ST Healing Love-IntoBalance October2022 - Flipbook - Page 4
Love in the Balance…
What an invitation, what a calling in, to collectively write about the power of LOVE
in the face of betrayal, injustice, mass-death, and violation of our mother earth. When
the four of us came together to see how LOVE could help us navigate the big tumultuous
questions spurred by the events of 2020-21, one organizing principle came up again and
again—BALANCE.
This, of course, was not the first time BALANCE had revealed itself to us as an organizing principle.
I remember in early 2017 when the inauguration of Trump unleashed a flood of hate against our
communities, a string of intense storms hit the Bay Area and caused major flooding in my neighborhood.
This massive flood displaced families, caused millions of dollars in damage, and revealed some of the
ways in which our systems are completely out of balance. What it also revealed was the power of Love.
Neighbor helped neighbor to remove the water, sludge, and debris from all that was destroyed. At
City Council meetings to address the flood, many impacted residents used their two minutes of public
comment to acknowledge the kindness of others, or to share their own efforts to support their neighbors.
The neighborhoods most impacted by the flood were made up of predominantly Vietnamese and
Spanish-speaking residents already negatively impacted by systems out of balance. In the days directly
following the flood, gratitude (despite and in full awareness of the injustice) kept me centered and
my energies high. A symbol appeared clearly in my mind’s eye. It was a glowing orb with four arms
extending out in the four directions and bending to the left.
As a student of Vedic wisdom and my own ancestral knowledge of ancient México, I recognized the
symbol right away as signifying health and balance. The four directions represent the multiplicity of
the material world (the elements earth, water, fire, and air; and all the living beings, birds, mammals,
insects, etc.). The arms bend towards the left, indicating they spin clockwise around a single point of
unity—the fundamental, absolute energy of the universe.
This symbol represents the interplay between diversity and unity, between the seen and the unseen,
between movement and stillness. According to the indigenous Mexican philosophy of Nahuatl and
Mayan-speaking culture groups, the material
world is maintained by an equilibrium between
the four elements who are in a constant
struggle for dominance. If one of the elements
achieves supremacy over the others, the
destruction of the material world is imminent.
It follows that part of the responsibility of
living beings is to help maintain the balance
between the elements. For many generations
now, economic systems based on resource
extraction and labor exploitation have thrown
the essential elements of life out of balance.
The responsibility to cultivate balance has been
largely replaced by the drive to accumulate
wealth. And we are witnessing the consequences
all around us in the interlocking crises of climate,
health, and inequality.
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Healing Love: Into Balance | A Brown Paper