What do I mean by “right balance”?
I do not use the term “right” to convey “right or wrong,” as in moral judgment, but my belief is that there is – within oneself, within a dyad interpersonally, and within all the elements, all the “players” and all the considerations within the whole world – a balance that is healthier, more sustainable, and which offers the best possible outcome for all parties (or factors) involved.
My presumption is based on a concept which values the largest possibilities of well-being for all, rather than “everyone for themselves.”
Within oneself, I have the notion that we are the sum of our parts, and those parts of us (as in the IFS, Internal Family Systems, sense of parts) came into being to deal with varying issues to be attended to in life, given that we do interact with the outside world and with others in the world.
There is an ability to explore one’s inner life, and there is a (varying) need to attend to what is outside us – is the outside world safe? Unsafe? Supportive of our “going on being”? or are the outer dynamics something we have to accommodate to in order to protect ourselves?
I have just arbitrarily listed several of these areas of attention, as they occurred to me, but I imagine that everyone has their own personal poles that they attend to and need to “balance.” (How much am I giving? How much am I receiving? How much am I working? How much am I playing?)
I also (myself) take as a start-place that for my own well-being that I need to be connected to Nature– and connected to whatever it is that I conceptualize as Spirit (imagination, creativity, inspiration, awe).
And, again, for my own start-place, I find it useful to try to engage with both my left brain (intellect) and with my right brain (creativity, imagery, emotions).
So the “poles” that I look to check, myself, when seeking to be in “right balance,” are topics such as the following:
Intellect —— Creativity
Ability to love —– Ability to be loved
Curiosity — Self-care
Openness to self-experience —- Awareness of surroundings
Adventurousness — Self-compassion
Ability to give —- Ability to receive
Generativity —- Playfulness
Liveliness, vitality —– Ability to relax
Connection to nature —- Connection to Spirit
A friend and colleague helped put these into an image. I experience the image as if spokes of a wheel, and just as bicycle wheels function best when they are balanced, so, for me, I believe that humans function better when “balanced.”
Click to Enlarge
But it can become a personal self-care practice, a spiritual practice, if you will, to become aware of our different vectors in order to see how we can best express “who we were meant to be.”
Or there might be others, say due to trauma backgrounds, had an environmental need to stay small, stay safe, not ask for or expect much for themselves, give too much to others, attend too much to the outer environment, perhaps even in a hypervigilant way – they might be served to develop better capacities (once they are in a safe environment) to resume attention (which might have had to have been aborted early on) to inner awareness, and to expression of their inner beings.
That is what I mean by a “righter balance” within oneself.
IFS (Internal Family Systems) therapy postulates the existence of a “Self,” our “Higher Self” perhaps, from which we can view, witness, experience, feel into and understand our different energies, our different ways of being in the world.
IFS also postulates that it is from the compassion and clarity offered by this witnessing “Self,” we can discover, explore and get to know and work with these energies, so as to discern are they trying too hard, are they in place to protect us, and are the other ends of the poles constricted out of fear?
This modality is one of many practices that can help us discern what “right balance” might be for any of us.
Jennifer McLean
We are moving from "mine" and materialism, to humanitarian efforts, less top-down economies, more grass roots efforts, and deep authentic sharing.
The David Suzuki Foundation
The David Suzuki Foundation, founded in 1990, (https://davidsuzuki.org/) has as its guiding principles:
One nature. We are nature. All people, and all species.
We are interconnected with nature, and with each other.
What we do to the planet and its living creatures, we do to ourselves.
We don’t deserve this planet
Solastalgia
A short film by Pascal Tremblay, on YouTube.
Goddess Remembered
When God Was a Woman, Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MtidJeLDyM&feature=emb_logo
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
A major book about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future
The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity’s transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it?
Ishmael
Ishmael is a 1992 philosophical novel by Daniel Quinn. The novel examines the hidden cultural biases driving modern civilization and explores themes of ethics, sustainability, and global catastrophe. Ishmael aims to expose that several widely accepted assumptions of modern society, such as human supremacy, are actually cultural myths that produce catastrophic consequences for humankind and the environment.
thanks, very interesting 🙂