Balancing the scales

The beauty of life lies in that its melody is a sweet, melancholy lament. It's scale is in D minor - the magnificence of which is that there is a perfect balance in the sound, of joy with sadness, upliftment and depression...melancholy (great word!).

And therein lies the point does it not? To find the balance? Yes there is even a place for the cynics of the world, to smash dreamers down into reality, and idealists to invent new aesthetics to debate the pessimists, and innocent children teaching naive parents the lessons they once new but forgot. All in the soulful march of seeking and maintaining balance.

More and more today, the herbalists, the vegans, the reiki and yoga masters are being given a voice. Scientists, dogmatic religious leaders and weight-trainers are being scolded - because its no longer the "healthy" way. The approach does seem terribly primitive, the whole "out with the old in with the new" manner in which new conformists are being born. *Sigh* at least one things has remained in check - the sheep, will always reliably be sheep.

But we are as always missing the point! Everything has its place and things should not be discarded and continuously replaced - this is why history has only repeated itself up to this point. And I choose religion and spirituality as my forum to exemplify this.

The truth of every religion lies in that they all have the same common core - one of honesty, goodness conquering evil (in the self, in the world and in the unseen reality) and all scriptures preach this to the same extent with very little difficulty in understanding. Religion therefore logically forms the baby-steps of self-growth and maturation into spirituality. But unfortunately religion has been so meticulously and cannivingly masked by the dogmatic dictators that it has formed no basis as a means but unto itself. But in the new age we are starting to see through that and free spirits are born, as they were in medieval times when witches were burnt, women scorched and free-thinkers hung.

We are a far cry from the middle ages so when birds tweet and mother nature sings loudly and the foodchain is disrupted because we no longer eat meat, this should be the happy ending of the story, fireworks have already started and we're once again distracted by our wisdom and advancements and discardment of religiosity or better interpretation thereof.

But pay attention a little longer and listen to those who wish to exist only in the realm of spirituality. To shed themselves of their human flaws and seek to be one with God by attempting to discard any sense of humanism, not for moments of meditation each day, but permanently in this state of trance, their "nirvana". It does seem logical does it not, that whatever your spiritual beliefs of our higher creator, we were made in human forms to exist as such, seeking balance in both humanism and spirituality together - rather than willing our physical selves to die before we're even dead. Which does lead one to wonder about our great leaders of the past (whose work should and will remain renowned and respected) like Ghandi - who adopted the philosophy of Brahmacharya and drank his urine towards the end of his life for its health purposes - surely he tipped over and teetered over into imbalance at the other side of the scale???