XIII. Achieving Balance, 
                             Stability, and Security

You can create stability by calming down and taking a few moments to think before you act. Continuous action without pause is appropriate for some of the tasks you have to do and inappropriate if done all the time.

As you move through the day many of you engage in continuous motion, going from one thing to the next as each comes across your mind or catches your eye. If you wish to feel stable and balanced, stop often throughout the day and focus on what you are doing. Change your perspective. Sit quietly and experience yourself and your thoughts from a calmer level of awareness. This involves bringing your emotions into a state of peace and quiet. When you change your posi­tion and sit down, putting your hands at your sides, you change your breathing. When there is no motion in your body other than your thoughts, you can think in a different way.

You may begin to experience a greater connection to your higher self at this time. As you pause for a mo­ment in your daily activities, resting your body, quiet­ing your mind and calming your emotions, you will discover many new ways to look at what is happening in your life. When you are continuously in motion you think differently from when you sit down and get quiet. Quieting your physical body enables your spirit to come into your thoughts, particularly as you become peaceful and serene.

Balance and stability are achieved by checking with your higher self before taking action, especially on im­portant issues. That means giving yourself the opportu­nity to view things from many different angles before acting. It means allowing yourself to take whatever time is necessary to do a good job. Many things that take you off balance can be avoided by giving yourself enough time to think before you act. There is a saying, "Look before you leap." You do not need to stop before every action you take, but you can make your life much easier and more joyful if you stop and think about something important before you take action. It may be the purchasing of a new car or the signing of a contract. All changes can bring balance and peace when viewed with careful thought. If you are in continuous motion, you can end up making decisions and taking actions that lead to crisis and problems.

If you have a decision to make about something you consider important, don't rush into it. As you allow yourself time to think about it, you live out many prob­able futures in your mind, and you begin to see the consequences of certain actions. One of the gifts of your world is that it is a place of action and reaction. Whenever you take an action you set ripples into mo­tion, like the ripples on a pond when you throw in a stone. Every action affects probable futures and makes changes in your life path. The more you can anticipate what things will be affected by your action and take action from that perspective of greater wisdom, the more you will set up joy and balance in your future.

Your attitude determines how
you experience the world.

It is the way you react to certain things. An attitude that creates joy is one in which you interpret what hap­pens to you through the filter of joy. Your attitude and outlook act like a filter. When you have a positive, opti­mistic outlook, it filters out the negative and denser experiences.

Your attitude is the words you use when you talk to yourself. Perhaps you have just succeeded in achieving a goal you have wanted to accomplish. A joyful attitude says, "Congratulations, job well done." If your joyful self speaks words of praise it helps you bring more of the same to yourself. Attitudes are magnetic and every moment you spend in joy magnetizes another moment of joy. Joyful, light emotions are always more powerful in their ability to create than negative emotions.

Stability comes from an attitude of balance. When things happen to you, your response to them creates your inner balance. If a friend is having problems and you respond by feeling angry or sad, you have moved away from your own center and allowed your friend's energy to affect you.

As you begin to create more balance and stability in your life, you will be able to observe when you are af­fected by other people's problems. It is most noticeable when those problems have no impact on your life, do not affect you directly, and yet you are still depressed or upset. Observe those situations in which your balance is disturbed by another's lack of balance. The next step is to tell yourself that you can keep your balance, that you are not dependent upon others responding in a balanced way for you to remain centered and balanced.

Many of you have allowed yourselves to respond in an unstable or insecure way when someone around you is acting that way. When someone is speaking to you about something you did wrong, or accusing you of something, instead of feeling angry you can choose to keep your sense of balance even though the other per­son is not able to do so. As his energy comes into you and you begin to feel it unbalancing you, see that you are resonating with that unbalanced part in him. To stop responding in this way, send him love. As you do so you reassert your own balance and connect with your higher self.

Balance is finding the midway point between oppo­sites. You are always involved in maintaining balance, both literally in the mechanism of the inner ear and symbolically through the juggling of all the things in your life. Whatever you picture balance to be, it will be.

You create balance by visualizing balance,
and by being clear that those pictures
of balance are what you want.

Some of you define balance as boring, for you thrive on things being slightly out of balance, creating drama and intense emotions. You have seen people whose lives are in constant upset, who go from one crisis to another. What they picture as balance is moving back and forth between extremes.

To some the thought of balance and stability means a void of emotions, something that can seem frightening. As you reach higher planes of reality, your emotions become so calm they are like the still lake that reflects back every cloud and tree. Many people, however, fear having no feelings, and they will create anything to get attention rather than have no attention paid them at all. Often people create upset and problems all around them because they are afraid that if everything were calm no one would pay attention to them. They would rather have negative attention than no attention at all.

