Balance

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my very dearest friends. Blessings for everyone of you. Once again with great joy I dip into your world temporarily and give you another step, as it were -- a helpful step, if you choose to make it so. I have announced to speak about balance in this lecture. For balance is what keeps the universe intact. If there were no balance, no balancing consciousness, no balancing law, then everything would disintegrate. All the natural laws that you know, and those that you may call "supernatural" laws because you do not know them and because they exist on another level of reality, are laws of balance. They come from balance and lead to balance. And this balance is not a cold, mechanical, coincidental factor, but it is the purposeful expression of the Supreme Intelligence.

Every single aspect of the law of balance is most meaningful and has a consciousness of its own. It is possible for you to find the law of balance up to a certain degree in the physical laws. But only to a degree, because the connection with levels of reality that you are not aware of must also exist, for otherwise these laws could not exist. In the same way that your bodily manifestation could not exist without the life that you have on other levels of reality. This applies to everything else, not just to entities, but to universal laws as well.

All the planetary systems are held together by these meaningful laws. If they were not, then they would break apart, the planets would clash into one another, and the whole system would disintegrate. It is exactly the same in the microcosm, in the human body. The human body is held together by a supreme law of balance of which you human beings know nothing as yet. If this law would not prevail, then all your cells and particles would disintegrate and spread apart, and the physical structure of your entity could not be held together.

The law of gravity, just as all laws of physics, of chemistry, of biology, and of every conceivable science in your physical reality, is governed by the principle of the great law of balance. Some of the laws are obvious for your scientists. Others are more intricate and lie unrevealed behind the great curtain.

Higher mathematics contains the key to these laws. But I am speaking of mathematics beyond your level of reality. And only a few enlightened human beings have sensed the relationship between mathematics and the key to the universe, the key to creation.

Balance exists on all levels. On the physical level balance is order and it creates order. Imbalance is disorder, but it does not create more disorder (only temporarily and up to a degree) because the temporary disorder is only another step to an order of a much higher organization. On the emotional level, balance means harmony -- the harmony of feelings. It leads to more harmony. Imbalance means disharmony, negative feelings. Disharmony must eventually lead, through the very disharmony, to a greater harmony of a higher order. On the mental level, balance means sanity, and it must lead to more balance and to more sanity. Imbalance on the mental level means insanity, which can only be that temporarily, but it must eventually lead toward a greater sanity of a higher organization. The greatness of divine law is that disintegration is only a step toward integration. Everything must inexorably lead to integration, to order, to harmony, to light, to balance, to love, to intelligence, and to health. Therefore, the law of balance is alwasys integrating.

Balance also means the right measure. Take any manifestation in the world of matter that you experience through your bodily senses. On this level of consciousness divine manifestations appear as opposites, but are not so in reality. Take, for example, warmth and cold. In the right measure they are both indispensable for harmonious living. Each has its own purpose, its own function, and its own meaning in the greater scheme of things. Both symbolize creative forces and currents indispensable to the life of the spirit. In materialization they are indispensable to physical growth and to the sustenance of life. I am not speaking of fixed temperatures, for there is no norm applicable to all. What is warm and what is cold may vary greatly in different cultures and in different locations, where differently organized human beings live. The tropical rain may be as cold as this climate requires to balance out a disharmony that may have set in. The mild arctic sunshine may be just the sufficient warmth needed in order to establish the balancing factor.

In imbalance, pleasurable warmth turns into unbearable heat, and purifying cold can become frozen icyness. Both can kill temporary life manifestations when in imbalance and in exaggeration. It is the same with every other physical manifestation, or, for that matter, with every other emotional manifestation or mental manifestation. Let us remain for the moment on the physical level. Take light and darkness. The balance between these two phenomena creates a beautiful harmony and provides mankind with exactly what it needs in this respect. But in the dualistic misconception they appear as opposites. Although they are a manifestation of the dualistic state of consciousness, they are both a unitive whole, fulfilling a purpose. In the darkness of night you rest, in the brighteness of daylight you expand, you are active, you become, and you move forth. This is a symbolic manifestation of the inner level, where you need a balance between activity and rest. And when each goes out of balance, with an overemphasis on the one and an underemphasis on the other, then chaos, disorder, and temporary disintegration exist.

