Living In Balance

The Balance Of Life and Spirit

Many people these days are taking a good look at themselves and their lives, trying to find a balance for achieving happiness. Or at the very least contentment. They look at how they interact with their family unit, how they conduct themselves within business matters and how much time they spend on making the all mighty dollar and that illusive career or achievement of success. And many realize they’re living a life out of balance and wondering how to find the solution.

A lot of people shy away from looking within as part of the recipe for change. They think of looking within and an exercise to become critical of the self and that introspection seems like it only makes things worse. They being playing the blame game of what has been, or what choices have made that contributed to the imbalance. Guilt for what they did or didn’t do, isn’t going to go back in time and change those things.

Guilt and blame isn’t going to make things better, so don’t waste your time on the “I should have done this instead of that” exercises. You’ll only be extending the imbalance you want to level out. This isn’t the introspection that helps. Looking within and being honest with yourself about those things you do that you want to change for the better is what spiritual introspection is about.

Perhaps it’s because the common idea of what a “spiritual person” is and can be are often far beyond our capabilities to attain. We look in a mirror and condemn ourselves for something we did that was “non-spiritual”. We may say I’ve “fallen from grace”, “I wish I hadn’t created that karma” or “why did I act or react so badly” and than beat ourselves up about it every chance we get. But we try the next day to aspire to that same illusive image again. Only to fail again because we weren’t perfect..again.

It’s great to have lofty goals, as long as you can attain some of them once in a while and build a level of confidence within your being. But one thing to remember is that our soul is only 50% of who we really are. We are also 50% human, and as such we have human desires, needs and emotions. Those human traits are not always conducive to spiritual thinking or spiritual ways of living. But we don’t have to beat ourselves up about it. What we can do is learning to find ways to accept our human selves and finding positive ways of changing the things we don’t like, in order to achieve our spiritual goals.

Living too much in the spiritual mind and not being grounded isn’t any better than those who live in the physical world and never give their spiritual natures a second thought, or a first one for that matter. “Even too much of a good thing isn’t good for you” is an adage that tries to define living in extremes is not living in balance. Accepting each side of the self and working to bring them both together in harmony is what living in balance really means. What we are, here in this physical form to learn, above all else, is balance. Through that lesson, you can learn acceptance, tolerance and peace from within. By reacting to situations in your life from this perspective, you are living as a spiritual being attempting to learn lessons, redeem or repay karma and walking in balance toward enlightenment.

What you put out, you get back. What you sow, so shall ye reap. What you give, you get. Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. Don’t sacrifice yourself in order to save others from their own lessons. The Law of Accountability is one of the biggest lessons of balance in the Divine Universe from many different spiritual paths. The actions we take through thought, word and deed will be balanced out when all is said and done. But this is the cosmic law that both defines and enforces the exercise and lesson of attaining balance. But balance can mean different things to different people.

Many people think being a spiritual person means you don’t cuss, you don’t lie, you don’t have bad thoughts, you don’t drink, do drugs, or talk about sex. Geez, how boring is that?! To some you don’t even have fantasies or get angry or even say a bad word about anyone. Now if that’s living as a spiritual person, then no one on this planet can call themselves spiritual.

Everyone tells a white lie now and then to save hurting someone else’s feelings. Everyone allows a negative thought about the injustices that occur in the world to enter their mind. And while you may not drink or do drugs, that carton of ice cream you ate last weekend because you felt depressed is pretty much the same thing. We all have our own little tricks to help us get through the stress and anxiety of life. And as long as we aren’t hurting others, including our selves, that doesn’t mean we’re not spiritual people.

If someone makes you mad, then accept the emotion for what it is. It is a human emotional response to a personal situation. Now isn’t that what you’re here to learn about? Aren’t we here to experience human interactions and emotions on all levels in order to learn how to handle them in better ways than we have in the past? How are you going to do that, if you don’t “feel” any emotions?

I’d like to note, we’re not talking about physical crimes here. We’re talking about personal emotional issues. If you believe someone has harmed you physically, then I urge you to contact the authorities in your area.

How you react to both the challenges and blessings in your life is what’s important here. Allowing yourself to feel emotions such as anger, frustration and anxiety are part of the physical experiences of life. But what you do with those emotions and how you allow knee jerk reactions to control your responses are the key. Do you swallow the hurt and walk away? Do you lash out and express the anger negatively?

Living in balance means keeping that anger in perspective. You don’t take it out on someone else and you don’t try to kill or harm the person you are mad at. You just accept the emotion for what it is. If you lash out at the person who made you mad, then you will have to accept the consequences of the energy you created by doing so. By the same token allowing others to push you around and not standing up for yourself isn’t good either. Having respect for the self is equally important as having respect for others.

