Bringing Your Life into Balance

Bringing your life into balance means that you are addressing all of the key areas of your life, and you are doing this in such a way that your life can establish a stable continuity in the face of changing circumstances.

When most people think of balancing their life, they are really thinking of catching up, of trying to deal with something that has been neglected. Therefore, they have to put a great deal of energy into one area of their life just to correct the problems there, to plug up the leaks, to deal with an emerging difficulty. But that does not mean that they are achieving a balance.

First, it is necessary to realize that a balance is really just a range of experience. It is not one fine point that you achieve and then you are able to maintain from there on.

A balance is something that requires constant adjustments. Like sailing a ship out on the open ocean, you are constantly having to deal with changing circumstances. You are constantly dealing with going off course in your life, having to readjust your navigation to bring yourself back on course and to re-establish balance.

Life is always moving, and so balance can never be a static state or one kind of experience only. If the fulcrum point upon which you are trying to balance never moved or never changed, then you could over time establish a very stable equilibrium. But that fulcrum point is constantly moving, and so balance is important.

To be in a position to experience balance on an ongoing basis, you must be building the Four Pillars of your life—the Pillar of Relationships, the Pillar of Work and Providership, the Pillar of Health and the Pillar of Spiritual Development. Like the four legs of a table, the Four Pillars of your life uphold your life. And if these Pillars are built sufficiently, giving you stability, then you can assume greater tasks. You can experience a greater purpose. You can achieve greater things.

A table is a solid object. It is standing on solid ground. It is not moving, in most cases. But life is not just a stationary object, and it is always moving. The balance is elusive and even out of reach for people because they have not built the foundation that is necessary in order to achieve and experience a greater balance in life.

Here the Pillars are very important. Most people put a lot of energy into one Pillar alone, to the neglect of the others. As a result, the Pillars that have not been built are always undermining their progress and their well-being and their stability, making balance an elusive and impossible achievement.

Some people give everything to their relationships: the pursuit of relationships, negotiation in relationships, the management of relationships. Meanwhile, the Pillar of Work is undeveloped, they are financially unstable, their personal health can be neglected, even completely, and perhaps they have no inner life and are not developing their awareness of the deeper spiritual power within themselves.

Then there are others who give everything to their career and to the accumulation of wealth, or who are fascinated by the economy through their investments and so forth. Likewise, they can sacrifice the quality of their relationships, allowing their marriage to deteriorate, being estranged even from their own children. They may have no inner life at all, and their health may be in great jeopardy.

Over time, those Pillars that have not been built will undermine your progress. Even if you are able to keep going, they will erode away your experience of well-being. For if you do not have healthy, meaningful relationships, then that will erode away your sense of well-being. If you do not have financial stability, that will erode away your well-being and your stability. If you do not have good health that can be sustained into the future, this will undermine your well-being and can even undermine your entire life. If your Pillar of Spiritual Development is neglected, this will rob you of the power of Knowledge within yourself—the ability to see, to know and to act with certainty. It will make you a stranger unto yourself, and as a result a stranger unto others.

You must be operating in all four of these arenas. And when you look at your life objectively, you will see that everything you do falls into one or more of these Pillars. So if you are really engaged with your life to this degree, you cannot afford to be eccentric. You cannot afford to be self-obsessed. You cannot be addicted to anything because you are giving your attention to so many things at once.

It is like, again, sailing a great ship at sea. It has complex rigging, complex sails. You have to manage this instrument, this boat that is taking you across very unpredictable circumstances, called life.

Here if you are paying attention to your environment, if you are paying attention to your own condition, if you are paying attention to the Four Pillars of your life, you do not have time to be self-obsessed or obsessive about anything.

Problems will arise that will require extra effort, of course. Unforeseen difficulties will occur, problems in relationships, even personal loss and tragedy. But you can weather these storms if you have the strength of these Pillars. You will have sufficient support. You will have sufficient mental and physical health. You will have sufficient financial stability, not to be overwhelmed by the events of life.

This has now become ever more important because Great Waves of change are coming over the horizon—converging, creating a set of currents and cross-currents that will be very difficult to navigate, more difficult than even the normal parameters of life. This will require a greater stability, a greater self-awareness, a greater responsibility, a greater caution and care.

You cannot be fooling around in the face of these Great Waves, for they are powerful. And you cannot run away from them, for they will affect everyone.

Great Waves of change are largely the result of humanity’s misuse and overuse of the world—depleting resources, degrading environment, violent weather, growing economic and political instability, and the risk of conflict and war.

