Balance is first and foremost a state of mind that then has the ability to influence the perspectives and events that are happening in your external reality. Without first understanding the need for and bringing about an inner stabilization, attempting to create a balance in your external circumstances is an effort in futility. You might be able to do it for a brief moment, but before long the you own internal shifting will throw you off course. However, before we get into the issue of how to bring about balance, it is important to inquire into what it is that we are attempting to balance in the first place.
The Dual Nature of Reality
Everything that exists in reality is dual in nature i.e. there are two aspects to every object, every event and every experience. These two aspects are inseparable from each other like the heads and tails of a coin, the crest and trough of a wave and the peak and valley of a mountain. These aspects are the Yang (light) nature and the Yin (dark) nature of experience.
The Yang nature refers to that aspect of experience which is seen as an expansion. This is the sense of upward movement, of abundance, of fulfilment, of sharing. It evokes the emotions of joy, camaraderie, laughter and high spirits. It is visibly expressed in events such as birth and marriage that signal new beginnings. Its fruits are experienced as gain, success and victory. In other words, the Yang nature is that aspect of experience that we find ourselves drawn towards, that we experience as pleasurable, that we feel that we want to experience in our lives. It is the summer of experience.
The other face is Yin nature. It is the aspect that is seen as contraction, as a downward movement, as lack, as emptiness, as solitariness. It evokes such emotions as grief, solitude, melancholy and low spirits. It is visibly expressed in events such as death and divorce that signal the end of things. Its fruits are experienced as loss, failure and defeat. The Yin nature of experience is the aspect that we feel repelled by, fearful of. We experience it as painful and wish it away or deny its existence. It is the winter of experience.
None of this has anything to do with good or evil, positive or negative. I have deliberately avoided these qualitative judgments because what I define as positive and negative is something very different, which we will arrive at in due course. For now, this is only an investigation into the dual nature of experience.
Nothing exists that does not contain these two aspects because they form the very basis of existence. Life is an expression of the interaction between the Yang nature and the Yin nature. Just like the current of a battery can only flow if there is a plus and a minus pole. It is the attraction and the relationship between these two that gives life to every person, event and experience in the Universe. In fact the one creates the other. Without the Yang nature there can be no Yin nature, without the Yin there can be no Yang. (I use the terms Yin and Yang because most of you are familiar with them as symbols yet the words do not carry the baggage that other words such as 'dark' and 'light', 'black' and 'white' do for some people.)
The ancient symbol of the yin-yang is a symbol of the nature of reality. It is the movement of Life, of expansion and contraction, birth and death, inhale and exhale. They flow into each other in a continuous dance over and over and over again. But what is perhaps the most vital aspect of this symbol is the spot of white within the black half of the symbol and the spot of black within the white half. What this represents is that the Yin movement contains the seed of the Yang and the Yang movement contains the seed of the Yin. The reason one cannot live without the other is that the one gives birth to the other. They are eternally linked in this relationship.
Every experience has a Yang and a Yin aspect. In the quest to find balance, the first step is to acknowledge this most basic fact. It may seem obvious to you when worded this way, but when it comes to living our lives and our approach to things we have a curious ability to ignore this very fact. All experiences, no matter what flavor they come in has an expansive aspect and a contracting aspect.
Those coveted experiences like fame, wealth and longevity are generally seen as positive by most people. However ask any person who has experienced these and they will tell you about the dark aspects (yin) of these. For fame, the yin aspects may be the loss of privacy, the constant scrutiny by media, lack of trust in social interactions. For wealth, they may be stress of obligations, the greed of others, the lack of meaningful relationships. For longevity it may be watching all your friends and loved ones die before you, being vibrant yet unable to work, being viewed as a liability by other members of society.
