Balance

     What is reasonable, appropriate, balanced, is context dependent. When a wildfire is closing in on their home, people should rush to gather family, pets, their most precious belongings, and escape as quickly as possible. However, a family going on vacation behaving as if a wildfire were closing in would clearly be unreasonable, inappropriate, unbalanced.

    For a variety of reasons, many have a distortedly pessimistic perception of their current & future context.
    Past traumas & ongoing traumas: racism, bullying, poverty, etc, lead to perceiving mainly danger, to great difficulty trusting anyone / anything, and being trapped in survival mode.
    News media almost exclusively focus on tragedy: murders, mass shootings, wars, fires, landslides, losses & misery of every kind. "Human interest stories" have devolved to this. The tremendous amount of kindness, good will, forgiveness, generosity & collaboration just to keep our busy transportation systems, factories, health-care systems & businesses running smoothly never seem to be newsworthy.
    Advertising firms earn billions convincing us that our only chance for happiness is through buying advertised products & services.
    Many unwittingly turn legitimate science into a fundamentalist religion. Secular materialist dogma preaches that science can & very soon will know EVERYTHING, & be able to control EVERYTHING. They furthermore assume that everything, including human beings, are nothing more than machines, arisen by chance, meaningless, and will inevitably disintegrate, end of story.

     A leading PTSD expert wrote: “If you feel safe & loved, your brain (is) specialized in exploration, play, & cooperation; if you are frightened & unwanted, it (is) specialized in managing feelings of fear & abandonment." Bessel Van Der Kolk. “The Body Keeps the Score. Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” Penguin Books, 2015.  

    “William Blake said, ‘As a man is, so he sees.’ ... the way a person sees or understands him or herself deeply conditions the ways he or she sees & understands objects, others & the world.” Rupert Spira

     These potent influences (above) in which we are SATURATED have produced our profoundly unhealthy, unsustainable, toxic, left-hemisphere-dominant culture. Historically, whenever cultures became left-hemisphere-dominant, they quickly collapsed.
    Whenever the right hemisphere is dominant, cultures thrive and the left hemisphere serves an important but limited, supportive role. Iain McGilchrist spent 30 years researching, writing & speaking about hemispheric differences. From one of his many SUPERB interviews: Iain McGilchrist: "Wisdom, Nature and the Brain" - The Great Simplification #85 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dogVQDydRGQ 

    "... the most important parts of religious experience & practice, the consensus is, seem to be underwritten by the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere is sort of necessary for systematizing it and turning it into a durable phenomenon such as Christianity or whatever it may be, Islam. But in doing so, it often over legalizes, makes over-certain, over-fixed what should be less certain, more fluid, more awe-inspiring, in fact.

    ‘Most human institutions, by the purely technical & professional manner in which they come to be administered, end by being obstacles to the very purposes which their founders had in view.’ William James

    I think we’ve lost the capacity for three very important things: a sense of awe or wonder; a sense of our own humility, or the humility we should have; and compassion. And I think these are the things that most religions that are real religions, or spiritual traditions that are true spiritual traditions, have in common, that they induce and rekindle in us a sense of wonder. They make us feel appropriately humble about what we can do & what we can know, and they increase our sense of oneness with and compassion towards the rest of the created world.
    Now I think that is what’s going wrong. I think we’ve completely failed to understand that religion is not about a matter of propositional belief, but dispositional belief. Belief is a matter of a disposition of your consciousness towards the world in a certain way. It’s not about propositions or six impossible things that you have to believe before breakfast. That’s not what religion’s about.
    And what I want to do in my work is take people from a standpoint where they will almost certainly be part of the culture that believes that only somebody rather simple or uneducated would think that there was a divine realm, to a position where they will see that only somebody who’s rather simple or uneducated would just want to rule that out. I’m not saying would become suddenly religious, but I think it’s extremely clear that people who either are fundamentalist religious or fundamentalist atheists are on the wrong track, and that they have more in common with one another than they have with true believing people. In any case, I just think that business of the ever-evolving, deeper relationship, a loving relationship with the world in all its manifestations, is the secret of human wellbeing & happiness.
    And you say that there is now a different religion, that of economic growth and so on. … I’m sure you’re broadly right, and it reminds me of something that GK Chesterton said, that ‘When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing. They believe in anything.’ And that ‘anything’ for them is their own power, to become more & more rich, powerful, wealthy. And that leaves out of the count just about everything that sustains human happiness. And in the seeking for it, they will never find happiness. As a psychiatrist, I can tell you that the most successful people, the richest people, the most powerful people are not the world’s happiest people.”
    Interviewer, Nate Hagens: “As a former high-net-worth stockbroker on Wall Street, I totally concur with that assessment.”
    Iain McGilchrist: "Wisdom, Nature and the Brain" - The Great Simplification #85 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dogVQDydRGQ

     "All shall be well,
      and all shall be well,
      and all manner of things shall be well." Julian of Norwich (1342 – 1416) English Christian mystic

      “So long as one is merely on the surface of things, they are always imperfect, unsatisfactory, incomplete. Penetrate into the substance and everything is perfect, complete, whole.” Philip Kapleau. “The Zen of Living and Dying. A Practical and Spiritual Guide.” Shambhala, 1998. 

       "To be enlightened is to be intimate with all things." Zen Master Dogen 

      "I was born
       when all I once feared
       I could love.” Rabia Basri 

     "Once we are willing to be directly intimate with our life as it arises, joy emerges out of the simplest of life experiences." Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara

     "... everything yearns to be met. Everything yearns to resolve itself in love – that love being the open space of acceptance, of allowing, of staying resolutely present, and unconditionally open to every nuance of your inner experience." Amoda Maa. "Surfing the Heart of Darkness: Suffering as a Doorway to Liberation." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXlUsBYbv0w

      During meditation “you are not escaping the world; you are getting ready to fully embrace it.” Christine Skarda 

 

 All that's obviously alive & seemingly inanimate, awaits our recognition & love, for we are ONE

"Acadia Heat Plant" by Arnaud Beghin harvestgallery.ca