Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 228
1996 Edition
February 12, 1975

Greetings, my very dearest friends. Blessings for every one of you. With great joy I again dip temporarily into your world and show you another helpful step, if you choose to make it so. This lecture is about balance. Balance is what keeps the universe intact. If there were no balance, no balancing consciousness, no balancing law, everything would disintegrate. All the natural laws that you know, and those you may call “supernatural” because they exist on another level of reality and you do not know them, are laws of balance. They come from balance and lead to balance. Balance is not a cold, mechanical, coincidental factor, but the expression of supreme intelligence and purpose.

Every aspect of the law of balance is meaningful and has its own consciousness. It is possible to find the law of balance in the physical laws, but only to a degree, because you cannot perceive their connection with levels of reality that you are not aware of. The physical laws could not exist without this connection. Neither could your bodily manifestation exist without the life you have on other levels of reality. This applies to everything, not just to entities, but to universal laws as well.

All the planetary systems are held together by these meaningful laws. If they were not, they would break apart, the planets would crash into one another and the whole system would disintegrate. The same holds true for the microcosm of the human body. The human body is held together by a supreme law of balance of which you human beings as yet know nothing. If this law did not prevail, all your cells and particles would disintegrate; your physical structure could not hold together.

All laws of physics, chemistry, biology — of every conceivable science in your physical reality — are governed by the great law of balance. Some of these laws are obvious to your scientists. Others are more intricate and remain unrevealed. Higher mathematics beyond your level of reality contains the key to these laws. Only a few enlightened human beings have sensed the relationship between mathematics and the key to the universe, the key to creation.

Balance exists on all levels. On the physical level, balance is order and creates order. Imbalance is disorder, but it creates more disorder only temporarily and to a degree because temporary disorder is a step toward an order of a much higher organization.

On the emotional level balance means harmony — the harmony of feelings. It leads to more harmony. Imbalance, of course, means disharmony, negative feelings. Disharmony must eventually lead to a greater harmony of a higher order. On the mental level, balance means sanity and must lead to more balance and more sanity. Imbalance, on the mental level, means insanity, which again can be only temporary, leading eventually toward the greater sanity of a higher organization. The greatness of divine law is that disintegration is simply a step toward integration. Everything leads inexorably to integration, order, harmony, light, balance, love, intelligence and health.

The law of balance is therefore always integrating. Balance means “the right measure.” Consider any manifestation in the world of matter that you experience through your bodily senses. On this level of consciousness, divine manifestations appear as opposites, but as I so often mention, are not so in reality. Take for example warmth and cold. In the right measure they are both indispensable for harmonious living. Each has its own purpose, its own function, its own meaning in the greater scheme of things. Both symbolize creative forces and currents indispensable to physical growth and sustenance of life. I am not speaking here of fixed temperatures, for there is no norm applicable to all. What is warm or cold may vary greatly in different cultures and locations where differently organized human beings live. The tropical rain may be as cold as required to balance out the stifling heat of the climate. The mild arctic sunshine may provide the warmth and balance just sufficient to sustain life.

In imbalance, pleasurable warmth turns into unbearable heat and purifying cold becomes frozen iciness. Both can kill. The same goes for imbalance and exaggeration in every other physical manifestation or, for that matter, emotional or mental manifestations.

Let us remain for the moment on the physical level. Take light and darkness. The balance between them creates a beautiful harmony and provides humanity with exactly what it needs. But in the dualistic misconception they appear as opposites. Although they are a manifestation of the dualistic state of consciousness, they both form a unitive whole, fulfilling a purpose. In the darkness of night you rest, in the brightness of daylight you become active. This is a symbolic manifestation of the inner level where you need a balance between activity and rest. When either goes out of balance and becomes overemphasized or underemphasized, chaos and temporary disintegration result.

The balancing factor reveals the richness, the beauty, the wisdom and the love of the Creator. Each living entity contains within itself the intuitive ability to discover the balance that holds everything together. As the creative light moves onward in the evolutionary urge to fill the void, consciousness and energy particles lose themselves and seem to separate themselves from the whole. In the attempt to penetrate and fill the void, the temporary, illusory separation fulfills its task, spiritualizing the void and bringing light into it. Gradually, the ever-onward movement fills in the gaps of consciousness, and the original oneness is eventually reestablished.

The whole sea of divinity is spreading on and on. In this process, the forerunners separate. As the movement continues they reunite, filling the void more and more. In saying this, I must use such terms as “later” and “after.” These are of course illusory, for the whole concept of time is illusory anyway. But to squeeze these ideas into your human understanding, where your consciousness is focused at the moment, I have to speak in terms of time. Eventually, these particles reunite with the forward-moving divine substance, discovering their original connectedness with the whole. The temporary, illusory disconnection must also create a temporary, illusory imbalance, leading to chaos and disintegration. But because the whole movement has an all-encompassing meaning and purpose, the chaos and disintegration are only temporary. The imbalance that the onward movement of the light causes as it penetrates the void creates the illusion of separateness. In separateness itself there must also be imbalance. But such imbalance is simply a step toward a greater balance.

