The Fall Equinox. Finding Balance
Finding Balance
I used to think of balance as the toe point of a ballet dancer. One leg in the air while the other finds it’s mark on the ground- holding her body in exquisite control and balance.
There’s no doubt that we have these moments in life. When our hard work and sweat come together for the applause of a crowd.
It may take suffering to get there, but damn it feels amazing.
Those peaks moments are often followed by valleys, which is another a form of balance, though that part rarely gets praised.
Balance is something we’re always striving towards yet find impossible to keep.
We all want a balanced life, relationship and bank account.
Yet try as we might, at what point do we actually have our all parts of life “in balance”?
And why do we care?
Who determines what balance really means after all?
Enter the Fall Equinox
The Equinox is moment in time when we are in a kind of cosmic balance, whether we realize it or not.
The Sun is shining directly on the Earth’s equator, resulting in both the Southern and Northern Hemispheres experiencing exactly the same amount of day and night.
This moment of balance between the our planet and our Sun only happens twice a year (the other being at the Spring Equinox in March).
The Equinox is different from a ballerina.
One is a result of the natural rhythm of the universe. The other is a moment created by physical effort and control.
If we strive for perfection in life- it takes large amounts of energy.
If we relax and flow with nature- life gets easier.
Which will you choose: Be the Equinox or the Ballerina?
Letting Go
Fall Equinox signals the edge of the winter season. From this point forward the nights will be longer than the days. Night continues to deepen until the longest night of the year at the Winter Solstice in December.
This is the harvest time.
When the crops that grew from seeds we planted in spring have reached their maturity.
Nature balances it’s growth with the ebb and flow of sunlight. Our lives are determined by this rhythm of seasons.
Balance in the Northern Hemisphere means that life slows down in response to less sunlight.
Trees drop their leaves and rest. Animals hibernate or migrate. Plants drop seeds and die back.
To escape being affected by the seasons- we’ve designed lighting, fuel, entertainment and food systems that act the same year round.
We call this stability and balance.
But like the ballerina, this act of balance takes a tremendous amount of effort and control over resources and people to produce.
Imagine what could be brought into larger ecological balance if we acknowledged and worked with nature’s cycles and slowed down in the fall?
Consume less.
Conserve energy.
Rest and restore our bodies, minds and spirits.
The Scales & The Spiral
The Fall Equinox is also when we enter the astrological sign of LIbra. The symbol of Libra is the scales- which are used to weigh things in balance.
Because of this Libras are normally seen as being well rounded and easy to get along with. They are good at keeping things in life balanced and tend to value rest as much as work and the arts as much as the science.
Libra reveals another way to perceive balance.
The 50/50 rule.
Using the Scales- a balanced life would be equal parts good days and equal parts bad ones.
This way of looking at things allows for half of our lives to fall into the “this sucks” category.
If we accepted this as balance how would life feel different?
Imagine living through your hard days and not judging them as “bad” but simply as balance to your easy days.
In fact, your days are just a series of events and emotions unfolding. Your mind is the one that categorizes them as good or bad.
What if every set back, illness, fight and disappointment is necessary for you to experience a jump forward, health, calm and happiness?
What if when you looked back on your life you discovered that there probably were equal parts “good and bad” times -and that even the bad times eventually led to good ones, until new bad times came along restored life to balance.
What if that is all life is really about?
Just scales tipping back and forth, a natural ebb and flow of known and unknown, struggle and growth.
It would take no effort on your part and there would be no way to do it right or wrong.
You could trust that all things balance out in the end.
The Spiral
In the ancient world they thought of balance beyond equal amounts. They felt balance as rhythm; expansion and contraction, ebb and flow. They used a symbol that repeats itself in nature, the spiral, to represent balance in a moving and changing world.
In truth-the Fall Equinox is not a fixed point on the calendar but a dynamic dance between two cosmic bodies hurtling through space inside of a swirling galaxy in an ever expanding universe.
In that sense, humanity is but a teeny part of a much larger picture.
All of our worries: pandemics, climate change, war, politics, health, injustices are playing out in balance with the larger laws of the universe.
Even our resistance and our struggles to change things are a part of it- as is our indifference and failure to change.
In the spiral there is no beginning or end. It’s creation and destruction in endless motion.
Life is rhythm and we are part of the dance. Not like a ballerina performing but like an ancient Goddess dancing life into creation.
In the spiral- we are the creators.
We don’t have to focus on balancing the scales in our favor because in the spiral every action has a dynamic balance. Every thought and action shape the whole.
No act is too small to create spirals of kindness. No loving thought or vision is lost.
You can let go and trust that you are enough.
Your being exists in perfect balance to what is and what will be.
Happy Fall Equinox!
I hope this helped expand your idea of having a balanced life:)
Stir vortexes in your tea, peel spirals of apple skins, watch leaves dance in the wind,
xoxo
Ginger
ps- please leave me a comment about your reflections of balance!
Does it help you to think of it in other ways?
Are you a ballerina or scales or a spiral today?
