According to a legend, the great Archimedes of Syracuse, an illustrious scientist of the ancient Greek world, known for his usual excessive enthusiasm, would have exclaimed: “Give me a point of support and I will move the world”.
Legend also has it that when he solved another problem that occupied him while submerged in his bathtub, he felt such a genuine intellectual pleasure in a moment of inspiration, unleashing such emotion, that he ran naked through the streets of Syracuse shouting: “Eureka! This is what we call today the “Archimedes Principle”. But let’s leave this problem for another time and focus on the expression: “Give me a point of support…”
Mathematically, this statement would explain the “law of the lever”, according to which any weight (or force) is balanced by a lower force whenever we use a lever with an upper arm on the side where the lower force is applied.
That is, a small force applied to a very long arm of a lever can balance, and even overcome, a large force acting on the other very short arm. But this requires a support point that divides the lever into two arms, the long and the short one.
Once these principles have been explained, what interests us in the context of this article, however, is to stimulate reflection on these postulates when we apply them to any “everyday” circumstance, or as Archimedes said, “of the world”. Can we raise the situations we face day by day, taken as “resistances”, as long as we have a point of support? Can we move around the world as long as we have points of support? And what is our point of support?
The answer we give to what happens to us has its origin in the will. If we stop applying the will, the leverage is defeated by losing its point of support.
Hence the importance of distance. One must know the precise moment to apply the right force, the right action. One step more or one step less and the result can change completely.
Therefore, we conclude that the resistances to be overcome are the daily problems.
The force to be applied: the actions we take to solve them.
The distance: necessary to see everything clearly.
The support point of our internal leverage: the will.
We have to be very attentive to our mental habits when we look for points of support, when we look for solid ideas. Ideas on which we can build and move forward in our lives, ideas on which we can lean and to which we return again and again.
This is because it often happens that when new knowledge or beliefs make us wobble, the usual knowledge and beliefs, instead of making us move forward, leave us blocked and stuck in our illusory world. In the world of ideation, one is changing continuously, and that is why we are advancing. “Leave the truth of today for the truth of tomorrow.”
We will leave for reflection whether or not the points of support in the world of emotions, feelings, and desires exist, and whether they are necessary or not. Is emotional stability necessary to move forward in life?
We also note that this universal physical principle -the law of leverage- , which we can apply to any daily situation in the world of causes or shadows, raises many doubts when it comes to entering, developing and living in the world of light, of phenomena, of the spiritual that is beyond the world of ideas.
Our inertia is based on repetition. We try to explain Life in the universe of Light from experiences gained in daily nature. This experience is very valid for us and brings us closer to the Truth. But we know that, “when we take the dress of the Torah for the Torah itself,” we are wrong.
So, what kind of leverage could we have to move forward in a Life, where nothing solid exists? What kind of leverage do we need to move our spiritual world? The first difference is that the first thrust does not come from an external motivation, but is produced from within.
How to understand the incomprehensible?
All this leads us to remember another example. This is the compass. It marks the north on our journey to the geographical North Pole. Our point of support is the compass. But we know that it marks the magnetic north and that this is not the geographical north, although it is approaching it at this time.
The compass brings us closer, but it will never take us to our destination. Moreover, when we are far away, it brings us closer. But when we are near, it takes us away, it diverts us.
And we were wrong again and again, until we discovered something that had gone unnoticed. Being already very close to our goal, we discovered that the only thing that doesn’t move is the sun. Standing in front of the geographical North Pole, the Earth will not move under our feet, even if it continues to rotate, and therefore the sun will be one more motionless star in the sky. And, just as during the night in the northern hemisphere, the pole star will indicate the geographic north, during the day, the motionless sun will indicate that we have reached our goal.
At this point, we recognize numerous writings that refer to the spiritual world and that indicate to us: to reach the world of the Spirit follow the track of that which is “immobile” in you, that which belongs to the world of the Spirit.
It is our immaterial point of support in order to move in the disembodied world. So, we give up the point of support we had, our will, to a new Will, the Divine Will.
“May Your Will be done, not mine”.
