Duality of Balance

Toj – The essence of Toj is the duality of balance. It is a very yin/yang day that makes us aware of light and dark, hot and cold, borrowing and paying back, hard work and laziness, selfless acts and selfish acts. On this day, pay attention to how there is no shadow without light, no men without women, no day without night.

“Balance”, the always elusive sometimes maddening and occasionally evil word. What is it? How do I find it? Is my balance the same as everyone else or do we have our own individual pulleys? Weights? Scales? I’m Libra, the sign of the scales, balance – but all it has meant for me is to continuously search it out and not know it when I find it.

I seem so compulsive no matter what I do. Constantly working or doing nothing – when I am bad, I am very bad. But maybe balance isn’t a daily thing? Maybe it’s a weekly, monthly, yearly or a decade achievement? Who knows? What I do know is that I feel like I am on a continuous gopher hunt. One gopher pops his head out, I run over stuff it back into the hole only to find another gopher had popped out his head, run over stuff it back in the hole, another gopher, another hole - you get the idea. Really, I am never going to get it right, get it perfect, climb the spiritual ladder fast enough.

My list grows almost by the day. Make a health drink, don't forget the lemon water with added nutrients throughout the day, make lunch, schedule students, clean the house, return, emails, phone calls, pray, cook, go to the grocery store, balance the checkbook, meditate, write in the mornings, exercise, study, have time for my husband, my dog, take walks - most of it by instruction for me to be a better person. But honestly I think it's just causing me to be exhausted.

The cottage has helped. I want to write, want to stay home, do homey things – no longer driven to be somewhere other than where I am or be doing something other than this. I am in the middle, the center of my life, the Chi, the Tao – whatever. Enjoying the details. Is that balance?
Paying attention to the details?

The ice is beginning to form again – I feel a bit sorry for the plants, beginning to peak out – they too want spring. Those groundhogs better not see shadows in the beginning of March. Damn Groundhogs - probably really good friends with the gophers! Too much dark, too much cold, too much snow – too dreary, too hard, too bitter, too harsh. We need the sun. Lots of it. But the sun lies behind the shadows of the clouds, the temperatures, warm then cool, the plants grow then die - ah, I get it, the duality of balance.
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This book followed by another “Beyond 2012”. The book is about connecting to nature – the heart of mother earth. Remembering the balance between you and her. There's that word again. He goes on to say that we need to connect our hearts with the heart of the earth. In that is our salvation. I have always found that if you are depressed a good remedy is to put your hands in dirt. I'm not the only one to think this. I remember hearing a story about a small town in Mexico. When a villager went crazy his/her neighbors would would tie them to a tree until they stopped being crazy. Can you see it now? Riding down the street, your neighbors tied to trees? What I suspect is that has something to do with being connected to the roots that run deep into the ground. The magnetics of nature, which we are so depended upon. Oh, I see, a little more of that balance. Balancing the demands of trying to live a life with the act of being rooted to the earth......hmmmmm.

In trying to keep balance today, I need to keep the blogging short and get back to all of these super important things that are supposed to make me a better person. But I'm pretty sure, if I just laid down on the couch and read a book, the world would be a no worse place for it and I too would be just a little more balanced.