Balancing
Act
“Your
hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or
always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence
is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully
balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.”
Rumi (The
Essential Rumi; translated by Coleman Barks)
Balance is so important.
I try everyday to stand on one foot—like the tree pose in yoga—then
stand on the other. I must keep my core muscles strong to be able to
do that--otherwise I will just fall over. Balance is important in other parts of life, too. Sleep and
waking, active and passive, work and play. I have a tendency to be
over-active and under-passive—which throws my body/mind out of
balance. Sometimes, my consciousness is focused inside my head while
my body is doing something physical. When I'm distracted by my
thoughts and not paying attention to what I'm doing, I sometimes hurt
myself. I wonder whether you do that, too.
Right now, the balance in
nature has changed, too. There are longer hours of darkness, so I
sleep later. That can, and often does, mess up my whole day. My dog,
Liza, is also a creature of habit. I sometimes think she keeps a
check-list of what comes when, because when I get things out of
sequence, or leave something out, she is not well with it. She knows, for instance, that five o'clock is time to eat, whether morning or evening. When I
oversleep or am busy at that time, she will stand in front of me and
bark. Sometimes, if I ignore her, she'll even jump up and down and
bark—whatever it takes to correct my timing mistake.
Expecting ourselves to
always be light, and never allow our darkness to show is also
imbalanced. When we're angry or sad, we can show that, or speak that,
in a way that does not harm others, just as we do when we're feeling
good and upbeat. Being dark does not mean that there is no light;
it's not a permanent condition. Just as the moon rotates through its
phases, so do we. Sometimes our light is just a tiny sliver and our
darkness is almost complete. Like the moon, our light waxes and
wanes. That's okay; that's balanced.
Balance in all things is
important. Whether it's the way we live, the way we eat, or the way
we deal with others, the open hand and the closed fist are good
images for that balance. We cannot always be giving and never
receiving, nor always receiving and never giving. We must respect our
body's need for rest and introspection, as well as keep up exercise
and social routines. We must give our soul its own time or, like Liza,
it will do whatever is necessary to correct the imbalance. And, Soul
out of balance will make spooky old Halloween seem like a walk in the park.
Trust me on that.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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