The New Message from God that has been sent into the world reveals the real nature and the potential of these Great Waves of change, and why they cannot be resolved with simple solutions. For they will change the landscape of humanity, and they will change the conditions of your life.

Humanity is heading into stormy waters and times of great upheaval and uncertainty. Many people do not have the stability to be able to maintain themselves in any kind of healthy manner in the face of these Great Waves of change. For they have not built the Pillars of their life, and they have not looked carefully and objectively and courageously to see what is coming over the horizon, to see what they will have to contend with, and what they must change and focus upon in their life.

Here the importance of looking ahead is very significant. You do not want to be caught off guard by great events. And great events always have signs preceding them, giving warning, giving an alert.

Here life is telling you what is coming. It is warning you of danger. It is alerting you to the presence of conflicting forces and changing circumstances. It is giving you time to reconsider your position and to change your position if that is necessary.

But people are not looking. They are in avoidance. Perhaps they feel overwhelmed already and think they cannot take on any more concern. But really this is just an excuse to not pay attention to your life and to your environment.

Your environment includes not only the natural world and all of its forces, but also your social and economic environment as well. These will undergo profound and at times wrenching change.

So balance here becomes something that comes after one has built a strong enough foundation within the Four Pillars of their lives. Otherwise, balance is kind of an elusive dream. It is something that will take your eyes off of the horizon. You will become only concerned with what you have now, trying to balance that, and not become mindful of the great change that is approaching.

Look at the animals in nature. They are always watching. They have to do this in order to maintain safety in their environments and to be alert to the presence of danger or changing circumstances. No matter what they are doing, they are always watching. They are always alert.

But, strangely, people—who have the greatest intelligence—are not watching and are not alert. They are trying to establish balance within their own current circumstances without realizing they must build a stronger foundation, and without realizing that their environment is changing.

This neglect of one’s environment is very tragic because people will fail for unforeseen reasons. They will lose their employment. They will lose, perhaps, their homes—to forces they did not foresee and did not anticipate. They were trying to establish balance, but they were not paying attention to the larger environment around them. And when you are not paying attention, you are not seeing the signs. You are not allowing life to alert you and educate you about what is coming and what is taking place around you.

Real balance here means that no matter what happens, you are able to stay afloat. You are able to maintain your inner stability. You are able to maintain objectivity and clarity about what you are doing and what you may have to do next.

In light of this, most people are very ill prepared for the Great Waves of change. Even in the wealthy nations you see this, especially. People are obsessed in one part of their life, or trying to remediate another part of their life, or trying to deal with emerging problems all around them. But they do not have a strong foundation, and often they are not really paying attention to their environment.

Here if you are trying to repair a relationship that is in jeopardy, you may ignore the fact that your economic reality is falling apart. Here while you are trying to either become beautiful and magnificent in the area of health, or trying to deal with serious illness or a health problem, you may fail to see that your career or your employment will not survive the great economic changes that are coming. And all of a sudden you find yourself in financial difficulty.

It takes a lot of work to build and maintain the Four Pillars of your life. But this work is healthy and redemptive. It keeps you out of trouble with yourself. It builds real stability and solidity in one’s life. And it will enable you to withstand great change and difficulty. It will enable you to withstand personal loss and confusion.

It is really unfortunate that this teaching on personal awareness and responsibility is not emphasized throughout children’s education. People are encouraged to pursue their dreams, to follow whatever they want that fascinates them or that they think will make them wealthy or successful.

They are not taught a wise approach to life. They are not taught about the meaning of their social and financial environment. They are not connected to the natural forces of the world.

So they launch themselves obsessively on their pursuit of love, or their pursuit of wealth, and they do not know how to balance their lives. And they are not encouraged to restrain themselves from overinvesting in any area of their lives.

People have spent too much. They have overextended themselves. And now the Great Waves are coming, affecting the economic stability of nations. People suddenly find themselves in jeopardy, overwhelmed by their circumstances—circumstances that could have been foreseen, for life has been giving you the signs.

It takes a lot of work to be aware of all these things. But this awareness gives you strength. And if you are building your Pillar of Spiritual Development, you are gaining a greater connection to a deeper and wiser Mind within yourself—a Mind that is here to guide you, to protect you and to lead you to your fulfillment in service to the world.

When you are maintaining a Four Pillars approach to life, you are allowing this Knowledge to give you the signs that you need and the indicators that you need in every aspect of your life, for you are looking at all of them at once. Here your natural inner guidance has the optimum opportunity to reveal itself to you and to be of service to you in your life.

