Searching for Imbalance

March 25, 2010

        Imagine in your mind a seesaw.  A teeter-totter to some.  Or, if you will, image a scales with two sides with little metal bowls hanging from chains opposite each other.  Whether the image in your mind is a seesaw or a scales is only important to the extent that you can visualize the concept of balance between two sides.  Got it? 

        Now examine your balance.  Look closely at the image in your mind.  Look closely at each part of it.  The seesaw has a fulcrum right in the middle of a long, flat board.  Maybe it’s painted red or yellow like the ones in the schoolyard when you were a kid or in the park down the street.  You are not on the seesaw and it is empty in your mind.  It is as if it is frozen and motionless when you walk up and see it. 

        If your image is a scales, look at it closely as well.  Examine it very closely.  See every details of its parts, from the base, which holds the main vertical support column or stem, which supports the horizontal branches extending outward.  Do you see the chains on the end of the branches that hold the bowls?  Step back and take a look.  Imagine that you have just walked into a room and you see the scales frozen, like the seesaw, and motionless.  Got it?  Take your time.  This is important.  The image in your mind forms the basis of your life.

        Is the seesaw or is the scales in perfect balance or not?  Is one side higher than the other and consequently, and inherently, the other side lower than the other?  Or are the sides perfectly aligned at the same height?  I mean “perfectly”; not even the tiniest bit asymmetrical.

        What you see is the balance of your life.  You may see imbalance if one side is higher or lower than the other, but it is balance nonetheless.  Balance may not, to you, be that fixed position where everything is equal.  Think about and consider that for a moment.  It may not be your ideal of “perfect” balance, but it is balance.  A tightrope walker across Niagara Falls is balanced, although he sways and shifts his weight all the way across.  Unless he falls off the cable suspended between the sides, he is in some sort of balance.  Gravity does that.  In a way it is like balanced imbalance.  Asymmetrical symmetry.  Both can be good but it depends upon how you perceive it and then how you exist with it.  Imbalance, as long as it is balanced, can actually be a good thing, like a sprinter who leans forward down the track just so far that it helps propel him or her faster.      

        Now, try to imagine that the law of gravity does not apply to your balance in the way your life has demonstrated that it applies.  Imagine that the law of gravity is reversed.  The more weight you place on one side of your seesaw, the higher it rises.  The less weight you place on it, or the more weight your remove from one side, causes that side to go down.  Reverse gravity.  Not “no” gravity like in outer space.  Reverse gravity where everything is the opposite of what is true on Earth.  In other words, the apple that bonked Sir Isaac Newton on the head and caused him to finalize his documentation of the earthly phenomenon of gravity, would detach from the apple tree and fly upward into the sky.  Got it?

        Your life is a continuous sequence of balances.  How you perceive each side of your scales determines which side dominates your perspective, attitude and the balance itself.  Your scales is one weighted or weightless with your emotions, mentality and spirituality.  Your scales is a scales that works in reverse where either joy or sorrow are lifted up on the balance with the preponderance of weight rather than weighed down.  The life you lead and how you react, or not, to the things you encounter determines your balance or imbalance.  Your perspective on the imbalance or balance determines the state of your being.  Your life is your search for imbalance.