.
They seem so different - hot and cold - but both ends are really just different points on the same line. They seem like opposites, but they’re not. They’re just different degrees of the same thing: temperature.
But as much as life fluctuates - whether wildly or subtly, whether in dramatic highs and lows - there is always something that is constant beneath it. Underneath all of your thinking about the way things should be, shouldn't be, what could have been - underneath all of that, there’s a wholeness there that doesn’t shift. A peace that is untouched by degrees.
You know this in your own experience. Not just as an idea, but you know it, because you have felt it. Remember a moment where everything felt completely overwhelming...and still something in you simply noticed how overwhelming everything felt. Or think of a time when things were actually calm, but the mind still searched for something to fix, a problem to solve. That which is noticing - that is what has always been there - that’s the constant in your life - covered over by the fluctuation of thought.
There’s the part of you that doesn’t move. That doesn’t react.
It’s not something we can "achieve" and it was here long before the trying began. And without it, there is no life.
Let’s look at the temperature of water.
Somewhere between really hot and really cold there is a perfect temperature. The ideal temperature. A perfect point. Always the same, always perfect. And no matter where you are on the scale of hot and cold, that perfect temperature still exists. The concept of temperature doesn’t disappear - you're just experiencing varying degrees away from it.
It’s the same with you.
The life that is living you - that what we could call wholeness, or presence - is steady, constant, quiet and and never in a tizzy, disturbed by what's going on. It is always peaceful, always whole. It is the mind, however - through thought - that experiences this life at varying degrees away from that peace.
You might feel too much, or not enough. It might feel too quiet, or too loud. Life never quite seems to be “the perfect temperature.” But that perfect still point, that inner balance, that quiet equilibrium, never actually goes away - it does not disappear, it just gets lost in thought.
It simply goes unnoticed as your attention fluctuates. And because thought fluctuates, experience fluctuates.
Hot and cold are not two things. They’re one thing: temperature. Just different degrees of it.
And you - your inner experience - is exactly the same.
There’s not a “spiritual you” and a “messed-up you.” There’s just you: A single being experiencing different degrees of connection to your wholeness. Sometimes you feel "warm and connected,” other times “cold and separate.”
But just like the ideal temperature never stopped existing just because you didn’t feel it - your wholeness never left you. You just didn't experience it at the time. It’s still there. Always was. Always is.
We don’t find peace by reaching the perfect state. We find peace by seeing the one who never left it. The one that’s already still, already whole.
You’ve never left it, but you learned to believe you had.
That "just right" feeling? That’s what non-duality is pointing to, not two, just one. Not as a temperature, of course - but as an experience of being.
Of wholeness.
I’m here to remind you: this “ideal temperature” is the truth of who you are. It’s not something to achieve. It’s something to become aware of. To relax into.
We are not the ups and downs. We are the whole scale. We are not the dark or the light - we are the space in which both appear. We are not the wave - we are the ocean.
So next time you’re feeling off, or like life is too much, ask yourself:
How many degrees away from my natural state am I feeling right now?
And then, instead of fixing, striving, or fighting, maybe…just take a deep breath. Just breathe. Maybe just notice. Because the truth is - you are never really separate. Not from warmth. Not from love. Not from Life.
You are just a few degrees away.❤️
With much love,
Suzanne
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