Part 5:   THE KEYS TO BALANCE AND HARMONY

There are three essential elements in our growth and development:

• Worship
• Self-Awareness
• Relationships.

Incorporating these three actions into our daily lives enables us to experience a life of balance and harmony, regardless of the prevailing conditions in the world. What are these actions and how are they performed?

1. WORSHIP

Worship is the action of being quiet and receiving spiritual guidance and purification from the Universal Energy that surrounds us. Every living being is immersed in this energy at every moment. Connecting with this animating force of life aligns our individual nature with the Great Laws that operate throughout the universe. This connection becomes our internal guidance system that enables us to maintain our human identity and reveal our human qualities in our daily interactions with others.

Unlike our relationship work, worship is not something we can actively do. It is something we receive when we stop doing and become quiet. Worship requires no techniques or acts of will. We only have to quiet our will and receive what our Creator has willed for us.

For modern men and women who are constantly encouraged to think .. will ... do, the act of quieting our mental processes and disengaging our will is not an easy one. Yet without this quieting process, it is extremely difficult to connect with our Creator, maintain our spiritual-material balance, and supervise our intellect with a compassionate heart.

Worship gives us the experience of what it feels like to be animated by spiritual energy. With this experience as a standard for comparison, we can learn to recognize the nature and presence of the material energies our body receives through our daily relationships. When we can feel the Creator's Presence and finally understand who we really are, we can begin to fulfil our role as the Earth's guardians. No longer will we exploit other life forms or be insensitive to their needs.

2. SELF AWARENESS

Our life on Earth brings us in continuous contact with a variety of energies. Whether we are conscious of their presence or not, these energies are constantly altering our state of being. Self-Awareness is the ongoing process of consciously experiencing our changing state of being. It involves observing and identifying:

Our Outward Behaviour: what our body is physically doing, the state in which it is doing it, and how its actions seem to be affecting other living things around us.

Our Internal State: our body's reactions i.e. our thoughts, emotions, and sensations, to the different energies that are entering and leaving it. For those who don't worship, these reactions can feel like"I", but they aren't. They are our physical body's communications with "I".

By practising self-awareness we can monitor our progress as developing human beings and observe whether our actions are in harmony with our human nature and life purpose. It also allows us to feel who or what is influencing us at any given moment.

Self-Awareness is most beneficial when it becomes an integrated part of our daily activities. We don't have to stop what we normally do in daily life in order to watch ourselves. By observing our internal and external state as we are performing our daily actions, we can begin to learn how to make conscious choices in any circumstances instead of simply reacting to the energies, people, and events around us.

Self Awareness requires that we pay attention to what is happening to us as we move through our daily activities. If the purpose of our life on Earth is to develop our human qualities, then the practice of self-awareness is a vital part of that developmental process.

3. RELATIONSHIPS

Our human purpose is to be an agent for the creation of balance and harmony, the two Universal operating principles. We do this through our relationships i.e. by exchanging energy with other living things. Our relationships are in balance and harmony when we recognize and satisfy the needs of our relationship partners as well as our own.

Every plant, animal, fellow human, and material object has their own needs that must be satisfied if they are to experience a life of balance and harmony. It is our responsibility as the Earth's guardians to honour and support these needs.

The most effective way to create wholistic relationships is to apply our human qualities; love, patience, tolerance, co-operation, and compassion whenever we come in contact with any living thing. Putting this into practice can be quite challenging in these frenetic times! It requires an inner awareness that comes from worship and the establishment of a clear and noble life purpose, one that all parts of our being support. With this internal guidance in place, we are continually reminded to reveal our human qualities in any situation we find ourself in. Without this internal guidance we are subject to the external influences and agenda of other people, energies, and events.

Wholistic relationships are built on more than intellectual concepts and good intentions. They must be supplemented by the active daily use of our inner feelings and our spiritual receiving in order to consciously choose how we relate with others. All parts of our being must play an active role in our relationships, each part making their own unique contribution to the process. Our thoughts tell us what we need to do when relating with others, our inner feelings tell us how we are to do it, and our spiritual receiving reminds us why we are doing it.

Wholism is a way of living that is based on the creation and maintenance of balanced and harmonious relationships, both within our own being and with all living things around us. It encourages the fulfilment of our two human duties, worship and relationship work. It encourages self awareness and the use of all parts of our being in supporting a noble life purpose. It respects the Universal Laws and welcomes the contributions of science and spirituality, thought and feeling, acts of will and the submission of our will to the Creator's. It views life as a great balancing act, balancing the satisfaction of our own spiritual and material needs with the needs of others.

On a planet whose guardians (us) have experienced several centuries of unsupervised thinking and lack of worship, the emergence of wholistic values and practices are beginning to make a beneficial difference in the world. Slowly but surely, a critical mass of people are beginning to choose attitudes and lifestyles that encourage self awareness, compassion and co-operation. For this we can thank the Creator whose Universal Laws do not allow a state of imbalance and disharmony to remain in place indefinitely. Divine intervention has occurred and we're it!

Michael Greenstein, Montreal, Quebec, latest revision Jan 2003