Skalalitude: being in harmony with nature – a harmonious state of heart and mind where all things are in balance. Concept of the Salish First People of Northwest Coast Canada.
At the fall equinox, balance of light and dark, the sun rises due east and sets due west, after which the location of sunrise moves towards the south. At the winter solstice the sun rises at its extreme south position for that latitude.
Balance – The following excerpted from Morning Star’s Seven Steps to Spiritual Awakening:
Ancient knowledge and wisdom never die. The echo of ancient knowledge needs to be heard once again. One small segment of ancient Greek knowledge is connected to ancient Delphi. It is the Delphic maxim “keep the measure.” There are a multitude of meanings and teachings connected with this maxim. One meaning is “measure everything before you act,” another one: ‘” everything measure excellent”— “right measure.” Most importantly, this maxim right measure – right proportion goes with self-knowledge. Once again, Know Thyself, our first step.
Keep the Measure may be traced to Apollo himself as he was the god of measure, science, philosophy, and the higher intellectual activities. It refers to the interpenetrative unity of the diversity of creation.
To awaken we need to live this Ancient Philosophy of Keep the Measure or accept due measure (relationship: relation of one thing to another).
Keep the Measure relates to the relationship of self (subject) to other (object)… it is knowing the measure of our feelings and the knowledge of people. Once we awaken our spark within, we live the measure of all things by keeping the proper measure and relationship between us and all other things. In other words, “keep the balance.”
Our concept of self and other is best represented by the measure of love in human relations: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. When we have a knowing within our hearts that we have starlight, a “spark of creation—a sun of God,” within us and a knowing that others do also, we are then able to truly “love our neighbor,” to forgive, and to have compassion for others. This is the heart knowledge of the oneness of life and the heart knowledge of the humanness, the joy, the struggles and the suffering of life. We understand our own selves, and we understand others. This is true empathy and compassion.
Our balanced state of being is not static and is based on our self-measure, which needs to be open to growth and self-mastery. If we look again at “sôphrosunê with temperantia: temperance is far from being a reducing kind of moderation but is rather the quality that enables one to get the right mixture or the right balance.”[i] We must discover the mean or balance between too little and too much. For instance, “rainfall may vary in space-time, as regards to intensity and duration, but is neither too much (to the extent that all life on earth is flooded off to total extinction) nor too little (to the extent that no life on earth can be sustained).”[ii]
To summarize: Apollo (Divine) and Dionysus (Human—all things). Apollo (radical non-duality) and Dionysus (duality). Before we awaken, we must discover the right proportion between our spiritual focus and our material focus. And once awakened, we must discover the right proportion between Apollo and Dionysus not as a static proportion but one that we strengthen. Accordingly, the value of our measure in awakening and once awakened is the extent to which we manage to grow in our balance of our divineness and humanness. Once our divine fire/spark is awakened, with the right measure, we strengthen it, strengthen our luminosity—our luminous body.
According to Pre-Columbian Nahuatl Philosophy: The wise man is a light, a torch, a stout torch that does not smoke. Once awakened. We achieve the resurrection body or a light luminous body—the miracle of turning death into resurrection.
According to the Pythagoreans, the virtue Justice was considered the supreme principle of balance. They identified justice with proportion where “each part receives what it is due.”
This concept of ‘keeping the balance’ is not limited to the Greeks. There is a Hawaiian concept called pono. It refers to a balanced state of mind and heart—harmony. Pono also means being in balance with others, nature and the spirit world. Illness comes from losing our natural state of pono. Restoring balance and harmony restores health. Speaking, thinking and acting properly are the keys to wellness and maintaining pono. Keeping ourselves and our relations (all other things) balanced and in harmony is essential for us in our journey of awakening.
And then we have the Mesoamericans as we travel to Chichén Itzá, “at the edge of the well of the Itzáes” as it was built close to two cenotes – natural wells which allow access to underground water. Specifically, the Pyramid of Kukulkán, or El Castillo, can be seen set in a wide expanse of flattened ground. The four-sided steep step pyramid has a central staircase on each face and is stopped by the temple of the Jaguars. On the northern side the staircase is flanked by plumed serpent heads at ground level.
At Chichén Itzá during the spring and fall equinoxes, the Pyramid of Kukulkán (Maya Quetzalcóatl) serves as a visual symbol of the day and night. As the equinox sun sets, a play of light and shadow creates the appearance of a serpent that gradually undulates down the stairway of the pyramid. This diamond-backed snake is composed of seven or so triangular shadows, cast by the stepped terraces of the pyramid. The sinking sun gives life to the sinuous shadows, which make a pattern on their way down the stairs. Symbolically, the feathered serpent joins the heavens, earth and the underworld, day and night.
And then we have The Platform of Venus, my favorite. It lies just to the north of the Pyramid of Kukulkán.
The platform has a staircase on each side. At the top of each of these are sculptures of plumed serpents’ heads. The panels around the platform are decorated with carvings of the morning star, sinuous Kukulkán shapes, fishes, matting (a symbol of power), twisted rope and human heads emerging from between the jaws of the feathered serpent Quetzalcóatl or Kukulkán.
Below is a picture of me on the steps of the Venus Platform and the Pyramid of Kukulkán taken during one of our group journeys to the Yucatan in 1990.
[i] Paul van Tongeren, “Nietzsche’s Greek Measure,” Article in The Journal of Nietzsche Studies · January 2002, 14.
[ii] John D. Pappas, “The Concept of Measure and the Criterion of Sustainability,” 81. (http://www.academia.edu/29332856/The_Concept_of_Measure_and_the_Criterion_of_Sustainability_The_St._Johns_Review_)