Spiritual Balance

May 1, 2008 | 3 Comments

praise-god-photo-by-shirleypnz.jpgDon’t you love the feeling of being in balance? ‘Balance’ is truly one of those wonderful words that describe a magical, joyful life. If only we could manage to be balanced more of the time!

Then why aren’t we? We all know that the pace of modern life is faster than in the days when we baked our own bread, milked the cow and grew our own vegetables. How then do we make time for balancing activities like quiet time for spiritual reflection?

Of course the answer is simple (if only the execution was!) You assess your priorities and make time! You have to have a really big YES so you can say NO to some of the cluttering activities you may currently be enjoying!

You may like to do an exercise where you consider how much time and effort you spend in various aspects of your life:

  • health/fitness
  • personal learning/growth
  • family/friends
  • romantic partner
  • fun/recreation
  • surroundings
  • work/money
  • spiritual growth

All are important and valuable. Make up your own if these categories don’t suit you.

Richness in one can be used to spill over into others, eg. If you focus on the spiritual aspect of your life, you will spend less time and energy on less balanced activities like arguing or working too long each day.

If you have a particularly low participation rate in any aspect of your life, contemplate whether this is something you need to address. Most of us believe that all our time is taken up, so it means that something will need to decrease if something else is to increase. We all have the same 24 hours!

What puts each of us in balance is a personal thing, but listen to your body, mind, heart and soul and you will know when you’re there.

“If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet smelling herbs – that is your success. All nature is your congratulations”

– Henry David Thoreau

Love, peace and wisdom

Posted by annie | Filed Under May 08, Spiritual Space 

Your Breathing Space for May

May 1, 2008 | 8 Comments

Breathing Space May - by Amy Palko

“Happiness is not a matter of intensity
but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.”

-Thomas Merton

Image by Amy Palko

Download this image as desktop calendar wallpaper for your PC
(right click on the preferred size below)
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Posted by leah | Filed Under Breathing Space, May 08 

The ‘Sus’ in Sustainable

May 1, 2008 | 8 Comments

Praying for a Sustainable Future by Marc LehmannSociety holds much suspicion toward sustainability. In the back of many minds out there I’m fairly certain that life may not be quite as balanced with nature as we would all like it to be. This isn’t just about how society is impacting the balance in nature as a whole but also about our personal and our family’s impact. It is hard to live a happy and balanced life while a personal responsibility to mother earth goes unattended.

Balance is a symptom of how you live your life. There are work and home life balances. Body, mind and spirit balances. Create and consume balances. Balance will be a bi-product of how your commitment to these aspects are distributed in your life and in society. We will focus on the create and consume balance.

What are we suspicious of?

There is an underlying suspicion about businesses, consumers and the media around the topic of sustainability. Greenwashing is a term that has evolved from this thinking. It relates to the level of authenticity that exists in being green. Business is not alone in this area.

How sustainable is someone who composts 100kg of food waste each year but burns 20,000kg of carbon into the atmosphere through energy consumption? How sustainable is the person who feels good about installing a water tank whilst running a 2,000 watt air conditioning unit? We know in the back of our minds that this doesn’t balance. Guilt around our own actions and/or suspicion about others green credentials are present.

Removing the ‘Sus’ from sustainable. Getting real about sustainability.

In order to remove the ’sus’ from sustainable we really need a re-balancing in our lives where we consume less and create more for the environment. So installing a water tank is a great step in the right direction. However, lightening the scales on the consumption side is far more effective in re-balancing.

You can liken your life to a big elephant running through a jungle wildly wiping out a lot of small creatures with your big feet as you go and eating a lot of food. You can choose to tame that elephant in you, tread carefully on the earth and help the jungle and it’s little creatures survive. A balanced sustainable existence.

