A Message From Our Editor, Issue #55 – Finding The Balance Within

As kids in the 70s, my friends and I were avid followers of The Moody Blues.

We had every one of their albums, and we knew every song. We considered them to be almost like prophets of the time. Their message moved the listener to think about the deeper meaning of life.

One such album was called A Question of Balance. The first track erupts with the question:

Why do we never get an answer When we’re knocking at the door With a thousand million questions About hate and death and war?

With the stories making the news today, I couldn’t help but think of this album, whose message is most relevant. Daily, we are told about crime and human-rights violations. We hear about racism, sexism, hate, and intolerance. The stories we hear are always heartwrenching, and they pull at us in such a way that we, too, fall into opposition and intolerance. We become polarized, allowing ourselves to transmit the very vibrations of energy that we wish to dispel from the world.

This is a human error that all prophets and sages have cautioned us about. To avoid this spiraling pit of demise, the wisest among us have given us the message of compassion and the vision of what this kind of love can do for us. Yet, we often default to the polarization of judgement because it’s so easy for us. Our physiology actually supports it. Our brain is designed to look for the negative, but when we are repeatedly given fear, anti-truths, and distorted perceptions by the social structures in which we live, our brain learns to accept these things, and even becomes addicted to them. By the very nature of our physiology, judgement and fear have become our truth.

The protective survival mechanisms inherent in our brain’s function have been turned against us to keep us in a base, unsatisfied state of angst. Everything that we see, hear, and read influences the way we think and plays on our physiology. An actual addiction to the tactics of propaganda can happen when enough physiological responses occur in the body. Once addicted, we start to buy more, follow more, fear more, and judge more.

To address the Moody Blues’s question, “Why do we never get an answer?” it’s because the ruler of our present-day consciousness— our survival brain—keeps us in what Bob Marley called “mental slavery” in his “Redemption Song.” In this lower, un-emancipated state of mind, we are easily thwarted from living freely and being who we really are.

What if, instead, we consciously choose what we subject our mind to? What if we choose to continually connect the brain in our heads to the brain in our hearts? What if we choose to discipline ourselves away from the addictive state of judgement, and into a state of love? What if we choose heartfelt meditation and contemplative prayer to reinforce our efforts to change the world?

I will leave you with these lyrics from the final song from that Moody Blues album. It is titled “The Balance.”

Upon this, he saw that when he was of anger or knew hurt or felt fear, It was because he was not understanding, And he learned compassion. And with his eye of compassion. He saw his enemies like unto himself, And he learned love. Then, he was answered.

For the raising of the consciousness, Jeanne Ohm, D.C.