Balancing and Healing

What Balance Means

The previous chapter described the seeker's path: meditation, service, faith, perseverance. These are the practices of the open heart. Yet the heart alone is not enough. Without Balance, the seeker's progress may be undermined by energies that remain unexamined within the self. We turn now to the specific work of balancing and healing -- the inner technologies that transform understanding into wholeness.

Balance is often misunderstood. Many imagine it as a smooth flow of feeling, a state in which emotions pass through the being without leaving a trace. This is not what is meant. The objective of the balancing work is not the smooth flow of feeling but rather the quality of becoming unswayed. This is a simpler result, and it takes much practice.

To be unswayed is not to be unmoved. A perfectly balanced entity, when confronted with aggression, still responds. The response is love. This bears emphasis, for it overturns a common expectation. Balance does not produce indifference. It is not objectivity. It is a finely tuned Compassion that sees all things as love.

When the entity achieves this seeing, something profound occurs. Until then, even a response that is only observed is still a use of the Catalyst of experience, which exists to provoke learning. The end result of that use is that the catalyst is no longer needed. The seeing of all things as love elicits no response from catalytic reactions, and so the entity is able to become a co-Creator of experiential occurrences. This is the truer balance.

Think of what this means in practical terms. When the seeker encounters difficulty -- a harsh word, a betrayal, a loss -- and can see within that difficulty the face of the Creator, the difficulty ceases to carry its former charge. Not because the seeker has suppressed the response, but because the response itself has changed. Where once there was reaction, now there is recognition.

This capacity does not arise overnight. The being is not a machine. It is something more like a tone poem -- a living composition in which each Energy Centers contributes its unique note. The goal is not the rigid placement of each note but the fluid and balanced blending of all notes, so that the whole composition allows Intelligent Energy to move through with minimal Distortion.

The work of balance has an order. The heart of this discipline is threefold: to know the self, to accept the self, and to become the Creator. The work moves gradually from the examination of specific thoughts and reactions toward this central acceptance, and each step prepares the next.

Still, this central work cannot be rushed. One must first know the Distortions of the self before one can accept the self. Each thought, each reaction, each pattern of behavior must be examined at its foundation. Only then does the acceptance become real rather than merely spoken.

The Balancing Exercise

The specific practice of balancing has been described with remarkable clarity. It begins with a prerequisite explored in the previous chapter: the ability to hold silence within the self at a steady state. The inner landscape must become still and receptive.

Once silence is established, the work begins with the examination of the self. Where patience is found within the mind, the seeker must consciously locate the corresponding impatience. Each thought that a being holds has, in its turn, an antithesis. The disciplines of the mind involve identifying both what the self approves and what it disapproves within itself, and then holding each quality together with its opposite until a balance is reached.

This is not suppression. The seeker does not push away the impatience or the anger. Instead, the seeker recognizes both and balances each charge with its equal. The mind contains all things. Therefore the seeker must discover this completeness within the self.

The second step is Acceptance. Having seen both the patience and the impatience, the seeker accepts both as part of the completeness within its own consciousness. It is not for a being of polarity to pick and choose among attributes, building roles that create further blockages and confusion. Each acceptance smooths part of the many distortions that the faculty of judgment engenders.

The third step extends the same work outward. In each other entity there also exists completeness. When the seeker views patience in another, it is responsible for understanding both the patience and the impatience within that being. When it views impatience, it must hold the full picture: impatience and patience together. Most configurations of mind are subtle and many-faceted. This outward work requires great discernment.

The fourth step is the acceptance of these other-self polarities, mirroring the second step.

In daily life, this practice may be applied at the close of each day. The seeker reviews its experiences -- the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that arose -- and examines those it considers inappropriate or charged with unprocessed energy. Where a disproportionate response was observed, one locates that response within the map of its energy centers and notes where the work is needed.

It bears repeating that this is not suppression. If a response arises during the day -- anger, jealousy, grief -- it is not recommended that it be repressed or suppressed, unless the reaction would be a stumbling block to an other-self, not consonant with the Law of One. It is far better to allow the experience to express itself, so that the entity may then make fuller use of the catalyst. Afterward the seeker may sit with the experience and do the balancing. Repression may seem a shortcut to discipline, but it only calls for further experience to balance it.

