In a world that struggles with imbalance there is one being that by its very nature mirrors the world's disarray: the balancing artist called man. Fundamentally, we can distinguish two types of people, the conflict-avoider and the conflict-maker. Some are driven to reach peace, others precisely to avoid it. For the one, peace and balance are the natural element; for the other, they are an enervating, unbearable morass. In man's psychological balance a thousand things play a part: how well fed he is, his finances, his emotional life, his experiences of success or failure, perhaps even his ideals. Besides the conflict-avoider and the conflict-maker there is, fortunately, a third kind of person too: the resolver of conflicts, the balancer. He too needs imbalance, or even conflict, yet not to fish in troubled waters and draw strength from discord, but precisely so that he can create balance.
Man explores and practises his personal balance, and at the same time he is part of the great system of the universe. Ideally, the course of his personal life fits the role that falls to him in the universe. He travels his life's path and comes to experience things that are part of his own learning, but also of the universe as a whole, and in this way he contributes to the planetary balance. Where this is lacking, we may speak of a life in disarray.
Man in his present state – despite his technical achievements – is growing psychologically weaker, on the wane. Most of our fellow men are weak and fallible on their own; everyone needs a handhold, needs companions to lean on. And it is the very neurosis of modern life that man depends on others but can count only on himself, lives for others but is bound to be disappointed in those very others.
Balancing Artists
A particular order of acrobats is the balancing artist, or equilibrist. Originally, acrobats were strongmen who kept their balance as they walked along a horizontally stretched rope. Those who walked a rope stretched at a slant were the schoenobates; the neurobates used gut strings or thin wire, and so seemed to float freely. On the slanting rope, sitting or lying down, the oribates performed their routines. Those who worked on a vertical rope or a wall were the tichobates.
Sadly, for many people today a state of balance is hardly an attainable goal. It is as if the world today set before man ideals that do not function as goals. The world speaks more and more to us, but not of us. Unattainable goals and dreams that never come true may be regarded as ills of civilisation. Money, women, fame, success – mostly mere alluring illusions, but as goals they prove inadequate; rather, they ought to serve as means towards man's universal development, whose ideal is spiritual.
Presence of mind can help one find personal balance and keep it. A consciously lived life – balanced eating, sleep, work, rest and so on – is not the unconscious drift of waterweed. Self-awareness, and the sense of belonging to heaven, help man attain the enlightened state at the level of deep feeling, of first-hand experience. Thus he may move up to a higher grade: the world around him may well not change, yet he can share personally in the lived experience of transcendent beauty, in the first-hand experience of the higher dimensions of existence.
Most people ride the emotional roller coaster of success and failure, of penury and material gain, of barrenness of heart and sudden flare-ups, and yet, as the ultimate acrobatic feat, we must keep our balance to the very end on the rope stretched between life and death.