What the spiritual person tries to do is rise above the moment and look at the confrontation from a higher perspective. Why is this situation happening and what is it trying to teach me. It could be the person lashing out at you is doing so because they have been hurt and they are in need of compassion. Perhaps their anger has nothing to do with you, but you’re the one standing in front of them and thus they’re unloading it on you.

Here’s an example:

Madge is a middle-age woman, married with no children. She and her husband Max both hold management positions and are very good at what they do. During the off time, they are involved in church activities, gardening and going to the theater. Madge manages both her home life and professional life with pride and fairness. Indeed she is thought of as a great team player. She makes decisions by vote or consensus. She rarely if ever is part of controversy of any kind. She is described as a kind, sweet woman.

One day, Madge meets a new boss. A young man who is “gun-ho”, driven and a little egotistical and arrogant. This boss begins talking to her in angry tones, accusing her of not being a good manager, not being able to plan projects correctly and so on.

Madge continues to get angry and hurt by these interactions with the boss, but she is trying to live a spiritual life. She keeps her comments to herself, she doesn’t speak badly of the boss to anyone and she continues to turn the other cheek. She tells Max and leans on his shoulder, but she speaks to no one else about the situation. The new boss gives her a poor review and tells her she must improve or she’ll be put on 6 months probation. After that she’ll be fired.

Now, the question is, Is Madge living in balance?.

The answer is No.

Madge maybe a very spiritual person, but living in balance doesn’t mean always turning the other cheek, or allowing people to walk all over you. Madge created the adverse situation with her boss, by not speaking up for herself. Living in balance doesn’t mean going behind his back to his boss and complaining, or putting him down to co-workers. It means being able to maintain your understanding, kindness and unconditional love for this person as you stand up for yourself. Madge should have discussed the issue with her boss when it first became a problem.

In life we create situations on a sub-conscious level that will create events to redeem karma or learn spiritual lessons that will progress our soul along its journey to enlightenment. Sometimes when those situations deal with love or acting kindly with other people, we often forget the one person we should put at the top of the list is our self. Being kind to yourself, and loving YOU is just as important, if not more so than loving others. If you don’t love you, who else is going to? So if Madge wasn’t going to stand up for herself, how was anyone else going to help her?

However living in balance also means keeping the blessings in life in check as well. Waiting around for the big things to happen to be excited about, may mean you’re missing out on the thousands of little things that cross your path. Not taking things for granted can also be an exercise of living in balance. So too being a braggart and flaunting your blessings in front of others, especially those who are struggling can also be a negative action that takes you away from the spiritual perspective.

There’s a happy medium to enjoy what you have achieved with grace and how you react to challenges with strength yet compassion.

How Do I Create Balance?

To live in balance means more than accepting your natural human instincts. It also means looking objectively at why you react the way you do to situations, people and so on. Analyzing too much isn’t good either, but looking at a situation for its spiritual significance can help you replace those knee jerk reactions with positive spiritual patterns. Ask yourself, is this situation karmic, if so how do you redeem it. Is it a lesson or test of faith, and if so what am I to learn?

Now of course in the heat of the moment you may not be able to sit down and take a few private moments to reflect on what’s happening. But you can take a deep breath and say wait a minute, I don’t deserve this. I’ll come back when you have calmed down. When you do have a moment, close your eyes, take in a few deep breaths and say a quick cleansing prayer to push the negativity out of the way and away from your inner being and your physical body.

Next turn your focus to your higher consciousness and say whatever prayer you feel comfortable with to connect to the Divine Spirit in your life. Ask your spirit guides and teachers to come to you and help you understand this conflict or this situation and decipher the spiritual message that needs to be resolved. Then trust in your instincts and listen to the answer you receive. Then act accordingly.

This isn’t the easiest thing to do at the office or in the middle of a family fight. But remember you decide what conversations you will participate in and how you allow them to affect you. Sometimes simply putting the yelling match on hold and walking away is all you need to do to defuse the anger and find out what’s really going on.

Additionally, the more you try to connect to your higher consciousness and view the situation from a spiritual perspective, the easier it gets. Pretty soon, you won’t have to walk away, you’ll be able to detect the issue as it’s occurring and can alter the course of the discord and help not only yourself, but the one you may be in the heat of battle with.

We are all part human and part spiritual being. We need to accept those traits we see in ourselves as “un-spiritual”. It is who you are. How can you ignore part of yourself? Better to address the part you don’t care for and change it to a positive you do like. Bottom line is, learn how to accept the human traits you have within your being. They’re just as important as the spiritual gifts you’re trying to attain. Accept them, forgive yourself for them and work to change them to a better aspect of self that you are proud of. By doing this you can bring into balance the nature of your physical life with the wisdom of your spirit.