New Year and winter is a time to unfurl potentiality held in liminal space and bring it out into life. It is a time of reconsideration , of new starts and a time to balance what has got out of kilter. I have been thinking quite a lot about balance these past few weeks. At the winter solstice my husband and I decided to do a day of winter retreat and meditate on the four natural elements, with a buddhist twist. We went down to the Burn deep in the Beech woods near our house, dressed like two swaddled eskimos, to sit in silent contemplation by the ever bubbling stream. Here we meditated on water and earth. Then we wandered home and built a winter fire in the garden and meditated on fire and air and ether (spirit). The continuous thread that held all these together was: interconnectedness and balance.
We, our earth, the plants and the animals are all made up of each of these elements. We require all of them to remain alive . We need all of them for the circle of life, death and rebirth and together they form a delicate dance that creates a holistic balance in which everything has a part.
The balance of all things is needed for flourishing, for growing for happiness. Creating balance is sophisticated and intricate and something we have forgotten. Our world is full of clamouring noise, goals and desires and we are often far away from thinking about or creating balance.
Consequently our external world is about as unbalanced and crazy as you could get! International conflicts, despotic narcissist leaders, the eternal grasping of the capitalistic machine , the polarity between rich and poor, environmental degradation. Humans seem to get crazier by the minute!
Perhaps the simple idea of seeing into the interconnectedness of all things and the idea of creating balance – in some simple form or another- would help each one of us bring a little balance into the small microcosm of each of our lives. Perhaps we need to do more exercise, diet, to sit in stillness, to be brave and step out into something new….. Balance is deeply personal, ever shifting and requires a flowing mindfulness that brings what is needed into focus. A life lived in balance and a world turning in balance would be a place of harmony, breathing in productivity and breathing out repose. It seems a simple thing to talk about balance but when you consider it, it is a deeper and more subtle process than one thinks on the surface. Balance is like the still surface of water, with all the processes of life going on in harmony underneath. Busyness combined with stillness.
Where will we go this year : a frenetic whirlwind of unbalanced disharmony creating dystopias in which no one wants to live? Perhaps, but in our own small ways we can step apart and reflect and contemplate and do the things that make our humble personal lives more balanced. I leave you with my poetic personal contemplation.
Balance
Shall I sing into harmony?
Myself and others in ebb and flow
Respectful attention to my daily dance.
Each moment a hum in the harmony of life.
The worlds crashes drums of bellowing despair
Cacophony of capitalist hubris and leonine pride.
Frenetic, jagged, values deposed.
Discordant symphony of disrepair.
Shall I sing into harmony?
Myself and others in ebb and flow
Respectful attention to my daily dance.
Each moment a hum in the harmony of life.
Intelligence untethered and in slaved to machines.
Humans adrift in arrogant indolence
Lost in a maze of our own making.
Our balance, our anchor, lost in oceans deep.
Shall I sing into harmony?
Myself and others in ebb and flow
Respectful attention to my daily dance.
Each moment a hum in the harmony of life.
Listen to the whispers
Held on the wind
Listen to the whispers
In the sparkle of stars
Listen to the whispers
In the aroma of earth
Listen to the whispers
In waters deep
Listen to the whispers
In embers gold
All held in forever flow
And your Omniscient spirit will know……
Abi's World of Music 