Daily Meditation: Sunday, May 16, 2010

Life - a constantly corrected imbalance

05/16/2010

One of the books of the Zohar, the Siphra di-Zeniutha, begins with these words: 'We have learned that the Secret Book is the book concerned with the balancing of the scales.' But balance does not mean there is no movement. When God became polarized in order to create, the cosmic scales were set in motion and started to fluctuate. Creation presupposes the perpetual fluctuation of the two pans of the scales, and as long as creation remains unfinished the scales will continue to fluctuate. The fluctuation of the scales expresses the fact that creation is always in a state of becoming. Perfect balance would prevent exchanges taking place, and life consists of nothing but exchanges. This movement, however, needs to be steady, for if one of the pans goes up too high, the other goes down too low, and then it collapses: fluctuation ceases and so does life. What we call balance is therefore in fact a certain imbalance, a balance momentarily upset only to be straightaway restored. This upsetting of the level state causes forces to well up that then have to be quickly compensated by an opposite movement so as to be kept in check. Hence it is this very fluctuation that brings about life, and we can say that life is a constantly corrected imbalance.