Some of you depend on intense emotions to feel alive. Yet intense, dramatic emotions always take you away from your center. Some of you, when you are feel­ing very peaceful, having little emotion, think you are sad or depressed. Whenever you get silent within, do you begin to think that something is wrong? Are you addicted to strong, intense emotions? Do you feel good when things are peaceful and calm or do you begin to worry about what will go wrong next? It takes patience to get used to being calm. Although you might think it would be easy, it is harder for most people to adapt to a peaceful environment than to a disruptive one. If the environment is too peaceful, many will begin to create turbulence because it is what they are used to.

People need different things to maintain their bal­ance. Some people need a steady job, some require large blocks of time off, and others need much activity and constant variety. Go within for a moment and pic­ture a time in your life when you felt stable and bal­anced. If you cannot think of a time, think of a symbol to represent the balance you would like in your life. Now picture yourself feeling balanced in the future. Having a symbol to represent something is a very pow­erful way to draw it to you. Symbols work on a deeper level of consciousness than words and bypass belief systems.

Balance is about moderation and not extremes. Main­taining balance in your life means doing the right amount of each thing. Some of you think that things would be better if you only had more time off. Yet, when people retire they find that there is such a thing as too much time off. There is a balance between work and play, sleep and wakefulness, time together and time apart that will create the most peace and joy for you. It is not eliminating opposites that brings balance. It is doing things in moderation, stopping when the energy is gone and riding the waves as they come in. It means pacing yourself in a steady, even way.

Some of you keep going long after the energy to do something has left. Do those things that bring aliveness to you. There is a proper mix of focus and daydream­ing, intellect and intuition, sitting and movement which brings joy. Most of you need variety and all of you need to keep growing. Balance is finding the proper mix of activities that support your aliveness and allow you to most joyfully accomplish your purpose.

Some people feel balanced when they feel peaceful, others feel balanced when they create excitement, when things are moving rapidly in their lives and they are busy juggling many things. Some picture balance as things going well and under control. You are constantly

creating the degree of balance you will have in the fu­ture by the pictures you have of yourself in the future.

True security exists
when all needs can be met
by the self.

Most of you think that to have security you must find something or somebody in the outer world who will give you something that will make you feel secure. No one can give you anything before you give it to your­self. If you cannot give it to yourself then no one can give it to you either. This means that anything you are seeking right now to feel secure—such as money, a boyfriend or girlfriend, marriage, a home—none of those will fulfil that need until you have given yourself inner security.

Some of the things people think they need to feel secure are acknowledgement and recognition, praise, love, fame and fortune. Often love is demanded from others in a very specific way—so many phone calls a week, so many hugs, so many times the other person says "I love you." Security needs can also include the need to feel the world is safe, to feel that you are spe­cial, to feel a part of something. Many of you look to others to give this to you, and you find constant disap­pointment. You can satisfy your security needs yourself—you can love yourself, believe that the world is safe, acknowledge and recognize your accomplish­ments. Ultimately, only the self can fulfil these needs.

Many of you, in your search for a higher purpose, select other people and their lives as your purpose. You want to get wrapped up in their lives, draw them dose to you, have them listen to your every word, cater to your slightest whim, and be swept off your feet, as they say. The desire to become entwined in another person's life, being more involved in their future than yours, can cover up the need to fulfil your own higher purpose. When you seek to feel secure by making another per­son your project before you have made your own growth a priority, you will find constant disappoint­ment in the outcome. At the very least you will find that the need for self-growth cannot be met by making another's growth your life's work.

Security comes from having something in your life that is bigger than yourself, something you are reaching for, something that attracts and pulls and calls to you. It makes the petty hurts and insignificant events small by comparison. And yet, many of you seek that bigger thing in each other, rather than in your own growth.

To feel secure you need to feel
you are growing, expanding, and
enlarging the scope of your world.

You might think you will feel more secure by keeping things unchanged, maintaining the status quo. Yet, se­curity only comes from taking a risk, opening up, and discovering more of who you are. Some people have discovered when they try to keep their world safe by not taking risks they end up even more scared and inse­cure. Fear is always lessened when you face it. You may have noticed when you did something new you felt braver and stronger in other areas also.

Balance is handling the amount of things you have to deal with every day in a way that is peaceful and healthy to you, and in a way that contributes to your growth and higher good. It keeps the things you are doing stimulating, helping you to wake up in the morn­ing feeling that life is worthwhile. Decide that you will become a radiating source of stability and balance for those around you. Give yourself the things you require for joy and be willing to accept a peaceful universe when it comes.

ACHIEVING BALANCE, STABILITY, AND SECURITY

PLAYSHEET

1. Think of an important issue in your life right now. It may be a large purchase, changing jobs, ending a relationship. Record it here.

2. Sit quietly and relax your body. Let your deep inner feelings surface. Spend at least five minutes think­ing about this issue. Ask for guidance from your higher self and the higher forces of the universe. Record any new thoughts that come up here.

3. Stay in this quiet, relaxed state. Think about what you could do right now to bring more balance and stability into your life. Record your ideas here.

4. Create a symbol for balance and stability in your mind or draw it below. Imagine that it is growing and expanding and becoming more powerful.