The Spiritual Law of Gravity
by Father Paul Keenan
 Do you desire to live a balanced life?
We all do, I guess, but just what does it mean?
Most of the time when we think of balance we think of putting something into the pan of a scale to offset the weight of something in the other pan. As in going to the market, establishing that sort of balance in life can be a tricky thing. If one pan has had a lot of frenetic and busy activity around it, let us say, what amount of that side of the scale can we clear out and what can we put into the other pan to balance it? How much time for reading, for relaxation, for meditation, for physical activity, for watching our nutrition, for gardening or whatever will offset the demands of our busy lives? It’s hard to know. I think that one of the reasons we have so much trouble achieving a balanced life is that we tend to think of it in terms of taking bits and pieces out and putting bits and pieces in.
Another image for achieving balance is the game many of us played when we were kids and we tried to get a set of dominoes to balance without everything toppling. That, too, is sometimes an approach we use for achieving balance in our lives. We may be fortunate enough to clear the decks and start all over, maybe thanks to a good vacation, sabbatical or retreat, or by the sheer power of will. We get the pieces of our lives all arranged and it looks as though we have finally reached the balance point we wanted. Ten minutes back after vacation, we find ourselves wondering if we were ever away. All the mail, all the demands that awaited our return, are there before us now and we are left scratching our heads as we find ourselves succumbing to the old rat race. Like the dominoes in our game, we find ourselves scattered in pieces once the pressures of life return to us.
What happened, we wonder?
We need to change our ideas about balance. Balance in life is not about piecing things together in the hope that they (and we) will hold and not collapse under the weight of the pieces. Rather it’s about working with, shall we say, the law of spiritual gravity to let it do the work it is intended to do.
For what we are talking about when we turn our thoughts to balance in life is a spiritual law of gravity, the force or energy that gives us center and focus. Another way of describing that spiritual law of gravity is “the soul.”
>>> Continue Reading "The Spiritual Law of Gravity"©
Copyright Fr. Paul Keenan. This article was originally
published at our website, SoulfulLiving.com, in July-Sept. 2005,
as part of Soulful Living's "Life Balance" Issue.
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