Double-Minded or Open-minded

Don’t try to straddle the fence. If you wish to accomplish anything, you must be single-minded. It will be going a long way around if you first turn left and then right when you really want to go straight ahead. Let nothing turn you from the path. The Bible says,
    A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways (James 1:8).

Around the Year

with Emmet Fox, p. 99

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Single-minded purpose isn't the same as narrow-minded, though I am often accused of straddling the fence when I show tolerance for other points of view. I suppose that there are two distinct ways of looking at choosing a spiritual discipline… a regimen or a religion. One would have me wear blinders in order to see exactly where to plant my feet, looking neither to the right nor to the left, trusting that it leads somewhere. The other is to have my eyes completely open to see where the path I’m on is going and to enjoy the terrain I’m passing. In such cases, open-mindedness doesn’t say one is right and the other is wrong. They are the same path, the same direction, but different approaches.

   Straddling the fence is about standing at the crossroads without choosing one path or the other: choosing either the material or the spiritual realm. As the Carpenter says in Luke 16:13; “No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” What Chogyam Trungpa calls spiritual materialism turns into a deadly game also because it deludes me into thinking I am being most spiritual while I am actually straddling the fence with the materialism of ego. It takes commitment, determination and perseverance to get anywhere worthwhile at all.

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