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Balance (an excerpt)
Susan L. Taylor

Read All the Books
Jim Rohn

Stalking the Truth
Charlie Badenhop

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Living in balance is vital to our well-being.  Without balance, much of the beauty and grandeur of our existence is lost.  But a balanced life doesn't just happen.  It is a state of grace we create by staying connected with our thoughts and feelings and consciously measuring what we do.  Just as feeling fit and flexible demands physical exercise, just as expanding your mind requires intellectual effort, so bringing your life into balance and maintaining your spiritual equilibrium require focused awareness and daily retreat from the stresses of the world.

The wisdom and strength you seek await you in the silence within.  Awakening to our deepest desires, to our needs and to our truth requires reflection and inner listening.  We must create the space in our lives where our physical self and our spiritual being can meet.  The more we nourish our internal world, the more powerful we grow in the external world.  Retreating doesn't free us from the concerns of the external world, but it delivers us from the pain of living in it.

Look to the light within you.  It's awaiting your attention, longing for your return.  You may have lost sight of your inner radiance as you turned to look outside yourself for validation and meaning.  You may have forgotten it as you gave authority not to your own inner voice, but to the dictates and opinions of others.  Yet no matter how far you wander or how long you stay away, the divine light never flickers or dims.  You are host to the eternal flame.  It glows in the silence of your being to illumine your life and light your way.  

We would probably be more zealous about retreating from the world if it were a complicated task, requiring great effort.  But, in fact, the task could not be simpler, because there is nowhere to go, nothing to do.  To retreat, you need only be.  How?  By giving yourself to yourself before you give yourself away.  It's amazing how a simple fifteen minutes or more of quiet inner listening each day creates such abundant peace and joy.  My life works beautifully when I start each day in communion, when I draw a warm bath, lace the water with fragrant oils--frankincense, jasmine, lavender or patchouli--light a single candle and retreat.  During this precious time, the tiny bathroom in my small Manhattan apartment becomes a grand and healing space for me.

Choose your place.  Any place that's quiet and where you feel completely comfortable--your bed, and easy chair, a mat on the floor--will do.  Stretch fully for a few seconds from head to toe before you settle in.  Sitting or lying down, close your eyes gently.  Allow yourself to breathe slowly, deeply exhaling longer than you inhale.  As you exhale, feel yourself letting go.  Consciously relax each part of your body separately, starting with your feet.  Tense and lighten them as you inhale.  Release and relax them as you exhale.  Continue to breathe deeply and fully as you tense and tighten your calves, thighs, and buttocks, then your torso, your arms, your shoulders and face.  Is there any tightness in the areas where stress normally takes hold--your upper back and shoulders, your neck and jaw?  Breathe deeply into each of these areas as you tighten and release those muscles again.  Let go completely.

Stay with your breath, breathing slowly, deeply and rhythmically, consciously inhaling joy and peace and exhaling stress and strain.  Feel yourself descending deeper and deeper into our breath.  You are completely at ease, your body limp and relaxed.  Listen to the rhythm of your breath whispering in the stillness.  This is the Holy Spirit, the breath of life in you.  You are now in touch with your inner light.  Feel the love, the peace at the center of your being.  Feel its healing light caressing you, filling you, renewing you.  Feel its glow enveloping you and radiating from you.  This is your own loving-kindness, embracing and restoring you to wholeness.

Now is the time for asking questions of yourself--and for listening for your deepest, most intuitive responses.  You need only attune your ear.  There is no problem too trivial or concern too great to bring to the spirit within.  God resides within you for this very purpose.  In this place you can lay your burdens down.  So surrender your worries and fears, releasing them into the care of your own inner wisdom. . . .

When you are ready, open your eyes.  Remain still for a moment and experience how at peace you feel.  You may feel a smile from your very center.  Try to hold on to the tranquil point of light glowing within as you move through the day.

Soon you'll discover the lasting faith and understanding that result from the simple act of listening to yourself in silence each day.  It may even seem miraculous.  As you honor your need for an intimate relationship with your spirit, you learn to trust in yourself and your inner wholeness.  You gain clarity and insight into the people and things that enhance or hamper you.  You learn to use your gifts wisely, to set your own standards.  You begin to see how life works, how it is always deconstructing and reconstructing itself and always for our higher good.
   

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All of the books that we will ever need to make us as rich, as healthy, as happy, as powerful, as sophisticated and as successful as we want to be have already been written.

People from all walks of life, people with some of the most incredible life experiences, people that have gone from pennies to fortune and from failure to success have taken the time to write down their experiences so that we might share in their wealth of knowledge.  They have offered their wisdom and experience so that we can be inspired by it and instructed by it, and so that we can amend our philosophy by it.  Their contributions enable us to reset our sail based upon their experiences.  They have handed us the gift of their insights so that we can change our plans, if need be, in order to avoid their errors.  We can rearrange our lives based on their wise advice.

All of the insights that we might ever need have already been captured by others in books.  The important question is this:  In the last ninety days, with this treasure of information that could change our lives, our fortunes, our relationships, our health, our children and our careers for the better, how many books have we read?

Why do we neglect to read the books that can change our lives?  Why do we complain but remain the same?  Why do so many of us curse the effect but nourish the cause?  How do we explain the fact that only a small percent of our entire national population uses the library card they possess - a card that would give us access to all of the answers to success and happiness we could ever want? Those who wish for the better life cannot permit themselves to miss the books that could have a major impact on how their lives turn out.  The book they miss will not help!

And the issue is not that books are too expensive!  If a person concludes that the price of buying the book is too great, wait until he must pay the price for not buying it.  Wait until he receives the bill for continued and prolonged ignorance.

There is very little difference between someone who cannot read and someone who will not read.  The result of either is ignorance.  Those who are serious seekers of personal development must remove the self-imposed limitations they have placed on their reading skills and their reading habits.  There is a multitude of classes being taught on how to be a good reader and there are thousands of books on the shelves of the public libraries just waiting to be read.  Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary.  We must not permit anything to stand between us and the book that could change our lives.

A little reading each day will result in a wealth of valuable information in a very short period of time.  But if we fail to set aside the time, if we fail to pick up the book, if we fail to exercise the discipline, then ignorance will quickly move in to fill the void.

Those who seek a better life must first become a better person.  They must continually seek after self-mastery for the purpose of developing a balanced philosophy of life, and then live in accordance with the dictates of that philosophy.  The habit of reading is a major stepping-stone in the development of a sound philosophical foundation.  And in my opinion it is one of the fundamentals required for the attainment of success and happiness.
  

Reproduced with permission from the Jim Rohn Weekly E-zine.

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