Life in the world at this time is complex and can be very confusing. But this is your life, and this is the world that you have created with everyone else. But within you there is something very fundamental and very simple.

It is the power and the presence of Knowledge. It is not confused or perplexed by the world around you. It is not seduced or intrigued by the world around you. It is not impressed by beauty, wealth or charm. It is not seduced by the desire for power, or by the fear of loss. It remains pure and potent within you, but it exists beyond the realm and the reach of your intellect.

For in truth, you have two minds. You have the social mind that has been conditioned by the world, where you live every day. And then you have a deeper Mind that was created by God, that represents your true existence and the greater wisdom that God has given you to be able to navigate life in this world and all of the change that is coming to this world.

You must take the steps to this Knowledge. You must connect your thinking mind with the deeper Mind within you if you are to benefit from its guidance, its wisdom and its power. It will bring you back into the world and require you to deal with the Four Pillars of your life, even if you have been avoiding any of them for a long time.

You cannot lose yourself in your personal pursuits. You cannot lose yourself in anything here within the context of the Four Pillars of your life. And this is what enables you to become clear and aware and effective.

So many people are lost in their hobbies, their interests, the difficulties in their relationships. Or they have just given themselves inordinately to one of their Pillars—not paying attention to the rest of their life, not bringing awareness, not making adjustments in their position, not seeing what is coming over the horizon.

It is as if the weather were changing dramatically. All the creatures in the woods are paying attention, but people are not noticing and are just going about whatever they are doing. This is clearly not intelligent. It is not using one’s intelligence. But you see this all around you, and you must correct this within yourself.

You have to build the Four Pillars of your life, and you have to balance these Pillars. At any given time, one may require more attention than another, but you cannot lose sight of the others.

It is like having four children. Maybe at any one time one of them is having difficulty or needs extra care and attention, but it does not mean you neglect the other three. Each is important. Each requires observation and clarity and consideration.

People who are looking after four children effectively do not have time to fall into difficulty with themselves. They are busy, yes. But this also leads to a kind of stability and health.

Your four children right now are the Four Pillars of your life. Do not lose contact with any of them. Build your relationship with every one of them. And maintain a balance between them.

Now this Teaching in the Four Pillars of your life is greater than you might think at the outset. For when you are considering the Pillar of Relationships, you begin to see that everything is relationships.

You have a relationship with your body. You have a relationship with your mind. You have a relationship with your home, with your work. You have a relationship with the financial reality you live within, and the social reality. You have a relationship with the natural world. You have a relationship with the deeper Knowledge within yourself. So you can begin to see here that relationships is far more encompassing than just your association with a few people. It is very great.

The more you are dealing effectively with your relationships—attending to them, observing them, learning what they are telling you, responding appropriately, making adjustments in your thinking and in your behavior—the more you do this, the less you will have time to dwell on your personal problems, or your sense of inadequacy, or your regrets from the past, your unforgiveness with other people, or low self-esteem. These problems may reside within you to a certain degree, but you will not have time to amplify them or allow them to overtake you if you are truly engaged in building the foundation of your life.

If you are going to sail your ship on the open ocean, it had better be well provisioned. It had better be sound. You had better know it intimately, and pay attention to it constantly. Like the animals watching their environment and the changing climate, you are watching your circumstances—not with fantasy, not with dread, but with a greater objectivity.

The New Message from God that is being sent into the world has given a great warning about the Great Waves of change, and has provided a set of guidelines for people to use, to re-evaluate their lives and their circumstances and their position in their environment overall. This represents a deep evaluation, and it is of the greatest importance.

So many people today will really fail and lose their stability in the face of the Great Waves of change if they do not prepare accordingly and if they are caught unawares. That is why the warning must be given, and given very strongly so that people have time to come to terms with the changing conditions of their lives; so that people will have time to begin to alter their position, to change their circumstances, to re-evaluate their assumptions and their beliefs; and to respond to the reality of change around them and even within themselves.

Change is difficult to bring about. It requires courage. It requires extra effort. It requires taking risks. It requires that you think independently and not just follow along with what everyone else believes or assumes. But it is this ability that returns strength to you and the power and the presence of Knowledge in your own awareness.

Then when great storms come in the world, or great change occurs in your life and circumstances, you are in the best position to weather them and even to benefit from them. You have diminished your risk to change. You have diminished your risk to even calamitous change. You have broken free from the obsessive nature of people’s preoccupations.

You are not allowing yourself to be consumed by anything, for you must be the captain of your ship. No one else can really run it for you. You must be the captain of your ship. You must be aware of your circumstances. You must know of your provisions. You must know of your strengths and weaknesses and your capabilities to be out in life, particularly in the face of the Great Waves of change.

