Balance
Having touched on the three points of our second triangle, attraction, intention, and allowance, we are ready to drop “universal law #4” into the mix: balance. Our universe seeks its own balance, and has built into its structure the propensity to right imbalance. To balance out the imagery of the model we are building, we can plunk the word “balance” right into the middle of our down-pointed triangle, the way we put “self-mastery” at the center of the first one.
In the same way that the measure of health is the capacity to right imbalance in our bodies, our healthy universe is constantly performing a balancing act. The planets are adjusted just so in their orbits around the sun, and in their spinning about their own axes. Earth is actually a bit out of balance, and some would have it that its 23 degree tilt is a reflection of imbalances here still needing correction. Machaelle Small Wright mentions the notion that for every illness that might arise on this planet, a new plant springs up which carries within it the principles for healing that illness, because balance is inherent in our universe. I’ve been told I place balance at the center of the picture because I am a Libra, but I would counter rather that Libras are particularly tuned to this central aspect of univeral law :-)
Balance does not necessarily imply symmetry. A balanced human body is not symmetrical. There will always be more liver on the right side! A perfectly symmetrical face would appear like a stylized drawing, and lack the true beauty of human asymmetry. So too the balance of the universe does not require an artificially even distribution of this or that, and seeking such artificial forms of “fairness” and “justice” will lead only to more imbalance. Male and female are not balanced by becoming symmetrical. Sameness is not satisfying.
So if balance is not symmetry, what is it? Balance is the state achieved when all elements are moving in coordination with the divine will. Balance is a state of harmony, where different notes (asymmetries) can come to an accord. The songs of the heart and the liver and the brain, of the hormones and the pheremones and the living bones, all singing together ring out a common truth, like oboe and clarinet and piccolo coordinated by the conductor's inspiration and movement.
The lives we live must be balanced, because balance is built into the structure of our universe. So those choices we make, those habits we form, the ones which are out of sync with the divine will pleasure, must ultimately be balanced out. From the victim consciousness, this necessary balancing gets written up as punishment for wrongdoing, or as “bad karma,” or even as divine justice. But the victim consciousness does not have a balanced view of the matter! The balancing necessitated by our choices, the ones made independent of the divine will, is no punishment at all, no more than you could consider water finding its level in a pond a punishment for having tossed a rock into it. To the same degree that we modulate our tune out of harmony with the divine word, will we ultimately be required to readjust until we are in harmony again. And as surely as we are not forbidden in a free will universe to sing as badly as pleases us for a time, the time will come as a purely mathematical principle of balance, when we must find our way back to the harmony from which we originated.
In this way the law of balance serves as a built in check to the free will. The choice to stray involves a promise to return: this is a function of balance. The recollection of that promise almost universally requires some not so subtle reminders. That’s because we forget that we were ever part of an orchestra when we wander far out of tune. But again, those reminders are not punishments. They are rather markers that we place for ourselves along the path so that we can find our way back home, back to the harmony of our origins.
In the same way that the measure of health is the capacity to right imbalance in our bodies, our healthy universe is constantly performing a balancing act. The planets are adjusted just so in their orbits around the sun, and in their spinning about their own axes. Earth is actually a bit out of balance, and some would have it that its 23 degree tilt is a reflection of imbalances here still needing correction. Machaelle Small Wright mentions the notion that for every illness that might arise on this planet, a new plant springs up which carries within it the principles for healing that illness, because balance is inherent in our universe. I’ve been told I place balance at the center of the picture because I am a Libra, but I would counter rather that Libras are particularly tuned to this central aspect of univeral law :-)
Balance does not necessarily imply symmetry. A balanced human body is not symmetrical. There will always be more liver on the right side! A perfectly symmetrical face would appear like a stylized drawing, and lack the true beauty of human asymmetry. So too the balance of the universe does not require an artificially even distribution of this or that, and seeking such artificial forms of “fairness” and “justice” will lead only to more imbalance. Male and female are not balanced by becoming symmetrical. Sameness is not satisfying.
So if balance is not symmetry, what is it? Balance is the state achieved when all elements are moving in coordination with the divine will. Balance is a state of harmony, where different notes (asymmetries) can come to an accord. The songs of the heart and the liver and the brain, of the hormones and the pheremones and the living bones, all singing together ring out a common truth, like oboe and clarinet and piccolo coordinated by the conductor's inspiration and movement.
The lives we live must be balanced, because balance is built into the structure of our universe. So those choices we make, those habits we form, the ones which are out of sync with the divine will pleasure, must ultimately be balanced out. From the victim consciousness, this necessary balancing gets written up as punishment for wrongdoing, or as “bad karma,” or even as divine justice. But the victim consciousness does not have a balanced view of the matter! The balancing necessitated by our choices, the ones made independent of the divine will, is no punishment at all, no more than you could consider water finding its level in a pond a punishment for having tossed a rock into it. To the same degree that we modulate our tune out of harmony with the divine word, will we ultimately be required to readjust until we are in harmony again. And as surely as we are not forbidden in a free will universe to sing as badly as pleases us for a time, the time will come as a purely mathematical principle of balance, when we must find our way back to the harmony from which we originated.
In this way the law of balance serves as a built in check to the free will. The choice to stray involves a promise to return: this is a function of balance. The recollection of that promise almost universally requires some not so subtle reminders. That’s because we forget that we were ever part of an orchestra when we wander far out of tune. But again, those reminders are not punishments. They are rather markers that we place for ourselves along the path so that we can find our way back home, back to the harmony of our origins.
posted by Gil :-) at 10:24 PM
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