The practice strengthens over time. Each repetition brings the seeker closer to the state in which situations that once carried emotional charge are met simply as opportunities for service. The charged situation and the neutral one become, in the balanced entity, the same thing: a moment in which the Creator may be recognized and served.

Working with Distortions

Every emotion, every thought, every habitual response is material. Nothing that arises within the being is waste. The seeker who learns to work with distortions -- rather than against them -- discovers that even the most uncomfortable feeling is a doorway to greater self-knowledge.

The first task is assessment. The thoughts of an entity, its feelings, and least of all its behavior are the signposts for the teaching of self by self. At the end of a day, the seeker may examine what it considers inappropriate thoughts, behaviors, or emotions. Having identified them, the entity places each distortion in the proper vibrational ray, and thus sees where the work is needed.

Consider how this works with a specific emotion -- anger, for example. The entity walking the positive path perceives the anger within itself. Rather than denying or condemning it, the entity blesses and loves this anger. It then intensifies the anger consciously, in mind alone. The nature of this energy becomes apparent: not as folly in itself, but as undirected energy subject to entropy because it has no channel.

From this point, positive orientation provides the will and Faith to continue the process. The anger is understood, accepted, and integrated. The other-self who provoked the anger is transformed within the seeker's awareness into an object of acceptance and understanding. The great energy that the anger began is not lost -- it is redirected and reintegrated.

The key for those on the positive path is acceptance. The key for those on the negative path is control. Between these two poles lies the territory of the unprocessed -- the raw, undirected energy that, finding no conscious channel, may express itself through the body as illness. The most vivid example of this is the growth of tissue that physicians call cancer, which may arise when emotional energy is neither accepted nor controlled but left to its own random devices.

This connection between unprocessed emotion and physical disease deserves attention. It means that the work of balancing is not merely a spiritual exercise. The entity that uses the experience of anger consciously, to polarize, does not experience the bodily catalyst but uses the catalyst in mental configuration.

The process of directing attention toward this work requires something that might surprise the seeker: the capacity to focus. The spiritual attention span of most entities is that of the child. The technique for nurturing this capacity is the focusing of attention upon the desired discipline -- and maintaining it. This, when continued, strengthens the will. But the entire activity can only occur when there exists faith that an outcome is possible.

Visualization may serve the seeker in this strengthening. Some find it helpful to hold in the mind an image of personal inspirational quality -- a symbol of the heart's deepest aspiration. Others prefer the simpler discipline of visualizing a single shape or color, holding it steady within the mind's eye. Whether the image chosen is a rose or a circle matters less than the regular exercise of the faculty of concentrated attention.

Healing the Body

The body speaks a language that the mind does not always wish to hear. When the energy centers carry blockages that have not been addressed through conscious work, those blockages may eventually express themselves through the physical body. Disease, in many cases, shows where a center is blocked, and can serve as a resource for self-revelation. The catalyst itself is unconscious and does not work with intelligence.

This is not to say that all physical illness originates in spiritual imbalance. Some conditions are part of the pre-incarnative programming chosen by the entity before birth. These are limitations designed as part of the learning experience. Birth defects, genetic predispositions, and certain chronic conditions may fall into this category. They are not punishments. They are chosen tools for a particular kind of growth.

Yet illness can also be the product of unprocessed catalyst. Emotional energy that is neither accepted nor channeled may create a bodily analog. Destructive thought patterns, when left unaddressed, can make themselves known through the body, and in fourth density, where information is revealed, they show in more obvious ways.

The good news within this understanding is that illnesses of this kind are very amenable to self-Healing. Once the mechanism of the destructive influence has been grasped by the individual, the path toward restoration becomes clearer. The healing is not effortless.

The self-healing distortion is effected through the realization of the intelligent infinity resting within the self, which asks for conscious awareness of the spiritual nature of reality. This realization is blocked, in a way that varies from entity to entity, in those who carry imbalances in the body complex. When there is no blockage, these energies pour into the being, perfecting the body moment by moment. When blockage exists, the flow is interrupted, and the body manifests the result.

Unworthiness is one of many distortions that can block the way. When the entity does not believe itself worthy, the indigo-ray center -- the gateway to intelligent infinity -- may constrict, and the influx of healing energy may be reduced. The solution is action that puts into practice the peaceful understanding, in humility, that the entity is one with the Creator, therefore perfected and not separate.