On the flip side, all those experiences we tend to avoid or are fearful of, like divorce, death, unemployment, have an inherently built yang aspect to it. Divorce provides an opportunity for reflection, time and space to dedicate to your own personal drives and inspirations, the freedom to act of your own accord. Death is an experience that brings people together, family and friends that were once estranged are sometimes made closer in its wake, it provides perspective on the importance of the present moment, it is a symbol of the completion of yet another one of Life's many expressions. Unemployment is a chance to strike out in a new direction, to reconnect with the creative spark and to redefine your expression.
Balance of the Two Natures
The first step to balance, is to acknowledge the two natures in every experience. The next step is to embrace the two. This is not something we are taught or encouraged to do. In fact, as a society we seem excessively obsessed with a model of constant expansion and unconditional positivity. This is evident in the social and economic structures we have created around us. Our value systems are inadvertently skewed towards the positive. We perceive youth, happiness, longevity and abundance as positive and worthy. We view old age, melancholy, disease and poverty as evil and worthless. And so in this constant chase for purely the Yang nature and discarding or dismissing the Yin nature of experience it is no wonder we feel ourselves constantly stumbling, both individually and collectively, through this experience called life. When learning how to walk can is it possible to use only one leg?
There is no such thing as good and evil, right or wrong in any absolute sense. These qualitative judgments serve no purpose outside the specific context of the circumstance. To use them in an absolute way is where we make our most fundamental error. To illustrate this lets use the example of a person climbing a mountain:
Now climbing a mountain is an arduous task. It is a painful experience and except for a master mountaineer, few people would view such an endeavour as desirable or pleasurable. Imagine you are climbing mountain. The downward pull of gravity is the contracting force you experience, it is the Yin nature in effect. It is limiting you, tiring you, slowing your progress. Yet with every step you take upwards you grow in confidence. Even as your legs begin to tire, your muscles tighten, harden, grow in power. Even as your mind begins to fatigue, your resolve and determination begin to increase. With every step that tells you 'No', your mind responds with a 'Yes'. This is the seed of Yang within the Yin experience. You finally make the summit and resolve you will never do it again. And yet a few months later you are back on the mountain doing it again and again. You have discovered the Yang nature of the experience - the desire to transcend your own reality.
Where does 'balance' fit into all this? Competing against the Yin nature of gravity, the pain and the anguish of the experience is the Yang nature represented by the power of your body, mind and resolve. If, as you are climbing, you focus excessively on the Yin of the experience, you will feel overwhelmed, defeated and eventually unable to continue. Your progress has been halted. You have become imbalanced towards the Yin. If on the other hand, you focus excessively on the Yang of the experience, you will become overzealous and hyper, you will rush ahead exerting yourself excessively, believing you are indestructible and will like fatigue or injure yourself well before you summit. You have become imbalanced towards the Yang. So the balance here lies in being equally aware and equally respectful of both the aspects and finding the right response in the moment to what is being required. This is the second step to Balance.
Now take that same scenario in reverse. You have reached the summit and now are coming down the mountain. The same mountain has now transformed from a foe to a friend. Taking the easy path down, gravity has now become your friend. It is the Yang nature driving you forward, encouraging you on. if you were to give into it you would move faster and faster and lose control. So now your legs are the yin nature, they are slowing you down and tempering your progress. Your mind which in the first instant wanted the end to come sooner now wants the opposite, it wants you to slow down, to postpone the base of the mountain. Here the Yang nature of effortless movement and speed contains the seed of restraint which is Yin. You see that giving into gravity and hurtling down would be foolhardy even though it would be effortless. Restraint and the desire to temper the experience is the Yin nature.
Do you see how depending on which perspective you look at the example what is 'good' and 'bad', 'desirable' and 'undesirable' is completely flipped on its head? Which is why to form any absolute view on 'good' and 'bad', 'right' and 'wrong' is misleading and ultimately produces an unstable effect.