The balancing factor reveals the richness, the beauty, the wisdom, and the love of the Creator. It is up to each living entity to intuitively find within the self the balance that holds everything together.

As the creative light moves onward in the evolutionary urge to fill the void, particles of consciousness and energy lose themselves and apparently separate themselves from the Whole. In the attempt to penetrate the void and fill it, the temporary illusory separation fulfills its task, spiritualizing the void, bringing light into it. Gradually the moment arrives when the ever onward movement fills in the gaps of consciousness and the original oneness is re-established after further penetration of the void. It is as if the whole sea of divinity had spread, and is continuing to spread, on and on. In this process of spreading, the forerunners separate in filling the void more and more. In saying this, I must perforce use terms as "later" and "after." These are illusory, for the whole concept of time is illusory anyway. But to squeeze these ideas into your human understanding, where your consciousness is focused at the moment, then I have to speak in terms of time. So, eventually, these particles find their way back to the forward-moving divine whole substance, thereby discovering their original connectedness with the Whole. The temporary, illusory disconnection must also create a temporary illusory imbalance, therefore chaos and disintegration. But since there is an all-encompassing meaning and a purpose to the movement as a whole, then it is only a temporary appearance of disintegration.

The imbalance that accrues through the onward movement of the light penetrating the void creates the illusion of separateness. I spoke of this many times. In separateness there must also be an imbalance. But this imbalance is only a step toward a greater balance.

It is very important for you to understand this, my friends. The words alone cannot be understood. On the intellectual level you cannot understand what I am saying to you here. But you are all capable of opening an inner channel, an intuitive channel, and then connect with what I say to you here. Perhaps you can do this best when you feel the areas in you where you are in imbalance. The purification process of this path is an expedient way of re-establishing balance. You intuitively find the measure. Not the rule, but the measure, the intuitive measure, how to balance certain expressions: when to be outgoing and to what extent and how and in what way; and when to hold yourself together, gathering your forces; when to be active and when to be receptive and in quietude. You all grope in these and in many other areas to find the balance, to find the measure, to find the equilibrium where you will spontaneously know when to express yourself in one way and when to express yourself in another way. For example, when to assert yourself and when to be flexible and give in.

Mankind has always sought refuge in hard and fast rules that can be accepted without thinking and without going deeper. In other words, without feeling yourself by going into the deepest processes of your inner light. But these are illusory shortcuts, meant to avoid finding your spontaneous inner resources, your inner functioning, the functioning of your Godself that knows the when, the what, and the how. In other words, that knows your right measure in any given situation. This must be consciously and deliberately desired without directly forcing it, but knowing that it is a possibility to be realized. Realize that you can feel the strength and the reality of your inner nucleus, where you know spontaneously what to do, how to expres it, and when to express it.

If you seek the right directive merely with the outer mind, then you will tend to lean on rules and on pat truisms that may be valid as far as they go, but that may not be applicable to every situation. But even if they are, then they are still stilted if they come from the outer level. When you try to establish this longed-for balance with the surface personality, then the result must be a flat, unsatisfying gesture, not a meaningful action stemming from your divine center.

The true inner balance -- that is so satisfying and so fulfilling --comes only through the arduous path of self-purification. Then it comes as a gratuitous byproduct. It seems to happen to you from within, just as love seems to happen to you from within. Yes, you must be willing to love, you must be willing to be in truth, you must be willing to be in balance; you must conceive of the possibility to love, you must conceive of the possibility to be in truth, you must conceive of the possibility to be in balance. Nevertheless you cannot will it directly. It is one of those manifestations where the inner key is being turned to release the wisdom of your innate balancing factor, as a result of your efforts and of your sincerity in being in truth with yourself.

Balance can never be forced from the outside, any more than love can be forced from the outside, or wisdom can be forced from the outside, or enlightenment can be forced from the outside, or peace can be forced from the outside. Balance is a spontaneous divine manifestation. Balance is sanity. Within every one of your particles -- both those of your physical body and those of your energy body -- this balance, this sanity must exist if health and well-functioning are to exist. Cells that flow apart have become insane. Balance has been discontinued. The healthy body keeps itself in balance.

