BALANCE

Related States & Conditions | Syntonic | Dystonic

Just as you breathe in and breathe out
Sometimes you're ahead and other times behind
Sometimes you're strong and other times weak.
Laozi
570-490 BCE, Chinese Philosopher, Founder of Daoism
Tao Te Ching , Gia Fu-Feng & Jane English, trs., 1972

Where the solid qualities are in excess of accomplishments, we have rusticity; where the accomplishments are in excess of the solid qualities, we have the manners of a clerk. When the accomplishments and solid qualities are equally blended, we then have the man of virtue.
Kongfuzi
c. 551-c. 479 BCE, Chinese Philosopher, Educator
Analects

The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.
Euripides
c. 485-406 BCE, Greek Dramatist, Poet

Where there is sunshine, there is also shade.
Kashmiri Saying

Human lives go along with circumstances. It is not necessary to reject activity and seek quiet; just make yourself inwardly empty while outwardly harmonious. Then you will be at peace in the midst of frenetic activity in the world.
Yuanwu Kekin
1063-1135, Chinese Chan Master
in Zen Essence: The Science of Freedom , Thomas Cleary, tr. & ed., 1989

Calm, activity – each has its use.
Shaku Soen
Zen Master

The dark threads were as needful, in the weaver's skilful hand,
as the threads of gold and silver, for the pattern which he planned.
Greek Saying

Observe the qualities of expansion and contraction
in the fingers of your hand:
surely after the closing of the fist comes the opening.
If the fingers were always closed or always open,
the owner would be crippled.
Your movement is governed by these two qualities:
they are as necessary to you
as two wings are to a bird.
Rumi
1207-1273, Afghani-Turkish Sufi Mystic, Poet
"Two Wings," Mathnawi III, 3762-66, The Pocket Rumi Reader , Kabir Helminski, ed., 2001

Be humble, for you are made of dung. Be noble, for you are made of stars.
Serbian Saying

Ask counsel of both times, of the ancient time what is best; and of the latter time what is fittest.
Francis Bacon
1561-1626, English Philosopher, Essayist, Politician

Whatever difference may appear in the fortunes of mankind, there is, nevertheless, a certain compensation of good and evil which makes them equal.
Rochefoucauld
1613-1680, French Moralist, Epigrammatist

A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life … The world looks like a multiplication table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist
The Oversoul

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something else.
Emerson

If ever the faculties of the great majority of mankind were exclusively bent upon the pursuit of material objects, it might be anticipated that an amazing reaction would take place in the souls of some. I should be surprised if mysticism did not soon make some advance among a people solely engaged in promoting its own worldly welfare.
Alexis de Tocqueville
1805-1859, French Historian, Politician, Lawyer, Memoirist

Into each life some rain must fall; Some days must be dark and dreary.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1807-1882, American Poet, Writer
The Rainy Day

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.
Theodore Roosevelt
1858-1919, 26th US President

The movement of life has its rest in its own music.
Rabindranath Tagore
1861-1941, Indian Poet, Dramatist, Essayist, 1913 Nobel Laureate

In the ocean we cannot raise a wave without causing a hollow somewhere else. The sum total of the good things in the world has been the same throughout in its relation to man's need and greed. It cannot be increased or decreased.
Vivekananda
1863-1902, Indian Guru, Writer
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 1984-1987 , 1:111

The ideal man is he who, in the midst of the greatest silence and solitude, finds the intensest activity, and in the midst of the intensest activity finds the silence and solitude of the desert.
Ibid. , 1:34

Ordinarily speaking, spiritual aspiration ought to be balanced through the intellect; otherwise it may degenerate into mere sentimentality.
Ibid. , 7:22

The world acquires value only through its extremes and endures only through moderation; extremists make the world great, the moderates give it stability.
Paul Valery
1871-1945, French Poet, Mathematician, Philosopher

The word "happiness" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.
Carl Jung
1875-1961, Swiss Psychologist, Theorist

Keep self well-balanced, and keep the body physically fit, the mental body alert, and the spiritual body – give it an opportunity to manifest.
Edgar Cayce
1877-1945, American Seer
Reading No. 342-1

A lament in one ear, maybe; but always a song in the other. And to me life is simply an invitation to live.
Sean O'Casey
1880-1964, Irish Dramatist

I would have you consider your judgment and your appetite even as you would two loved guests in your house.
Surely you would not honor one guest above the other; for he who is more mindful of one loses the love and the faith of both.
Kahlil Gibran
1883-1931, Lebanese Poet, Mystic, Painter
The Prophet , 1923

Order is not pressure which is imposed from without but an equilibrium which is set up from within.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
1883-1955, Spanish Philosopher, Critic

But I am not so sure that to be balanced is necessarily a virtue. Some urgent inner problem or some imbalance may actually improve the impetus for dealing with outer wrongs. The rebel who is stirred to action by injustice or cruelty to others may well have himself suffered from an inner tyrant which bullies him. Most geniuses in whatever field are, to ordinary eyes, more than a little mad. The heavy prices some artists have to pay for their unusual insight may be lack of balance.
Irene Claremont de Castillejo
1885-1967, British Jungian Analyst, Writer, Poet
Knowing Woman: A Feminine Psychology , 1973, 1990

Serenity of spirit and turbulence of action should make up the sum of man's life.
Vita Sackville-West
1892-1962, English Writer, Poet, Gardener

