This is http://www.essayz.com/a9004181.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %SEEK PICK CHOOSE BALANCE INTEGRATIVE DIFFERENT 900418 Often we get out of balance because we fall into the trap of seeking security in the familiar, even when the familiar contributes to illness and disease through imbalance. If we feel insecure we often avoid the unfamiliar because we have learned to fear the unknown. We need to balance these natural tendencies with the recognition of and use of, the principle of enjoying health and integrity through deliberate efforts to maintain balance through our choices, decisions and actions. We can maintain a healthy balance in our lives if we thoughtfully approach our choices, decisions and actions with our need for integrative balance clearly in mind. We can deliberately seek out that which is different in ways which are complementary to what is familiar through habitual presence in our lives: things, attitudes, activities, friends, associates, concepts, music, literature, questions, policies, ideals, values, etc. We are out of balance and prone to be diseased and ill-at-ease when patterns of selective exclusion and inclusion dominate our lives without regard to the disintegrative consequences which they bring upon us. We need to beware of exclusive patterns of choice by which we seek to be better by being purer than others, by more completely excluding from our lives that which distinguishes us from others by our apparent success in excluding it from our lives. Self-righteous people judge themselves by how pure they are; and the more pure they are, the harder they try to exclude whatever might make them impure. This leads to an exponential decay of the presence of the ostensible cause of impurity, and usually to some form of imbalance. We also need to beware of addictive patterns of choice by which we let some focus of attention/activity dominate our lives in compulsive ways. Addicts and supportive codependents are thrown off balance by preoccupations with technical fixes which are alike in spite of apparent differences. Their fixes throw them off balance by aggravating the lack of self esteem which led to the preoccupations. Their attempts to find external fixes for their lack of internal balance leads to greater internal imbalance, and so to greater foolishness in making unbalanced choices and pretending that the consequences are not their own; i.e., not owning the consequences of their own decisions, choices, and actions. Because they do not own their own consequences, addicts and codependents seek other persons to own them and fix them. They do not think for themselves to figure out how they are being the victims of their own dishonest thoughtlessness. To maintain personal and communal balance and integrity we need to regularly seek out and choose that which is different from what is familiar to us. We need to seek that which will be complementary to what we regard as familiar and good. Superficial differences which conceal fundamental sameness must not be permitted to mislead us into pretending that we have sought out and chosen that which is different. That which is fundamentally different will call into question the assumptions and convictions which characterize our collusions, addictions and codependence; and so will most likely make us feel uncomfortable, if not embarrassed. We will need to seek encouragement in our efforts to achieve balance; encouragement from trust- worthy friends and associates, trust-worthy people who are different from us. People of integrity are worthy of our trust even if they are different from us. Healthy people demonstrate their integrity through their healthy wholeness and the coherent way in which the are responsive to their environment. Unhealthy people demonstrate their disintegration through their diseases and the incoherent way in which they react to or ignore their environment. It is safer to trust people who are overall healthy and at ease, than to trust people who are overall dis-eased and ill at ease. We need to seek out the encouragement of healthy people who are worthy of trust as we seek to achieve balance by choosing that which has been unfamiliar to us, and which we may perceive as threatening to our narrow specialization and lack of balance. We cannot achieve balance through pretense and dishonesty. To enjoy health and wholeness we must seek an honest balance. Dramatic pretense for the purpose of dramatic communication on stage in a legitimate theater may demonstrate integrity in a fundamentally honest way. Daily pretense for the purpose of misleading self and other into believing that which is not true, cannot demonstrate any healthy form of integrity. Pretending to be pure through exclusionary choices to avoid things/behaviors which we see as evil does not lead to healthy balance. Pretending to be virtuous by exclusive specialization in goodness does not lead to healthy balance. Such dishonesty throws us off balance in ways which the dishonesty conceals, so that not even we can see how far off balance we are. When we fall we cannot see that we fall because we choose to be off balance. In our dishonest blindness we cannot learn from our mistakes because of our lack of balance. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================