The Magic of Balance

November 1, 2016 Simple Treasures

Some time ago, my editor and friend sent me a picture that she said described the protagonist in the book I was writing. She was too kind to say that it described me. It showed a female figure with arms outstretched against a field of stars trying to balance on the back of an enormous horse rearing up on its hind legs. If only I’d known what it meant.

Midway through my legal career, I felt that I was being pulled apart. I didn’t understand what was happening and had no idea how to fix it. I responded the only way I knew how and slogged on, rising in the profession, making more money and expanding my sphere of influence. The pain got worse. I palliated it with work, wine, food and spending. Changing jobs didn’t help and I traded a bad situation for one that was worse. When my inner demons and an abusive work environment collided, I knew I was going to die if I didn’t walk away.

I’ve wandered in the wilderness – literally – for five years now, trying to understand. The process has been like studying the rings in a tree. I quickly peeled away the outer layers because they were obvious: anger at the people who had hurt me, at the misogyny so imbedded in our culture that we are only now beginning to see its depths, at the stultifying processes and labels that jammed me into a claustrophobic box, at the fake relationships that pretended to be about more than business. When I thought I had figured it out, I wrote a hundred thousand words about the soulless and barren systems that entrap us. But I knew something was missing and my screeds went in the trash. What followed was a painful middle passage where I had to acknowledge my ego’s culpability in my woes. I was never going to get where I wanted to be until I stopped being motivated by money and living for others' approval. I had to get to know myself behind all of the labels that had modified me and live my truth. When I passed through the darkness and depression and pretty much killed my ego (mine’s way too big to ever completely die), I thought I was done. I would now be able to finish the novel that was going to change the world. Not so fast, said the Universe. The book that had been my lifeline, my hope for getting my old life back, went in the trash.

I felt like the alien-looking figure in Edvard Munch’s famous paintings of The Scream. What was I missing? The answer didn’t come as an aha moment. It was more as if I saw all I had learned come together. The center rings of the tree where life force flows is wholeness, that magical balancing of polarities: masculine and feminine, spirit and soul, Heaven and Earth, left brain rational and right brain intuition, aggression and receptivity, and so on. I wasn’t equally honoring both aspects. Most of my life had been heavily weighted toward the masculine energy that runs the world while the feminine creative and intuitive side had been stifled. My focus had been on uniting with God but I hadn't paid equal attention to my Earth-bound soul. I looked toward what lies beyond without connecting with the natural world. Years of left brain dominance had drowned out my right brain muse. I knew how to fight; I didn’t know how to receive. I needed balance.

The depiction of balance that most resonates with me is the Taoist Yin-Yang symbol. Known as the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate, it is a circle containing equal sized waves of black and white. Within the black wave is a white dot. Within the white wave is a black dot. The black wave – yin - is the feminine aspect. It is dark, moist, yielding and enfolding like the womb and Earth. The yin is quiet, contemplative and intuitive. It represents the “below” elements of earth (soil) and water. It holds the quality of restfulness. The yang embodies opposing characteristics: masculine, light, above, firm, full of movement, rational intellect, Heaven, air, fire, strong action. The yin and yang continuously move and rotate in symmetry, staying within the circle. Sometimes one is larger and exerts more force but when it reaches its extreme, the circle of the other within it contains and brings it back into balance.

Balance between opposing forces isn’t just a Taoist idea. Saying 24 attributed to Jesus in the Gnostic Christian Book of Thomas is an example: “When you make two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female … then you will enter the kingdom.” The Jewish Kabbalah tradition of unification and balance gives us the Tree of Life with opposite and complementary pillars of receptivity (feminine energy) and aggressiveness/expansion (masculine energy). My left brain is kicking in and wants to talk about the German philosopher Hegel’s and psychologist Carl Jung’s views on the unity of opposites, the development of the concept in Buddhism and Hinduism beginning with the Vedas and … My right brain says, “Enough. Point made.” Right brain wins.

There is a lot I don’t understand about polarities or duality as it is also called. I don’t want to balance war and peace. I want to get rid of war. I don’t want to balance evil with good. I want to get rid of evil and sickness and pain. But, we are in a dynamic state of change. My intuition tells me that if we equally honor the masculine and feminine, spirit and soul, Heaven and Earth, the rational and the intuitive, aggression and receptivity, what we perceive as the dark side will dissipate. Doesn’t much of what is bad flow out of imbalances in these dualistic pairs? Too much archetypal warrior/king energy squelching the archetypal feminine. Too much trying to force others to believe in our version of Heaven instead of making Earth into Heaven. Too much aggression and too little mediation.

I’m new to the practice of balance but I’ve seen it work already. I began going into the dense woods on my property to meditate and it popped in my head to make fairy houses. Now, I’ve always thought the idea of fairies was ridiculous and I’d never considered building a fairy house but I’ve been trying to give into my artistic side so I piled up sticks and acorns and berries and moss. As I worked, I flashed back on myself as a little girl in the woods of East Texas where my solace was going off by myself to build forts out of pine limbs and straw. Tears poured down my face as I remembered that terrified child. Back in the house, a story about a scared little girl named Elizabeth who found comfort in the woods with the fairies came to me fully formed. Me, a children’s book? No way. I’m supposed to become the next Erich Fromm or write magisterial works of fiction. Then, it happened again. Cordie Delia and the Hawk Feather, a story about a Cherokee girl finding God in nature, wrote itself with a little help from my grandmother Cordie Delia’s spirit. For the first time, I wrote for the sheer joy of writing without  caring whether anyone read it or it made a penny. (Elizabeth in the Woods is offered as a free download under the Books tab.) And I wrote this blog. Something's breaking loose.

Who knows what’s next?