The Way to Smooth Out Your Rough Edges

During my recent trip to Canada, I also visited Masset, one of the Queen Charlotte Islands, which was recently renamed Haida Gwaii. While I was there, I decided to find the renowned Agate Beach.

My staff and I had some trouble finding it, but with persistence, we found it in the end.

This beautiful beach has luminescent stones that were rounded and smoothed by time and nature. Everybody who goes there automatically starts picking up rocks.

I challenged one of my staff to find the whitest and then the blackest rounded rock. We all helped him find two beautiful stones that were similar in size. I pointed out to him that the rocks on this beach start out with sharp corners and edges, but the ocean polishes them over thousands of years until they become beautiful and smooth like this. People are like that too.

He said, “I hope it doesn’t take me thousands of years.”

I explained that it won’t take him or any of us that long, because we are people and not rocks. We are made for self-development. The mechanism for self-development is in our brain, and through it we are smoothed by the ocean of life. The more we focus on our personal polishing, the less time it will take to smooth out our rough edges.

I also told him that the black and the white rock represent balance. They are yin and yang. This perfect balance comes from maintaining a zero point—the point that connects positive and negative. The zero point is the unity that contains everything within it. For our development, to become so beautiful people want to pick us up, I explained, we need to maintain balance inside ourselves by staying centered at the zero point.