People assume their governments will take care of them, their communities will take care of them, social services will be provided. But you cannot assume these things into the future.

You are going to have to think more courageously and more carefully about how you are going to navigate the difficult times ahead, when social services may not be provided or may not be adequate because there will be so many people depending upon them.

Here you must rethink your work, where you live, how you travel, what you do, where you invest your time and energy. This is the deep evaluation, you see. It is very thorough. The New Message teaching on the Great Waves provides the guidelines and the instruction for how to carry out this deep evaluation.

This requires strength and courage and objectivity. You have the potential for these three things within yourself, but you must call upon them again and again to build this strength, and to have confidence in this strength, and to experience it serving you and being of service to others.

Therefore, when We speak of balance, We speak of balance between the Four Pillars of your life. And this balance is more inclusive than you will realize at the outset, for these Pillars overlap, and they provide a greater perspective on every aspect of your life.

Here, for example, in the Pillar of Work, you realize that work is involved in anything you are trying to change. If you are trying to change your circumstances, that is work. If you are trying to change your attitudes, that is work. If you are trying to minimize your fear and sense of inadequacy, that is work. If you are trying to relocate your home, that is work. If you are looking for a more stable employment, that is work. So here, for example, the Work Pillar becomes relevant to everything that you are trying to do that involves change.

Another example is that your Pillar of Spiritual Development is involved in everything you do because here you have the opportunity to be guided by Knowledge in everything you do. So your spiritual life is not disassociated from your outer life here. It is not disassociated from your work, or your relationships, your attitudes or your beliefs. Spiritual work is work, and therefore it is relevant to your Pillar of Work.

So you see here that your Pillars provide a greater perspective on all aspects of your life. Everything that you are involved in or engaged in represents relationship at one level or another. Everything you are trying to affect, to change, to build, or to alter requires work. Your ability to engage yourself with work requires health—mental and physical health. And everything you are involved in opens the door to the power and the presence of Knowledge within you. Therefore, your Pillar of Spiritual Development now becomes relevant to everything.

This is a complete experience of life, and it will liberate you from so many small things that are drawing way too much energy from you now. You only have so much time. You only have so much energy. You can only consider so many things. You can only do so many things.

Part of the deep evaluation is a reconsideration of where all this time and energy is going, and where it must go now. It is a re-evaluation of your involvements with people, your activities, what you give your thoughts and concern to.

People are losing energy in so many different ways—through idle conversations, through meaningless discussions, through hopeless pursuits. They are reacting strongly to little problems and are not reacting to big problems. Their energy is being lost and wasted, misappropriated, given to things of little or no consequence.

Meanwhile, there are great issues facing them that they must address. Knowledge within them is warning them, encouraging them, restraining them, motivating them, but they may not feel its power and its presence.

You can begin to see here, if you are understanding these words, that your life must be established on a much stronger foundation. It is not enough to merely make minor adjustments in your circumstances or in your thinking. There really has to be a great shift. This is driven not only by a sense of inner need, but now in the face of the Great Waves of change, it is being encouraged by great external needs as well.

Most people will not do very well in the face of the Great Waves of change. They are not aware of them. They are not prepared for them. They have not taken the time to build an ark to sustain them through a long period of great uncertainty and upheaval. Their foundation is weak. They do not have much mental strength to tackle so many different problems all at once. They do not have great resources because their Pillars are weak. They may not have the mental or physical health. They may not have the financial stability. They may be very poorly positioned in the face of the Great Waves of change.

So never think that you should go along with everyone else or that you should rely upon consensus, for this really is a prescription for failure. And do not think this is about love and fear. It is really about courage and responsibility. Love and fear become a dichotomy that people use to try to avoid or to escape from life. They think it is all about your attitude.

But really life requires much more from you. It requires awareness. It requires skill. It requires responsibility and the ability to function successfully with others.

It is not merely a problem of attitude or perception. It is not reliant upon how you look at a problem or the circumstances, for you are still disassociated when you are doing this. You have not come to meet life face to face. You are not opening yourself to see what must be done, regardless of your preferences in the matter.

It is not an intellectual issue. It is facing life squarely. It is looking at the Four Pillars of your life. It is looking at your environment. It is reassessing your position regarding all these things and saying to life: “What must I see? What must I know? And what must I do?”

There is no negotiating here. There is no bargaining here. You cannot be timid and evasive or clever or deceptive here if you are to meet the reality of your life face to face. You cannot be in denial and just say: “Well, this can’t happen, and that can’t happen, and I won’t look at this, and I won’t look at that.” You have to face the reality of your life as it is at this moment. And you have to face what is coming over the horizon.

