All my life I’ve tracked a wavering course between purity and impurity.

I yearn for a spiritual cleansing in which all my faults will be erased and I will no longer feel so vulnerable. And yet all my attempts to live like that leave my humanity starved.

So I vacillate between living as close to the light as I can, and then crashing – like Icarus and his melting wings – back down to earth, admitting my humanness, but with a heart-breaking sense of loss.

I reckon I’m not alone in this either. I read a lovely article by a spiritual teacher once who described the alternate pull of the mountains and the city. In the mountains you can feel pure, cleansed of the things in daily life that drag you down. But it’s lonely up there. You start to yearn for the city, where the people are, along with all the exciting and interesting things that people have created together.

But several months in the city and you start to feel disgust at all the ways you are betraying your better self, losing track of your highest goals and growing dull. The counter-yearning arises until it feels like you can’t breathe in that toxic place, and the mountains start calling you…

I’ve spent my life bouncing between these two, pursuing a spirituality that always contains enough asceticism and self-denial in it to be unsustainable; and then crashing down to earth with a sense of defeat mixed with relief.

I think on some level everybody deals with this. Should I have salad…. or pizza? Should I go out tonight…. or stay home? And there are many ancient teaching stories that involve the hero leaving the city and heading to the mountains, looking for wisdom. But at the end, he or she always returns to the marketplace, ready to share what they’ve learned.

What’s the way through this? Is there a spiritual path that is sustainable indefinitely? How to integrate the mountain and city so that we don’t need to vacillate endlessly between the two? I took these questions to my inner storyteller recently and received a touching story that continues to help me find my way with this dilemma.

It’s my latest podcast, and you can take an audio journey with it below. However, if reading is your preference, then read on…

There were once three brothers, whose mother had set them an unusual challenge on her deathbed.

“My sons” she said. “I want each of you to plant an orchard and grow the finest fruit you can.”

So the three brothers set about fulfilling their mother’s dying wish.

The first chose lemons, surely the most intense fruit of all! And with careful breeding he was eventually growing lemons so strong-tasting that one drop would season a whole plate of fish!

The second brother chose peaches, because can anyone think of a sweeter and more delicious fruit? After some years his peaches were so delicious they would make you swoon, and hanker after more.

The third brother chose apples, although he wouldn’t tell anyone why.

After several years the King, fulfilling a promise he had long ago made to their mother, invited the three brothers to his palace so that he could be the judge of which one had grown the most wonderful fruit.

The elder brothers spent the entire journey arguing as to which one of them had grown the finest fruit. The youngest one, however, spent the entire journey in silence.

When they arrived at the palace the King sampled their fruit. But the first brother’s lemons were so intense that that the King shrieked when he took a bite! When he had recovered his composure he declared that this fruit could not possibly be the finest of all, since it was far too sour.

But when he took a bite of the second brother’s peaches, he found them so deliciously sweet that within a short time he had consumed the whole basket. And then the inevitable consequences set in! He was so bloated he needed to retire to bed…

When he re-emerged and was presented with the third brother’s apples he found them unimpressive. They were blemished and oddly shaped and looked in no way special. But then something magical happened. One apple there seemed to call him, as if it was made just for him. And when he took a bite he declared that it tasted more delicious than any fruit he had ever eaten.

And the third brother explained that, unlike his brothers, he allowed his fruit trees to grow as nature intended. He neither pruned them nor bred them but rather allowed each tree to grow according to its nature.

He passed the basket around the King’s courtiers, and everyone there found an apple that was just….right for them, the tasting of which brought them a moment of utter deliciousness, in which they experienced themselves, and their life, to be just… perfect.

And I was there too, and found an apple for myself, and when I bit into it I found myself in heaven and upon the earth at the same time. The only thing missing was to share this story with you. And now, look! I’ve done that too!

It’s been six months since I told that story, and in the intervening time the distance between the mountains and city has shortened, and daily life sometimes takes on a magical quality. The yearning to be “away, somewhere purer” has diminished, as what’s right here in front of me reveals more of its perfection.

I always did like apples. And as everyone knows, the blemished ones usually taste the best.

You can find the podcast below.

Best wishes from Leo.