It is very important for you to understand this, my friends. But this cannot be done merely on the intellectual level. You are all capable of opening an inner channel, an intuitive channel, and connecting with what I am saying here. Perhaps you can best do this when you feel the areas in you that are out of balance.

The purification process of this path is, of course, an expedient way of reestablishing balance. You find the measure intuitively. Look for an intuitive measure of how to balance certain expressions: how and when to be outgoing and to what extent; when to hold yourself together and gather your forces; when to be active and when to be receptive and quiet. You all grope in these and many other areas to find the equilibrium where you will know spontaneously when to express yourself in one way and when in another, when to assert yourself and when to be flexible and give in.

Human beings have always sought refuge in hard and fast rules that can be accepted without thinking and without feeling into the deepest processes of their inner light. These are illusory shortcuts meant to avoid finding the spontaneous functioning of your Godself, which knows your right measure in any given situation. You must consciously desire this understanding without directly forcing it, knowing that it is a possibility that can be realized.

If you seek the right directive merely with the outer mind you will tend to lean on rules, on pat truisms that may be valid as far as they go, but may not be applicable to every situation. But even if they are, if they come from the outer level they are stilted. When you try to establish the longed-for balance with the surface personality, the result will be a flat, unsatisfying gesture rather than a meaningful action stemming from the divine center.

A truly satisfying and fulfilling inner balance comes only through the arduous path of self-purification. Then it comes as a gratuitous byproduct. It seems to happen to you from within, just as love seems to happen to you from within. Yes, you must be willing to love, to be in truth and in balance. Nevertheless you cannot will them directly. They manifest when the inner key unlocks your wisdom as a result of effort and sincerity in being in truth with yourself.

Balance can never be forced from outside. Neither can love or wisdom or enlightenment or peace. Balance is a divine and spontaneous manifestation. Balance is sanity. Within every particle of your being — the physical as well as the energy body — you need balance to be healthy. Illness of any kind is the result of imbalance. The healthy body keeps itself balanced.

The consciousness that perpetuates and nurtures the healthy body will make sure that you lead a balanced life, partly through intelligence, partly through intuition, and certainly always through a positive will. True, deep, meaningful personal balance cannot be measured with figures and equations of the mathematics you know. It is not a fifty-fifty proposition.

Take for example the balance between rest and wakefulness. The proper personal balance may vary from individual to individual, but nobody needs equal hours of rest and wakefulness. From an outer point of view balance is lacking when you sleep eight hours and are active sixteen hours. Yet in terms of inner balance this may be exactly the right measurement for you. And so it is in many cases. My point is that outer measurements do not necessarily express the inner measure of right balance.

This principle becomes more apparent when we try to apply it to inner attitudes. It would be as completely absurd to make rules about how much time everybody should spend being assertive or in a state of being as to claim that the spiritual person must never be aggressive or that the strong person must never be receptive and soft. The balancing measurement is beyond your intellectual calculations. You must feel it; you must look for it within.

The inner balance comes from a different mathematics, a measurement that comes from wisdom on a level that is as yet inaccessible to your conscious perception. But it manifests indirectly. In the apparent unevenness of the inner reality lies the real balance. There you will discover a completely different way of seeing what is even and what is uneven. In other words, the balance of the inner reality is not stilted or mechanical. There is a meaning behind it. Finding your way into this inner rhythm of life is the purpose of a path that leads inward.

The person who is completely disconnected from the inner dimension needs to delegate all rhythm, all balance, all measurements to the outer mind. This often becomes meaningless, stilted and self-defeating. It breaks the real balance. The measurements of the outer mind are contrary to the true proportions. But as you find your inner being, with its vibrant intelligence and wisdom that truly surpasses the outer mind, you experience the incredible beauty of being held together and carried by a balancing system of such grandeur, of such purpose, that it can never be expressed in words. You learn to trust this, you learn to go with it. You learn to deliberately consult the balancing system which is always available to those who seek it, who make themselves open to it, who make their outer being compatible with it through an attitude of wakefulness.

As you listen to the rhythmic balancing factors, you will discern that your own inner system is an integral part of a whole so finely woven together that it defies human understanding. It is of a grandeur that cannot yet be encompassed by your mind. But you can indeed sense it if you make yourself part of it. That always means giving up the temptation of staying in the temporary smaller order of your little mind and trusting that you will find the larger order of your greater mind.

This new consciousness can sustain you when things go wrong on your outer level of existence, when everything in you rebels against the disharmony and the imbalance that have been temporarily created by factors as yet unknown to your conscious mind. Your instinct is to battle against disorder and imbalance. Yet it is precisely this disorder and imbalance that affords you the opportunity to give up the outer battle, the outer insistence, and to go into an inner order and balance. Make room for it, have faith in it, and wait for it to manifest.

