scc

Friday, April 07, 2006

Finding Balance

Balance is one of the most important things in life. If you don't have balance you can't move from point to point - both literally and figuratively. Balance is the cause of movement and action. All energy seeks balance. Life creates balance out of imbalance.

One of the most fascinating things about life is the way it will never stop this balancing process. As a matter of fact, when one has some semblance of balance in many areas of life, you will find yourself in new situations that require you to start the balancing process all over again. It is for this reason that man is always hungry for something. Contentment would be the death of man. Man, as a being is born to struggle and attain things. One never stops this struggle no matter how advanced one becomes, how much one knows or how much one has.

The secret is to learn and manage this never-ending struggle so it reaps constructive growth and steers your path to higher planes of expression. It is all too easy to follow the herds, gaggles and packs and pursue simply material goals that are assigned to you at birth by a fearful society. Boys are taught they must find out what you want to do for a living, while girls are encouraged to marry and start a family ASAP, both sexes are taught to live life within socially accepted guideposts.

This is all swell and fine up to a certain point. If your mind is satisfied with making money, living as others do, following fashions dictated by others, watching mass entertainment pacification and following in the footsteps of the huddled hordes of people than you have nothing to worry about. You wont even feel a longing or a questioning - you'll just go with the flow. However, if you have an uneasiness about conformity, feel there must be some other level to life and human relationships that is not even being explored than you are reading the right blog entry.

Society should not be made up of people who are slaves to the work week. Such a society creates the tensions, stress and frustration that guarantees off hours to be spent seeking some form of escape mechanism. Food is a major escape for much of the planet. Obesity keeps hitting new highs as a percentage of the population uses food to nullify the stress of modern life. After the second world war and the automation revolution, workers were told they could now work less and earn more. 40 hour work weeks were the reward of industrialization. Now the 40 hour work week is a starting point and many have 60 hour work weeks with no increase in wages. The result? An ever more materialistic, culturally deficient generation who read less, watch TV more and spend their few non-working hours engaged in sensory gratification.

The technocracy of the Earth is a dual-edged sword that cuts both ways harming and helping man simultaneously. Instant communication serves to create a larger lowest common denominator as ignorance, hatred, degeneracy and exploitation retards and degrades more than was ever before possible in human history.

It is for this reason that one must seek out and release ones mind from these mundane constraints. Neither work to live or live to work, but participate cautiously in a society that is more lemming than lemonade. Realize that fitting in is not an admirable goal. The one with the most toys or who earns the most applause does NOT win - and in fact these are the greatest losers who are cursed with future experiences and lives of suffering to re-establish priorities and balance.

Spirituality is a confusing concept. Most associate spiritual with religion. Really, spirituality could be couched within the broader parameter of human consciousness. Your spirit is your mind. Spirituality is in decline - not religion. Religion is thriving. But religions just create another set of conformists with another set of rules and rewards. Seldom does religion reward the individual who enjoys thinking for himself. Fostering mental growth in our society is only done to turn humans into useful employees and workers. Education is classified as a tool - a tool that will help you make money and live better than your fellow man. This is the goal of education? Education is an end in itself. Your mind and its diversity and richness of thought is the greatest reward or gift anyone could ever give anyone else.

Yes, society has cheapened education into a materialist pursuit. Our universities are designed to educate people to become productive in their fields of endeavor and the result is a society deprived of true spirituality. Thinking, true thought for the nourishment of the soul is largely lost to ancient history. Athens valued thought, public discourse for discourse sake and with the goal of creating a new generation who were even better thinkers than the best of preceding generations. Thought spurred and nurtured fostered creativity. Creativity is a necessity for a thriving cultural layer in society. Because thinking is at an all-time low, creativity and culture have become a wasteland of imitation, repetition and regurgitation of others who are/were creative.

Balance. We're back to balance again. A society that thinks, creates and grows develops a healthy spiritual life to accompany their material pursuits and efforts. It is only then that a society can progress to new heights. When balance is lost a society goes into decline and sinks to its lowest depths.

Even though society declines you need not follow the steer to the slaughter. Seek balance in all you do, including the all-important emotional aspects of your reactions to all that surrounds you, and you will find yourself rewarded with a greater spiritual life - a life that leads to true happiness, joy and understanding.