The body itself must also be understood and accepted, just as the mind and emotions are balanced through the exercise described earlier. The seeker is invited to examine how feelings and emotions affect different portions of the body. The bodily biases must be understood, and then the opposite bias allowed full expression in understanding. The body is a creature of the mind's creation. It has its polarities. Only when these are seen and accepted can the body achieve its own form of balance.

The path of physical healing, then, is not separate from the path of spiritual growth. It is the same path. The one who does the work of balancing its energy centers, of accepting the self including the body, of recognizing the intelligent infinity that rests within -- this self has already begun to heal. The body is not an obstacle to the spirit. In illness it can show where a blockage lies.

Healing the Heart and Mind

What is true of the body is equally true of the inner life. Emotional and mental distortions follow the same principle: what is felt may be understood, accepted, and integrated into the wholeness of the self. The seeker who avoids this work has not thereby avoided the distortion.

The emotional landscape of most entities is shaped by the veil. Behind the veil of forgetting, the conscious mind cannot see the deeper purposes of catalyst. An insult stings. A loss grieves. A betrayal burns. These experiences carry charge precisely because the entity does not yet see the whole picture. The balancing work invites the seeker to move beyond the surface charge and into the energy beneath.

The method was described above for anger, and it is a different exercise from the balancing of opposites. The entity does not flee from the anger. It blesses it, even loves it, and intensifies it consciously, in mind alone, until the energy is seen clearly as energy used at random. Then, through will and faith, the entity allows the anger to be understood, accepted, and integrated. This is balancing and not repression: the path of unity.

For those on the positive path, the key word is acceptance. The other-self who provoked the anger becomes, through this process, an object of understanding and accommodation. The great energy that the anger began is not destroyed. It is gathered up and returned to the being as usable light. The process is alchemical: base emotion becomes refined awareness.

The positively oriented entity balances rather than represses. This point cannot be stated too often. Repression is the approach of the negative path, in which emotion is forced down and brought to the surface only when it can be used to enforce the will upon another. The positive seeker does the opposite. It welcomes the emotion, sees it in its fullness, and releases it into the larger pattern of the self's wholeness. This is the path of unity.

Mental distortions follow the same logic. A persistent thought pattern -- self-criticism, resentment, obsessive analysis -- is not an enemy to be defeated. It is a signpost pointing toward the energy center where work is needed. The seeker examines the thought, locates its vibrational ray, and applies the same balanced attention: understanding, acceptance, integration.

The energy thus freed may be considerable. Incoming energy can be blocked partly or entirely in any of the centers. When the blockage dissolves, nothing holds the energy back, and it can pour into the being, perfecting it moment by moment.

Spiritual Healing

Healing at its deepest level is not merely the restoration of the body or the soothing of emotions. It is the re-establishment of the connection between the entity and the source of all energy. When this connection is clear, healing happens not as an exception but as a natural expression of the way things are.

The spirit complex is the least distorted of the three aspects of the being. It is described as a pathway, or channel -- the shuttle through which the entity's individual energy of will reaches upward and the streamings of creative fire and wind descend. When the mind is single-pointed and balanced, and the body comfortable in its own biases, the spirit becomes a functioning communicator between the finite and the infinite.

Healing ability -- like all capacities that transcend the ordinary -- is effected by the opening of this pathway into Intelligent Infinity. Some entities have a random gateway in the spirit energy field, sometimes created by chemicals, and tap this energy without control and without necessarily wishing to serve. The purpose of the deliberate inner work is to open this channel consciously and dependably, so that healing becomes not an anomaly but an ordinary part of life.

The crystallized healer operates on this principle. Such an entity, having balanced and unblocked its energy centers, becomes analogous in function to the pyramidal action of the King's Chamber. Energy enters through the being, spirals through the energy centers, and is channeled through the green-ray center -- the heart -- before being offered to the one who seeks healing.

It is from the heart center that healing energy moves. This is significant. Some use the yellow-ray configuration to transfer energy, and this can be done, but the effects are questionable. The one receiving such energy may keep requiring it without true healing taking place when the healer is absent, because the armoring shell has not been penetrated. Such transfer also does not carry through the process of free will, which is not native to the yellow ray. Healing through the green ray gives the seeker the opportunity to accept a novel view of the self, a variant arrangement of its energy patterns.