What I have said to you here is very important, my friends. Now the new Christ consciousness is breaking through into human consciousness on an inner level of reality. It must therefore destroy the old order — the old balance system and its obsolete measurements — as it also destroys old, outworn attitudes, feelings, values and concepts. The destruction can happen in the very mundane “little” matters of your life. But only when you have the willingness and openness to discover the inner meaning of the temporary disorder will you find the new order. Only when you consider the momentary discomfort of the temporary imbalance in this light will you find a truer balance that is much more profound and meaningful than what you have known and established on a superficial level of being. You may have outgrown that more superficial level without being aware of it. You now are ready to expand farther outward and deeper inward into the real universe and adopt a new balancing structure that may manifest at first as imbalance simply because you obstruct the movement and fight against it.

Do you have any questions pertaining to this topic?

QUESTION: Is what you call the “balancing factor,” for instance in the aggressive and receptive principles, a third force?

ANSWER: No, the balancing factor is the cohesive force that underlies the manifestations that appear as opposites. The balancing factor is the cohesion, the bridge, if you will. The active and receptive principles are just two of many other universal laws in the creative scheme. But let us now stay with this example — the active and receptive principles. The balance is not a third factor, but the conciliation of these two principles, that creates a oneness in which these expressions exist in a meaningful way. I have mentioned before that the active principle must contain within itself the receptive, just as the receptive state must contain the active. Otherwise there is imbalance.

A person cannot truly be active unless that activity contains also the receptive state of mind; the still, harmonious state of being. Then the active movement becomes what I sometimes term “effortless effort.” It is not a strained effort. Activity is strained, tiring and effortful only if it does not contain the receptive principle within it.

It is precisely because human beings cannot perceive receptive quietude within active movement that they shy away from movement, from becoming, from effort. They tend toward stagnancy because their effort is so strained. But if they could think of effort in this effortless way, coming through the cohesion and conciliation with the receptive principle, then growing, active outward movement — becoming — would not be feared.

By the same token, if the receptive principle does not contain within itself the active principle, it creates a stagnant deadening state. The activity and movement contained within the receptive state makes it as alert, wakeful and alive as the active state is.

If you think of the qualities contained in the active and passive principles, you see the following — I oversimplify here for the purpose of illustration: The active principle is movement and action. The receptive principle is the state of being, quietude. The active state gives out. The receptive state takes in. The active state is a tensing of energies; the receptive state relaxes them. If you combine the two in proper balance, then you have action and effort that are relaxed, effortless and calm. And you have receptivity that is alive and vibrant. In both states you have all the qualities present, only in different proportions.

So it is not a third force, it is the proportion that keeps the balance.

QUESTION: I have a personal question that is very much related to the lecture tonight. I realize now the pain of the imbalance in my life. I realize that there is a lot of vanity and pride related to my outer will that forces me from the one extreme of overindulgence to the other extreme of deprivation. This applies to a lot of simple parts of my life — sleeping, eating, loving, all kinds of things. I’d like some help in understanding why this is so. It almost seems as if I’m using it as an identifying characteristic of “specialness,” to go from one extreme to the other and deny myself a sense of harmony.

ANSWER: There are several levels to this answer. For example, on one level — the lower self — the imbalance is deliberately sought in order to prove, as it were, “it does not work, nothing works.” You get confirmation that nothing works, whatever you do is wrong, life is no good, you may just as well capitulate. That is the case the lower self makes. It is very important that you be aware of this, that you confront it and do not allow it to take control. As you make yourself aware of it, you can identify this voice. Then you can open your heart and mind to your higher self and request guidance for the balance. As I said in the lecture, this cannot come through an intellectual determination alone; the intellect must be directed toward meaningful inner guidance.

On another level, the imbalance is due to ignorance of the reality and importance of balance. Perhaps we can combine these two levels: The lower self can create imbalance out of ignorance that both rest and work, for example, have their place in life. The same principle applies to everything else. Without some measure of abstinence, fulfillment becomes shallow and is therefore no longer fulfilling. This is what I meant by saying that imbalance defeats itself.

You need to conceive of yourself as being able to give to yourself so much and then stop. You need to take in the possibility that a force exists in you that knows when and how much to give, and you need to call upon this force. You need to cultivate in your awareness, in your thought processes, the concept of balance, of manifesting both sides of what now appear as opposites. As your understanding of this concept ripens, your lower self will no longer get away with its game, because you will meet it with truth.

Love and blessings go into every one of you and merge with the love and blessings that come from your innermost higher self. The truth of being, the beauty of life, the strength of your real self are all emerging more and more and make your life a blessed glory. Peace and love to all of you. Be blessed!