The Two Sides to Balance

“Living with contradiction, holding together polarities, making room for divergence leads to vitality and enables us to see opposites not as dead ends but as a series of open doors.”
-- Elizabeth J. Canham

I have been focusing on balance lately and learning much about myself.

All forces in nature continually seek balance. We’re most grounded and stable when we balance the head and heart, feeling and thinking, the inner and the outer and the extremes of dualities.

Growth, on the other hand, comes when we’re off balance. Being off balance creates tensions, new experiences and the dynamics of life. All life is cyclic and cycles take us out of balance – rising and falling, visiting the extremes of highs and lows.

Like the back and forth swing of a pendulum, our experience of duality must include both the positives and negatives, like love and fear, health and disease, joy and grief. We can’t swing in just one direction. To grow in consciousness, we must honour the integrity of both parts and seek the middle, higher path of experience and expression.

As much as I may want to, I can’t get rid of a problem – that’s an attempt to exclude something. We only achieve wholeness when we include everything. And so I need to bring the positive and negative parts into wholeness. I can draw on my compassion, will and intelligence to experience and RELATE the extremes. Relating builds consciousness.

I realize the need to be balanced over time but not every minute of the day. I have new appreciation for the potential of those many off-balance times. I now find more compassion and stability as I pay attention to, integrate, transform, absorb, harmonize and synthesize both poles of an experience.

“Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing there is a field – I will meet you there.”
-– Rumi

“Life is like a rainbow. You need both the sun and the rain to make its colors appear.”
-- Author Unknown

FOR OUR MEMBERS ONLY:
Balance on One Page – Monthly, check in to see in what areas your life is out of balance.
Spiritual and Material Distinctions List - Understand the differences
Duality Tension Tool - Let your mind stretch and integrate two extremes.