When it gets down to it, many of us are really committed to consuming

Most people living in industrialised countries live their life with a very strong commitment to consuming. Now that may seem like a strange choice of words but it is real. Your real commitments in life are displayed in your actions. Your consumption is witnessed and accounted for by the debit column of your bank account. At the level of society, it is the impact witnessed in the natural world.

The harsh reality is that if you want a large well furnished home, lots of nice clothes and world travel then you are committed to consumption. Don’t feel bad, consuming isn’t necessarily a bad thing, after all it is a requirement for survival. So the question we ask ourselves should be whether the level of consumption in our lives is too high?

If you can lead a life of buying, owning and consuming less then you are altering your create versus consume balance. The bi-product of which is a re-balancing to a more sustainable way of living.

Altering the Create versus Consume Balance

How sustainable your life is can be viewed as how much you consume versus your activities that give back to the earth and its creatures. What you create may be a business that is sustainable, it might be volunteer work cleaning up waterways or bushland, it may be in a scientific endeavour.

Weighing up what you create versus what you consume will help you observe your balance in this area. Let’s be realistic, it is a very tough balance to achieve and is not without effort.

The consumption fly wheel turns fast and with much momentum. It’s hard to slow and the nasty twist is that it is easy to accelerate with higher income facilitating that satiating feeling we get from fulfilling on our wants and desires.

Annie Leonard talks about consumption in the story of stuff in a wonderful and visual way.

It isn’t easy being green

Reducing consumption isn’t easy. Leah highlighted this last month in her post concerning the area of being green in technology. The world is geared to work against your efforts to reduce consumption. To add to our burden of change, consumption is a habit and could even be regarded as an addiction for some. Habits lead to an almost certain future for all but the strongest of minds. Tools can help break habits, one at a time. Radical changes are hard to achieve but small incremental changes in lifestyle over time can work well. WWF’s Futuremakers website is a classic example of a weblog, a social tool, being used to publicise new and better ways of living in a sustainable way.

To achieve a balanced life in the area of sustainability the aim must be put good environmental habits into practise whilst also reducing consumption.

This is easier said than done. Humans naturally don’t want to give up what they have. The creature comforts, those satiating feelings are very tough to say no to. So how do we break this almost certain future we are in? Setting yourself a new commitment or a new passion that drives you when you get up each day is the answer. Passion and commitment to creating a new life, a green change, a fresh approach has overwhelming power and excitement attached to it. The change isn’t always easy at the start but in the end it’s clearly worth it. Just ask all the tree-changers and sea-changers.

For some this passion or commitment is in activism, for others it may mean adopting a minimalist lifestyle with less possessions. The thing that will have this passion remain alive and well is being sure to choose a commitment that you love and can become who you are and what other people know you as.

Rewards are required, after all, the old addictions and habits of consumption have their rewards. So this is a battle.

Less Stuff Means Less Stress

The feeling of reduced responsibility is one such reward. Less stuff means less stress, less fear of loss, a simplification of life. By the nature of frame of reference, the things that you do have when you have less things will feel far more valuable. You can buy less but at a higher quality. A far more sustainable way of consuming.

Freedom from Eco-Guilt

We all peddle guilt. Some do it with others, but most of us do it to ourselves to some degree. By changing you lifestyle and re-balancing your consumption versus creation equation the guilt passes.

Less materialism ironically gives your life a richness

Seize the opportunity to have your existence on this earth occur more in your mind and spirit than in the stuff that you have. A liberation from materialism is one of the most powerful experiences a human can have.

So this is about a balance

Consumption brings much joy to life. It might not make you happy but it can help stop you being unhappy so there is a place for it in life. At its most basic level we have needs and to fulfill them we must consume. However the social habits of consumption we have created have gone far beyond the needs into the land of the wants and this is where the balance is lost, our life is taken away from our control and our very existence becomes so dependent on this earth and the stuff we make from it. Take ownership of your lifestyle and reposition yourself for a balanced life.

Posted by marc | Filed Under May 08, Sustainability Space 

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