Returning to Harmony
In these days of political, environmental and social confusion, I want to invite you to untangle harmony from balance, and love from preference.
Harmony: "a relationship in which various components exist together without destroying one another, agreement, accord, congruence, integration. The quality of forming a pleasing and consistent whole."
Balance: an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady. Offset or compare the value of (one thing) with another. A condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions.
Preference: a greater liking for one alternative over another or others.
I've been pondering the meaning of harmony for quite sometime now, I would say now after a year or so of using it to name a 7 week series that I teach (Returning to harmony), that harmony is the most vital anchor of my life.
I used to believe that the concept of love was more important, and yes, ultimately love is more important, but without going through the sieve of harmony, love ends up being this word that means a thousand and plus things, specially preference; loving my dinner, loving my outfit, loving my country, loving my religion, loving my beliefs, etc. The word love has been used in the name of division and hatred so much that I feel at this point in my life, it doesn't mean love anymore, unfortunately, because we have been willing to make someone suffer deeply out of our love/preference for our ideologies and beliefs. We could imagine Hitler really loving Germany (preferring Germans) while guiding all the Jews and Gypsies to the concentration camps. We could also say he was doing it to create balance in the country. But was that an act of harmony? No, because trying to create balance out of preferences has nothing to do with harmony, just like what is happening to the whole world is nothing to do with harmony, but a lot to do with preferences.
As a plant-based person, I hear a lot of "I love meat" it is a "balanced" diet. And I want to offer here the opportunity to ponder those statements, and change the word "balance" for harmony and the word "love" for "preference", and then hear how it feels to say those same statements in a totally different way. It is very honest to say "I prefer meat over a plant based diet", instead of "I love meat", because it gives us the awareness of what we have been choosing to do, it gives us awareness of the power of our preferences. Also, when we change the word balance to harmony, everything changes. Is it possible to say that a meat based diet is a diet in "harmony" with ourselves?, with our body?, with the rest of humanity?, with animals? with the Earth? That's what I started doing more and more, I started changing words, changing love for preference, so I could really be aware of what I was deciding to do, moment to moment with the consumption of food and then, leaving balance behind, I started using the concept of harmony to calibrate how I was choosing to eat.
My food consumption changed drastically, and also, I had to let go of balance (or my idea of what balance was), to return to harmony, because I wasn't in harmony, I couldn't be in harmony with animals, with the starving population of the planet, or with the environment, since, going back to the meaning of harmony: "it is a relationship in which various components exist together without destroying one another, an agreement", and that was not what I was doing with animals, since there was no mutual agreement of them being OK with the way we have been raising them to eat them. I wasn't in agreement with the meat factory farms either. I wasn't in harmony with the Earth, or with the forest that is cut to raise cattle, etc. This also applies to most of the relating I though I had with my body, my partner, my kids, my friends, etc. Did we had a mutual agreement of treating each other the way we did?, was it based in the premise of harmony or based in the idea of balance and preferences? Did we relate from harmony or from one of the thousand meanings of "love", what relating is supposed to be, old attachments and unconscious agreements?
Because of the desire to return to harmony, I let go of my preferences and desires of balance in my immediate field; body, family, friends, food, career, and also, in the bigger scale: politics, social justice, environmental causes, etc. I had to anchor myself deeply in love through the sieve of harmony to understand that there is an universal order that I don't understand at all, that is way beyond my control, beyond my opinions, beyond my ideas of balance. I started pondering questions about my immediate and far away environment, and I realized I was deeply in disharmony with all.
Our preferences and habits get in the way of our "love" for life, the life of our specie and of all living beings in the Earth. When I walk in this precious land that I am fortunate enough to be alive in, I know for sure in my skin and my heart that harmony is our birthright. But in order to be guided again through harmony, we have to let go of many of our preferences, and, most of all, let go of our idea of what a balanced life is. There is no way of creating balance when we are out of harmony. Living from harmony can be quite the challenge, because it might mean moving really far from our habitual balance point. Sometimes when people experience harmony, they get really frighten, because they start experiencing the shifting of their balancing point, and that feels very unsettling and unfamiliar. After all, this balance point, which is very far from harmonious, has been there to protect the person from trauma or intense and indigestible early experiences.
The shift of balance is great news, even though it can be terrifying, because it means that our life is anchoring towards harmony instead of balance.
I invite you to bring your desire of harmony to the center of your life, daring to switch from balance towards harmony, in yourself, your life and the life of all living beings. For the sake of your life and for the sake of the whole.
What if returning to harmony is all what is needed from you here in this beautiful Earth?