The consciousness that perpetuates and nurtures the healthy body will make sure -- partly through intelligence and partly through intuition and certainly always through a positive will -- of leading a balanced life. The truer, deeper, meaningful, personal balance cannot be measured with figures and equations of the mathematics you know. It is not a fifty/fifty proposition. Take, for example, the balance between rest and wakefulness. The proper personal balance may vary from individual to individual, but it is never true that you require hours evenly divided between rest and wakefulness. From an outer point of view there seems to be no balance when you sleep eight hours and you are active sixteen hours. Yet in terms of inner balance this may be exactly your right measurement. And so it is with many other expressions. My point is that outer measurements do not necessarily express the inner measure of the right balance.

This same principle becomes apparent when we try to apply it to the inner attitudes. For example, how many segments of time should you apply to being aggressive, outgoing, and assertive and how many segments of time should you apply to being receptive, in quietude, in a state of being? It would be a complete absurdity if outer balance, outer measurements, were to be applied -- just as it is an absurdity to claim that the spiritual person must never be assertive, must never be aggressive, or an absurdity to claim that the strong, adequate person must never be receptive and soft. What I am trying to say is that the balancing measurement is beyond your intellectual calculations. It must be felt. Therefore, it must be looked for within yourself.

This inner balance comes from a different mathematics, a different measurement, that has its wisdom on a level that as yet is inaccessible to your conscious perception. It manifests indirectly. The real balance lies in the unevenness of the inner reality. There you will discover a completely different way of seeing what is even and what is not even. In other words, the balance of the inner reality is not stilted or mechanical. There is a meaning behind it. To find your way into this inner rhythm of life is the purpose of a path that leads inward.

The person who is completely disconnected from his inner dimension needs to designate all rhythms, all balances, all measurements to the outer mind. And this often becomes meaningless, stilted, and self-defeating. It breaks the real balance. It is a measurement that is contrary to the true proportions. But as you find your inner being -- with its vibrant intelligence and with a wisdom that truly surpasses that of the outer mind -- you experience the incredible beauty of being held together and carried by a balance system of such grandeur, of such purpose that it can never be expressed in words. You learn to trust this, you learn to go with it. You learn to consciously and deliberately consult that balance system that is forever available for him who makes his outer being compatible with it in an attitude of wakefulness. When listening to those rhythmic balancing factors, then try to discern that your inner system is an integral part of a whole system that is so finely woven together that it defies human understanding. It is of a grandeur that as yet cannot be encompassed by your mind. But you can sense it if you make yourself part of it. And making yourself part of it always means to give up the temptation of staying in the temporary smaller order of your little mind and to trust that you will find the larger order of your greater mind.

When mishaps befall you on the outer level of your existence, then everything in you rebels against the disharmony and the imbalance that have temporarily been created by factors as yet unknown to your conscious mind. You tend to battle against and to strain away from this disordering, imbalancing occurrence. Yet it is precisely this disordering, imbalancing occurrence that affords you the possibility to give up your outer holding, to give up your outer battle, to give up your outer insistence. And then to go into an inner order and into an inner balance. But first you need to make room for its possibility; then to trust it and to have faith in it; and finally to wait for it to manifest itself to you.

What I have said here is very important. The new Christ Consciousness is now breaking through into the human consciousness on an inner level of reality. Therefore, it must perforce destroy the old order, destroy the old balance system, and destroy the measurements that have become obsolete. It must also destroy the old, outworn attitudes, the old feelings, the old values, and the old concepts. This destruction can happen in mundane matters of your life. But only when you have both the willingness and the openness to discover the inner meaning of the temporary disorder will you find the new order; only when you want to consider the momentary discomfort of the temporary imbalance in this light will you find a truer balance that is much more profound and meaningful than what you have known and what you had established on a more superficial level of being. But perhaps that more superficial level of your being is now finished with. In other words, you may have outgrown it without being aware of it, without having considered this. Now you are ready to go deeper and further. You are ready to expand farther outward and deeper inward into the real universe in order to first experience and then adopt a new balance structure that at first may manifest as imbalance simply because you obstruct the movement and therefore you stem against it.

Do you have any questions pertaining to this topic?

QUESTION: Is what you call the "balancing factor," for instance in the aggressive and receptive principles, a third force?