Even a Wanderer from the higher densities, carrying the memory of great capability, must do this balancing work in third density before it can become a channel for healing. The limitations of the incarnate experience apply to all. The wanderer may remember ease. But ease cannot be manifested until the energy centers of this density are clear. The advantage the wanderer carries is not ability but desire -- the desire to serve through this method, which may be stronger than in those native to this density.

The Healer and the Healed

We arrive now at one of the most important and most misunderstood truths about healing: the healer does not heal. The crystallized healer is a channel for intelligent energy which offers an opportunity to an entity that it might heal itself. In no case is there any other description of healing.

This is a radical statement. It means that the responsibility for healing lies always with the one who is healed. The healer's role is to offer an opportunity for realignment -- the chance to see the self in a new configuration, to accept a different arrangement of the energies. But whether the entity accepts this new arrangement is a matter of its own free will.

If the entity, at any level, desires to remain in its current pattern of distortion, it will do so. The healer cannot override this choice. Even the most crystallized, most balanced channel for intelligent energy cannot impose healing upon one who does not choose it. Healing is always an act of free will.

This understanding carries a gift for those who serve as healers, as long as the healer never approaches one whose request for aid has not come to it previously. If these entities could fully realize that they are responsible only for offering the opportunity of healing, and not for the healing itself, an enormous load of misconceived responsibility would fall from them. The healer who believes it has failed when a patient remains ill has misunderstood the nature of the work. The healer is responsible only for the offering. What the other-self does with that opportunity belongs to the other-self.

It should also be noted that when the one wishing to be healed, though sincere, remains unhealed, pre-incarnative choices may be at work. Some conditions were chosen before birth as part of the entity's learning. In such cases, the most helpful service may be to suggest that the entity meditate upon the affirmative uses of whatever limitations it experiences. The limitation is not a punishment. It is a teaching chosen by the self, for the self.

Perhaps the greatest healer is within the self. Continued meditation opens access to this inner healer. And many forms of healing available among the peoples of this world -- each has virtue and may be deemed appropriate by any seeker who wishes to work with the distortions of the body complex. The forms are many. The principle is one: the entity heals itself.

Acceptance as Healing

Most of the techniques described in this chapter -- the balancing exercise, the processing of distortions, the healing of the body, the channeling of energy -- rest on a single principle. That principle is acceptance.

The balancing work moves from the periphery to the center. It begins with specific distortions -- patience and impatience, anger and peace -- known one by one. It moves through deeper layers of the self and arrives at the most central task: the acceptance of the self, on the way to what the discipline of the personality finally asks, which is to become the Creator.

Even so, this central acceptance cannot be reached by skipping the earlier work. The foundation must be laid with care. One must first know the distortions of the self, must scrutinize each thought and action for the precise foundation of each reaction. This is the work of self-knowledge. The architrave must be in place before the structure is built.

When this work is done -- and it is the work of a lifetime, not a single sitting -- the way opens. Acceptance of the self, forgiveness of the self, and the direction of the will: this is the path toward the disciplined personality. The one who knows itself and accepts itself clears the way toward the gateway to the Creator. The path to the heart of self runs through understanding, experiencing, accepting, and merging, first with the self, then with the other-self, and finally with the Creator. In each infinitesimal part of the self resides the One in all of Its power.

Forgiveness plays a central role in this process. Karma -- the inertia of actions set in motion -- continues until it is met by its own antidote: forgiveness. The two concepts are inseparable. The entity that has set in motion an action may forgive itself and never again repeat the error. This stops the cycle.

This is true not only between incarnations but at any point within a single life. Both the self and any involved other-self may, at any time, through the process of understanding, acceptance, and forgiveness, ameliorate these patterns.

The deepest healing, then, is not the correction of a physical symptom or the resolution of an emotional wound. It is the realization, deep within the self, that there is no disharmony and no imperfection, that all is complete and whole and perfect. The distortions, the blockages, the patterns of suffering -- these are real within the illusion, and they deserve the seeker's full attention and care. But beneath them lies a being that was never damaged. The work of balancing and healing is the work of clearing away what obscures this truth, not of constructing something that was not there before.

And so we arrive at the closing of this chapter, and perhaps the most important thing we can say about healing: it is remembering. It is the removal of the forgetting. When an incarnation ends, it is reviewed and healed: you assimilate what you lived, weigh the biases you gained, and the conditions of the next are chosen, by provided aid or by the self. The balancing, the healing, the slow and patient work of self-knowledge -- all of it is part of the Creator knowing Itself through you.