The Level

What does it mean to be level?

Not calm. Not unfeeling. Not the performance of composure in circumstances that call for something honest and real. Level, in the deepest sense of the word, means being in genuine relationship with your own centre. Finding it. Maintaining it across the shifting terrain of a human life. And returning to it, as many times as necessary, when the ground moves beneath you.

The Level is the tenth book in the Seeking That Which Was Lost series. It follows The Upright, which asked what you are made of. This book asks how the structure holds when the ground shifts. Not one question about character, but a lifetime of questions about navigation.

Drawing on thirty years of martial practice, formal studies in forensic psychology, and the particular clarity that comes from a terminal cancer diagnosis at forty-three, S Y Kelake examines the ancient instruments of the builder: the plumb line, the spirit level, the square and what they reveal when applied honestly to a human life.

The result is a book about the practice of return. The daily, unglamorous, undramatic work of checking the level and making the small adjustment and coming back to centre again, and again, for as long as you are building.

Personal, philosophical, deeply humanistic. For those who are ready to look.

Part of the Seeking That Which Was Lost series by S Y Kelake. Published by Centerline Publishing Group Ltd.