Positivity and Negativity
Which brings me to the issue of positivity and negativity. Positive (positivity, being positive) is an imbalance towards Yang Nature. Negative (negativity, being negative) is an imbalance towards Yin nature. They are both imbalances. The need to be positive and to experience positive circumstances only, is inadvertently a refusal to accept the Yin Nature of experience and to be skewed towards the Yang. Oppositely, the feeling of being negative and experiencing life as a series of negative circumstances is a skew towards the Yin nature without a healthy perspective into the Yang Nature of experience.
A telling aspect of our fundamental value system is in the way in which we tend to view others. We see people who have achieved success, wealth, health, good fortune, who have a enthusiastic demeanour, a cheerful go-getting attitude as more worthy than those who have failed, are poor, experience misfortune, have an introverted demeanour and a somber, solitary attitude. Or simply we view "positive people" as better than "negative people". And yet they are both imbalanced. One might argue that if one is to be imbalanced that it’s better to be positively imbalanced than negatively imbalanced which is like saying it’s better to limp with the right leg than with the left.
The way in which we view others also translates into the way we regard ourselves. Seeing our confidence, our enthusiasm, zest, friendships and strong attributes as good and desirable and worthy of recognition. Whereas we condemn our own doubt, our depression, our loneliness and flaws as unworthy and keep it hidden in the dark corners of our minds hoping no one else will notice them. When we are unable to view ourselves with a balanced perspective how can we ever hope in manifesting balance in our actions?
An act of balance is like a dance. Your life, (which is the sum of your relationships, perspectives and circumstances) is your dance partner. When Life takes the lead, you must have the wisdom to follow. When Life looks to you, you must have the wisdom to lead. To attempt to take the lead in first scenario leads to aggravation and stress. To stay passive in the second case leads to idleness and lethargy. You need to be able to tune in to the needs of your dance partner and to feel their movements intuitively, without expectation or judgment.
We outlined the first two fundamental postulates of discovering balance: the first is to acknowledge the Yin and Yang Natures of every experience, the second is to embrace the two aspects in your experience by valuing and respecting them equally and feeling for the balance point through intuition.
The final and most important postulate is the one that is least mentioned but is nevertheless the core of the whole study of balance.
The Core of Being
What we have been speaking about so far is Human Nature. That is the nature of the human aspect of who you are. Yet what you are has a deeper reality and that is the reality of Being. In reality you are a Being having a human experience - a human being. In religion or spirituality, this being nature is sometimes referred to as Divine nature or God nature. I would rather steer away from those words because of the weight of history and interpretation they carry.
Recognition of one's own Being Nature is each person's greatest realization. Because this Being Nature exists prior to and unaffected by the human experience, but is simultaneously the source of all human experience. A human without the being is a corpse. It is the Being that is the Life force itself, that finds its expression in through the human form, the animal form, the plant form. And this Being is always Whole, Unfragmentable and Indestructible.
To glimpse into your own Being is to glimpse into your own divinity. The truth of who you really are, the unborn and undying eternal source of Life. This glimpsing into your own divinity has been referred to as satori, Awakening, Self Realization by different traditions. Yet avoiding the esoteric jargon, it is simply the experience of your pure nature when you are fully present in this moment without the mind creating an abstract version of who you are through thought. That pure You, before you have a name, before you have a gender, before you have a sense of being a human, before any thought you can have about what you are - that pure innocent You is the Being.
The more and more you become aware of this deeper dimension of your own reality, the more you will find yourself moving towards it, glimpsing into it, becoming it. When your own sense of identity begins to shift from the Human that is being to the Being that is human, the more you will begin to identify with those qualities and aspects of yourself that are Whole, Unfragmentable and Indestructible. The more you align with your Being, the more you begin to perceive these very qualities in the world around you. In other words, as you transform and shift in identity, the world you live in simultaneously begins to transform and shift in identity. This is when the statement "you create the reality you live in" transforms from an idea to an actual experience.
Then balance becomes more and more effortless, because from the place of Being it is your natural expression.
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