As we came through the recent equinox, where day and night are the same…it got me thinking about balance.  In ESP we talk about the wagon wheel of life…how all 4 aspects of our lives – physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual need to have an equal listening to.  That is, if we are focussing too much on one aspect to the detriment of the other 3, then our wheel is not in balance and will not turn as smoothly. It would be like being flung around the rim, not centred at the axis of the wheel.  Yesterday a family member who drives an audi demonstrated the alarm that goes off in his car when one wheel is under-inflated.  His car told me that there was a wheel that was out of balance and needed attention.  If only we had a similar internal system.

I know, for instance, that if I spend less time on my physical than perhaps I could then I feel out of balance because of it.  My body has a way of letting me know about this – with aches and pains, more weight, feeling tired or getting sick.

Intellectually I can get an alarm bell going off if I am feeling bored.  For me, intellectual pursuits are linked with creativity.  If I am not firing my creativity synapses, I will feel bored and lethargic.  Stimulation of the intellect is called for – reading, writing, painting, music, singing. Particularly singing for me!

Emotionally I get an alarm if I am going down the path of staying back at the river.  There is an old story – not sure of it origins – about a monk and his apprentice walking by a river.  There is a woman at the river needing to cross.  Their vows are such that they are forbidden to touch women.  The woman begs for help to cross the river and the monk carries her across.  About an hour later, the apprentice is very troubled and remarks to the monk that he should not have helped that woman that it went against their vows.  The Monk said: “I left the woman back at the river, have you?”  I am so often reminded that if I am carrying extra emotional burdens then there’s some leaving at the river I need to do.

Spiritually for me, I notice when I am feeling stressed about time, energy, money or direction, I am not paying enough attention to my inner world and some ‘me’ time is needed.  I love the saying that if you don’t feel like you have enough time to meditate for 20 minutes a day you need to do an hour!  If time, energy, money or direction feels like an issue, I commit to meditating more.

It’s all about balance.  How are you travelling?  How is your wheel feeling? Are you hanging on for grim death round the edges or are you centred in the axis, stable and solid with the whole of yourself?

I chose to use poison in the garden today.  To get at that rotten grass that has roots that go all the way to China and cuts through garden gloves if you try to pull it out.  I thought I would blast it – the technology was there right in my shed.  So blast it I did…and then I got to feeling guilty and thinking. 

So what of my inner weeds.  Should I blast them, or pull them out and risk getting hurt.  Should I let them grow and overtake me and my vitality; let them hold me back, tie me down.    Most often there is the temptation to lock the inner weeds away in the basement and throw away the key.  But that’s the thing with weeds, they thrive in the dark and they have a sneaky way of coming to the surface when you least expect it.  From their dark home they go on influencing…and growing.

I decided the metaphorical poison I use for my inner weeds is presencing, by that I mean coming right into the present moment and seeing what’s really there. The inner weeds took root sometime in the past.  Somewhere in the past I started to believe things like “I am not good enough” or “It is all my fault” and those weeds took hold and I fed them with my belief.  They thrive on belief you know. 

The key is composting .  From the present moment I can make a choice to compost those weeds.  Bringing them out into the light helps first.  Naming them and owning them and making a choice to add them to the compost so they “fertilise the future” as my friend Amanda Fleming would say.  This is the technology in our tool shed. Like Tinkerbell – we need to believe in fairies to make them real.  It takes perseverance, honesty and willingness and often this can feel like hard work. It was a powerful realisation – the garden will be pleased.  I’ve decided to put the work in rather than use poison the next time.