ANSWER: No, the balancing factor is the cohesive force that underlies all the manifestations that appear as opposites. The balancing factor is the cohesion, it is the scale, it is the bridge, if you will. The active principle and the receptive principle are just one of many other laws or manifestations or expressions in the universe, in the creative scheme. But let us now stay with this example -- the active principle and the receptive principle. The balance is not a third factor, but the conciliation in which these expressions exist in a meaningful way. I have mentioned before that the active principle must also contain within itself the receptive expression, just as in the receptive state the active expression must also be present, otherwise there is imbalance.

A person cannot be truly active unless in that activity there is also contained the state of mind that is receptive, that is quiet, that is still, that is in a harmonious state of being. Then the active movement becomes what I sometimes term effortless effort. In other words, it is not a strained effort. Activity is only strained and effortful -- and therefore tiring -- if it does not contain within itself the receptive principle.

It is precisely because human beings cannot perceive the receptive quietude within the active movement that they shy away from movement, from becoming, from effort. They tend toward stagnancy because their effort is so strained, and therefore so effortful. But if you could think of effort in this effortless way -- which comes through its cohesion, its conciliation with the receptive principle -- then growing, the active movement outward, and becoming would not be feared.

By the same token, if the receptive principle does not contain within itself the active principle, then it creates a stagnant, deadening, and dead state. It is only through the activity and the movement contained within the receptive state that there are in it an alertness and a wakefulness that make it just as alive as the active state.

If you think of the qualities or aspects or expressions contained in the active principle and contained in the passive principle, then you will see the following -- and I oversimplify here for the purpose of illustration: The active principle is movement and action. The receptive principle is the state of being, quietude. The active state gives out, the receptive state takes in. The active state is a tensing of energies, the receptive state relaxes them. If you combine the two in their own inner key of a proper balance, then you have action and effort that is alive and vibrant. In both states you have all the qualities present, only in different proportions. The active state contains the two principles in different proportions and combinations than the receptive state.

So it is not a third force, it is the proportion that keeps the balance.

QUESTION: I have a personal question that is very much related to this lecture. I now realize the pain of the imbalance in my life. I realize that there is a lot of vanity and pride related to my outer will that forces me to go from one extreme of overindulgence to the other extreme of deprivation. This applies to a lot of simple parts of my life -- sleeping, eating, loving, all kinds of things. I'd like some help in understanding why this is so. It almost seems as if I'm using it as an identifying characteristic of specialness, to go from one extreme to the other and to deny myself a sense of harmony.

ANSWER: There are several levels on which an answer can be given. For example, there is one level -- the lower self level -- where the imbalance is deliberately sought in order to prove to you, as it were: "It does not work, nothing works." You get the confirmation of the illusion that nothing works, of the illusion that whatever you do is wrong, of the illusion that life is no good, of the illusion that you may just as well capitulate. It is the case of the lower self. It is very important that you be aware of this. In other words, that you are wise to it so that you can confront it and thus not allow it to take control. As you make yourself aware of it, then you can identify this voice. Then you can open both your heart and your mind to your higher self's guidance and request guidance for the balance. As I said in the lecture, it cannot come through an intellectual determination alone, but the intellectual determination must be directed toward an inner meaningful guidance.

On another level this imbalance is due not only to your ignorance of the reality of balance, but also to your ignorance of the importance of balance. Perhaps we can combine these two levels. The lower self can do this because of its ignorance of the fact that both expressions -- rest and work, for example -- have their rightful place in your life. The same applies to all other expressions. For example, without some measure of abstinence, then fulfillment becomes shallow. As a result, it is no longer fulfilling. This is what I meant by saying that it defeats itself.

You need to conceive of yourself as giving to yourself just so much and then stop. You need to take into consideration the possibility that there exists in you a force that knows when and how much, and then you need to call upon this force. You need to cultivate -- in your awareness, in your thinking system, in your thought processes -- the concept of manifesting both expressions that now appear as opposites. In the ripening of your understanding of this concept, then your lower self will not get away with this game any longer because you will have truth to meet it with.

Love and blessings go into every one of you and merge with the love and the blessings that come out from your innermost higher self. The truth of being, the beauty of life, the strength of your real self are all emerging more and more, and they make a glory of your life -- a blessed glory. Peace and love to all of you. Be blessed.

February 12, 1975