BALANCE
Life exists in delicate balance. If all is in balance, life thrives in the full expression of joy and vitality. The quality of life diminishes as conditions become off balance. If balance is too far off, life ends.
When you are in balance, you are a living expression of life’s abundance and joyous health. The moment you become off balance, the more your life force weakens. Even your strongest personal assets begin to lose clarity and strength. One of life’s great challenges is the lesson of balance. Learn its importance and master the challenge of balancing yourself. It is a great lesson.
Imagine yourself to be a plant. If you get just the right amount of sun, shade, water, and nutrients, you thrive. You become the highest expression of life. You are the embodiment of health and vitality. If you get a little too much sun you will begin to show signs of poor health. You will begin to fade and wither. Your leaves will begin to wilt and this will effect your efficiency in metabolizing what you need in order to survive. This single element of too much sun will have effected your entire system, threatening your life. Even if you had just the right amount of water and nutrients, your life is in danger.
Like a plant you need just the right conditions to thrive. And like a plant your life force and vitality will begin to wither if you are out of balance. To live in harmony you must have all your needs met in balance.
Most people are out of balance. In fact it is normal to be out of balance. You are a highly complex being. You have many needs. The more you know about what your needs are and how to fill them, the more balanced you become. You are not automatically born with your needs filled. At birth, your essential needs are met by others. As time goes on, you learn how to take care of your needs yourself. However, you must learn to fill them against great odds. Life constantly seems to work at undermining human attempts at successfully filling and balancing needs. This is why true balance is so rare and why you must learn to balance yourself.
Humans have many needs, more than can be named here. The list of needs for the physical body alone is lengthy. There are four general areas of need: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. They fall into a hierarchy of importance. The first priority is the need for physical survival. This includes the fulfillment of
such needs as food, water, oxygen, shelter, and sex. Some of the emotional needs are for social acceptance, a sense of belonging, and love. Some of the mental needs are the need to discover and to be intellectually stimulated. The spiritual needs include the need for truth, to love, to serve others, and to experience spiritual oneness.
When the physical needs are met, the other needs come into clearer focus. When survival is threatened, attention shifts from the other needs back to survival. The spiritual needs are the final priority. Paradoxically for some they may become of primary importance. Spiritual needs can supersede even the need to survive.
This is the experience of the hero.
Many times during your life your needs will be in direct conflict with each other. Your needs continuously battle for attention. This condition can cause much frustration, guilt, and a sense of unfairness about life. What kind of god would create a creature whose needs conflict with each other? How can you find satisfaction when the fulfillment of one need means the frustration of another? Here lies the
challenge of life. Here lies the need to understand balance.
The hero’s experience is one condition that gives an answer to this problem. The hero is willing to put his need to survive second to his spiritual calling. He relinquished the basic human need for safety in order to achieve his goal. This function is not consciously thought out or rationalized. It is automatic and spontaneous. He risks himself for a higher cause. This is the act of the hero. The self is seen as a part of a greater whole. Others are perceived as being a part of the self and not separate from the self. Risking and giving to others is then perceived as also giving to the self. Then giving up one’s life is seen as gaining a greater and larger life. When one arrives at this perception, things begin to balance. It becomes easier to prioritize. What previously seemed to be an impossible juggling of demanding needs turns into a joyous adventure.
Do not over indulge a need. Too much time and effort focused creates a lack of balance. It lends to a perception of over importance to the focused area and creates a narrow mindedness that undermines happiness and health. It is a kind of a blindness to what is needed. For example, too much time and effort spent on exercise can blind you to the importance of rest. Too much time spent focusing on being loved and accepted can blind the need to give love. Too much time spent in intellectual pursuit can blind the need for feeling emotions. Too much time spent in sensual pleasures can blind the need for creative thought. This blindness of over indulgence creates a lack of balance.
Under nourishment is the result of over indulgence. Because so much time and effort is focused on a narrow area, other areas become neglected. A loss is suffered, creating the potential of poor health. Like the plant that gets too much fertilizer, the whole self suffers.
Spend time observing yourself. Observe which needs you most frequently indulge. Observe which needs are being ignored as a result. Notice how an imbalance is created within you. Do you think too much? Do you feel too much? Are you too concerned with yourself? Are you too concerned with others? Do you work too much? Too little? Are you over concerned with getting? Do you give yourself away? Does money mean too much to you? Too little? Do you ignore your body? Pay too much attention to it? How do these imbalances effect your health, your stress level, and your personal and business relationships? Look for the connection.
Find a middle ground. Take care of your body. Feel your emotions and heal you past wounds. Learn new things to stimulate your mind. Listen to what your inner spirit is telling you and follow your heart. Allow your observations of yourself to move you to a greater balance.
Visit me, Wendy Hill, Ph.D., for a phone conversation at 760-994-9296 or go to my website, wendyhill.com for more on how to have a happy balanced life.
Wendy Hill, Ph.D., Encinitas therapist at CentrePoint, Inc.