Spiritual Balance

The definition of balance in Chamber’s 20th Century dictionary is: “Harmony among the parts of anything.” I propose to examine spiritual balance in the light of this definition. Spiritual of course means “of the spirit” so we need first to define what we mean by “the spirit”. To a Spiritualist, the spirit, in human terms, is the force that energises and gives life to the physical body. The force without which, we could not “live, move and have our being”. It is the difference between you and me here and now and our physical bodies or corpses after we have passed to the spirit or died; it is the difference between a tree that has lost all its leaves because it is autumn and one that has died. Both trees appear identical until spring arrives, after which the living tree puts forth buds, blossom and leaves, whereas the dead tree remains as it was in autumn.

It follows from this therefore, that the physical body and the spirit are intimately linked. Therefore when we are examining the question of spiritual balance, we cannot consider the spirit in isolation but must include the physical body also. This is vital in my opinion because unless there is harmony between spirit and physical body, there can only be partial spiritual balance. It is an unfortunate fact that far too many people treat the two separately, which leads to much misunderstanding and many misguided actions. For instance, some people find it completely incomprehensible to live a normal physical life and be a spiritual person simultaneously. These are the people who may devote their lives to prayer and meditation, who scourge the flesh in order to make themselves more spiritual and who believe sincerely that the contemplative life is the only way to understand the power of the spirit whilst on Earth.

I believe that, wonderful though it is that these people are willing to sacrifice the enjoyment of a normal physical life in order to pray for the rest of us, they are quite innocently, creating a severe imbalance between their spirit and their physical body. It is my belief that we are born into the Earth in order that we may grow stronger spiritually by learning to cope with the stresses and strains that are inherent in the possession of a physical body, the spirit cannot be as free as it was before and cannot fully express itself. It is similar to the effect on the mill stream of the mill race. Because the water is squeezed into the narrow channel of the mill race, its kinetic energy is vastly increased and it moves with greater force and greater rapidity. I believe the aim of physical life is to have a similar effect upon our spiritual self.

Similarly, those of us who concentrate all of our energy on the physical enjoyment of life on Earth, who live a sybaritic life devoted to luxury and ignore completely the needs of their spirit, also create a strong imbalance between body and spirit. Even those of us unable to devote ourselves to luxury but who nevertheless only think about everything and/or act according to the dictates of their physical needs, are consequently unbalanced too. To achieve balance we need to devote an equal amount of time and energy to the needs of the spirit and the needs of the physical body, for they are integral parts of our being. To attempt any distinction between the two is to invite problems.

In other words, we need to live our life on Earth in the full knowledge that we are not what we seem when we look into a mirror. We are a great deal more. In order to keep our physical body healthy we need to eat sensibly and take regular exercise. In order to keep our spirit healthy, we need to feed and exercise it properly too. Whilst it is true that the spirit comes into its own while the physical body sleeps, I do not think that is sufficient to create the right spiritual balance. So what must we do?

As the spirit is the ‘higher self’ its sustenance should consist of making a big effort to occasionally read and listen to people who have serious things to say about life and their philosophy of life. Please do not think this means we should be serious all the time and become deadly dull. No, laughter and joy are part of our spiritual self and we should never deny ourselves those. We should be as broad as possible in our ‘eating’ in this respect and not restrict ourselves to the views of a single individual or one group of individuals. We can then, subject what we have learned, to the judgement of our higher self and be guided what to accept and what to reject.

As to how to exercise the spirit, then meditation for short periods each day is part of the answer. In meditation we learn to be still and in that stillness we discover the truth about our inner self. As the Psalmist said, “Be still and know that I am God.” In other words, the way to find God is from within not by looking outside. We should recognise that feelings are a very important aspect of our awareness and not be afraid to feel, as so many unfortunately are. Once we learn to feel wholeheartedly, then that “feel good feeling” will be a regular feature, even though occasionally, there will be sadness and disappointment. The other part of the answer is to be as tolerant as we can, whilst refraining from confusing tolerance with licence and also go out of our way to help others whenever we are able. "Service is the coin of the spirit," said Silver Birch, that great teacher from the world of spirit, and how right he is.