You either see it or you do not. You can either face it or you cannot. It does not require a great deal of sophistication, or cleverness, or intellectual capacity. It is a matter of simplicity and courage, and a sense of personal responsibility and commitment.

People have devised many escapes, many defensive mechanisms. People have retreated into many different places. A great deal of excuses have been made for things that simply must be faced. People have established patterns of avoidance, patterns of compromise, patterns of false self-assurance.

If you are not concerned, it means you are not looking. If you do not feel the power of your times, then you are not paying attention. If you do not see the fragility of your circumstances, then you are not being accountable.

This is a great confrontation with life, and it is a redeeming one if you can face life; if you can ask life for what you must see, what you must know and what you must do. This is the path of redemption. This is what will enable you to fill in the gaps of your life, to become strong where you are weak and to use your growing capacity and strength to meet every aspect of your life.

God has given you a greater power so that you can be the captain of your ship, for you must be the captain of your ship. You cannot just rely on others to tow you along, as if you were dead weight.

The Great Waves of change are the most powerful forces of change the human family has ever faced. And because there are many of these Great Waves, overlapping with one another, it creates a very confusing and perplexing situation. Only Knowledge within you will know how to navigate these waters and the many challenges that they will present.

The New Message from God has been given to alert, to strengthen and to prepare the human family for these great events, and to prepare in such a way that your greater spiritual power and Intelligence come into your awareness and your experience, and that your preparation redeems you and frees you from that which compromises your life and makes you blind.

The New Message returns your vision, your strength, your capabilities, and the power and the potency of meaningful relationship to your life. It does this not simply to meet a great inner need, but also to enable you to not only survive the Great Waves of change but to be of service to others. For it is within these Great Waves of change that your greater gifts to others will emerge and become known to you.

Everything here can work to assist you, to strengthen you and to empower you, but you must approach them correctly. You must build the Four Pillars of your life, and you must build them under the guidance of Knowledge within yourself for your actions to be truly effective and to have a permanent benefit.

The New Message from God reveals how this can be done, how to prepare, what you must see, know, and do. It builds a base of wisdom and competence within yourself, wisdom and confidence that you need today and that you will need increasingly in the times to come.

Do not withdraw from the face of life, for you were sent here to serve this world under the very circumstances that are emerging now. Your social mind will want to hide and protect itself, but your deeper Mind is here for a greater purpose. But for this greater purpose to be realized, experienced and fulfilled, you must build a strong foundation within yourself and around yourself.

Do not simply trust change because change can destroy you. Do not simply have confidence that whatever happens is appropriate, for circumstances can conspire against you. Do not live on false assumptions. Do not be complacent or falsely self-assured, or you will not be alert and prepared and observant enough to recognize what life is telling you and to prepare accordingly.

This is all a gift of love for you and for all of humanity. People are confused about love and fear. They think love is passivity and acceptance. They do not see the power of love to challenge people, to confront people, to demand things of people, to require courage and integrity from people, to require higher standards from people, to require selfless behavior from people. This is love.

So much of what people think is love is really fear—the fear of not having, the fear of being inadequate or insufficient, the fear of being unacceptable, the fear of not surviving. So much behavior is put on top of this fear, and much of this behavior looks loving and caring and beatific. But underneath, what motivates it is fear itself.

That is why, do not think you can use love and fear as the criteria for determining the reality of life around yourself. You do not even know what love and fear is, and their realities have become so intertwined and so twisted that it is very difficult for people to make clear distinctions here.

That is why you need the power and the presence of Knowledge within yourself, for Knowledge is not confused about these things. God has given you Knowledge to guide you, to prepare you and to redeem you. And this Knowledge is prepared for the Great Waves of change. It is not threatened by them. This represents your greater strength and the great endowment from God.

That is why you must be a student of Knowledge if you are to fully benefit from the power and the potency of this greater Intelligence within yourself, and to encourage people’s awareness of this power and potency within themselves.

It will require great strength and fortitude, great compassion and great determination for humanity to face and to weather the Great Waves of change. For the demands of life will grow, exceeding what you experience now.

You must be prepared for this and to build your foundation in Knowledge while you have time, and to learn The Way of Knowledge so you may bring a greater strength and a greater clarity to your decisions.

You must find the source of your inner strength if you are to have the courage and the determination to overcome the limitations you have placed in your life already. This strength and this power lives within you now, waiting to be discovered.