The good life can be lived only in a society where tidiness is preached and practiced, but not too fanatically, and where efficiency is always haloed, as it were, by a tolerated aura of mess.
Aldous Huxley
1894-1963, English Writer, Poet, Critic
Themes and Variations

Apparently, in nature's scheme, there is not a blessing in this life without its concomitant evils, and not an evil without its compensatory blessings.
Lin Yutang
1895-1976, Chinese Writer, Dramatist, Translator
The Vigil of a Nation

My studies of self-actualizing people find in them simultaneously the ability to abstract without giving up concreteness and the ability to be concrete without giving up abstractness.
Abraham Maslow
1908-1970, American Psychologist, Educator

My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income.
Errol Flynn
1909-1959, American Actor

The great skill of life is to be able to maintain the innocence of a child in one's heart while at the same time possessing mastery and control. The combination of these two modes of being is a great art.
Vilayat Khan
1916-, Indian/British Sufi Master, Writer
Awakening: A Sufi Experience , 1999

We must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.
Indira Gandhi
1917-1984, Indian Prime Minister

It is necessary to teach both to accept and to reject the past with a kind of balance that takes considerable skill. Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers of the proceeding generation.
Richard Feynman
1918-1988, American Physicist
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

Man always travels along precipices … His truest obligation is to keep his balance.
John Paul II
1920-, Polish Pope

We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.
Jimmy Carter
1924-, 39th US President, 2002 Nobel Laureate

When a person has access to both the intuitive, creative, and visual right brain and the analytical, logical, verbal left brain, then the whole brain is working. There is psychic synergy taking place in our own head. And this tool is best suited to the reality of what life is, because life is not just logical – it is also emotional.
Stephen Covey
1932-, American Management Educator, Writer
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People , 1989

Balance isn't either/or; it's and.
Covey
First Things First

A life of wisdom must be a life of contemplation combined with action.
M. Scott Peck
1936-, American Psychiatrist, Writer
The Road Less Travelled , 1978

Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Robert Fulghum
1937-, American Writer

Happiness is equilibrium. Shift your weight. Equilibrium is pragmatic. You have to get everything into proportion. You compensate, rebalance yourself so that you maintain your angle to your world. When the world shifts, you shift.
Tom Stoppard
1937-, British Writer, Dramatist

Balance is a perfectionist ideal, never to be found in actual life. Therefore, it is not a good image to keep in mind. Rather, the soul's complexity is achieved over time, through error and extreme. There may be only rare moments, quickly fading, in which the desired amalgam appears to be within reach. Most of the time we feel the unwelcome tug of one side or the other. That, I believe, is as it should be. We are guided by our emotions, by pain, by the feeling of going wrong. The point is to enter the mysterious complexity of the soul's polytheistic structures, and not to arrive at some static point of perfect balance.
Thomas Moore
1940-, American Psychologist, Writer
Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship , 1994

A balanced life doesn't just happen. It is a state of grace we create by staying connected with our thoughts and feelings and consciously measuring what we do. Just as feeling fit and flexible demands physical exercise, just as expanding your mind requires intellectual effort, so bringing your life into balance and maintaining your spiritual equilibrium require focused awareness and daily retreat from the stresses of the world.
Susan Taylor
1946-, African-American Editor, Writer
Lessons in Living

By trying to focus only on the things we deem "positive" and ignoring or repressing the rest, we are simply perpetuating the polarization of light and dark forces. Ironically, this further distorts and empowers the very energies we are trying to avoid. We must deeply recognize that there is no split between "spiritual" and "unspiritual," good and bad. All aspects of life are elements of the life force and facets of the divine. True healing comes from owning and accepting all of life's energies within ourselves.
Shakti Gawain
1948-, American Therapist, Writer
Return to the Garden: A Journey of Discovery , 1989

It's a question of balance: don't take yourself or your task too seriously, yet give it your best. It may seem like walking a tightrope in the beginning but later the spaciousness of your mind will make it seem like a broad path with lots of room on either side. When you live like this your presence becomes quite natural, and like a flower or a waterfall, your actions have an unselfconscious beauty which enriches existence not just for yourself but for everyone.
- G. BlueStone
Maverick Sutras , 1994

The heroic quest is not about power over, about conquest and domination; it is a quest to bring balance into our lives through the marriage of both feminine and masculine aspects of our nature.
- Maureen Murdock
Therapist
The Heroine's Journey

Difficulties are opportunities to better things; they are stepping stones to greater experience. Perhaps someday you will be thankful for some temporary failure in a particular direction. When one door closes, another always opens; as a natural law it has to, to balance.
Brian Adams
How to Succeed , 1985

The middle path is the way of balance, neither to the left nor the right, neither to the wrong nor the correct, but we shall not have this balance through trying to grasp it. It will come when the extremes are properly looked at and dissolved. The mind is always wanting to grasp something in order to stay with it and not let it go, but in doing that it is not open, and for the middle path it needs to be open.
Ajahn Dhiravamsa
Thai Buddhist Teacher, Writer
The Middle Path of Life: Talks on the Practice of Insight Meditation , 1988

Happy is the man who knows what to remember of the past, what to enjoy in the present, and what to plan for the future.
- A. Gibson

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Wisdom for The Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, © 2004