With so much instability in our lives and in the world, it is sometimes difficult to believe that our hopes and dreams are still possible and probable. As the Hopis point out, we are a world out of balance. The primary hope for humanity in this new decade and this new millennium is for BALANCE. We seek a balance of power in our government, a balance of equality among races and cultures, a balance between masculine and feminine, between conservative and liberal. However, the change we want to see in our world can only be made possible by balancing ourselves as individuals, making ourselves whole through a balance of our body, mind, emotions & spirit. This is the healing we need. But are we willing to heal ourselves if we aren’t yet willing to admit that we are the problem? Most Americans know and say that “we have problems in America” that need to be fixed. Yet most of us continue to see these problems as someone else’s problem that “they” should hurry up and fix so “we” can get on with our lives. It is time to wake up and realize that there is no “they;” there is only “us”. We are the problem, and we are the only ones who can fix the problem by bringing ourselves back into balance.
To live a life in balance requires all of us to develop ourselves from the inside out, and to shift from our personal extreme viewpoints and radical opinions. It’s time to grow up. It is time to develop our knowledge into wisdom. It’s time to wake up from our apathy and self-centeredness to conscious awareness of others. The foundation of conscious, holistic living is a life lived in balance, in which we release extremes (of any kind). That is not what we need. Balance is.
Yet we all, as individuals and as a society, have been out of balance for so long, how do we even know what balance looks and feels like? Are we picturing perfection when we think of what a life in balance and a world in balance would be like? If so, that’s an extreme thought, because “perfection” as most of us define it, is yet another extreme. Indeed, a life in balance is not a life of “human perfection” but rather an attunement to the perfection of the natural world and the natural universal laws. Nature teaches us a kind of balanced, whole perfection and will be our master-teacher if only we can humble ourselves. Humble ourselves to admit that our ideas of perfection are inferior to the ageless perfection of the forest, the seed, and the ocean.
Bringing our lives into balance starts from within with the choices we make. Start balancing yourself today by deeply reflecting on the words of Mahatma Gandhi: “Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.”