Living in Balance: A Mindful Guide for Thriving in a Complex World

by Joel Levey, Michelle Levey, Dalai Lama XIV (Foreword)

Marital partners and international consulting team Joel and Michelle Levey present a sensible discussion of living a more balanced life for readers who are overwhelmed by their hectic lifestyles. Living in Balance is grounded in pragmatic suggestions for finding harmony in love, work, eating, sleeping, exercise, and even breathing. "Balance can be sensed in terms of the waves and of the ocean," explain the authors. With each wave come the dramatic beginnings, culmination, and disintegration that can bowl us over on any given day. "Yet on a deeper level the changing tides of such 'waves' are balanced by the profound reality of an unchanging 'ocean' within you," say the authors. Citing sources as diverse as contemporary chaos theories, ancient Burmese traditions, and even NASA research, the authors teach readers how to stay afloat in their own perfectly balanced oceans regardless of the storms at sea.

Genres: Health, Self Help

360 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Apryl2010 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome! Love it! One of my favorite school books so far.. It doesn't look like much, but it's such a wonderful book. I did feel at first like most of the stuff in here was stuff I've already learned, or read, before. Then, I realized that much of the information I've learned over many years of study, countless books and several epiphanies are all contained in this one little book.. in a very concise and easy to understand format. Marvelous. It's also chock full of insightful quotes and interesting statistics. Below is a paragraph from the section titled: "Original Confusion and Mistaken Identity" from the chapter titled: "The Balanced Mindstate"

"Imbalance in our lives is rooted in a fundamental mental confusion regarding who we really are. This confusion leads us to misperceive ourselves and our world, and leads to out-of-balance thinking and relating. This original confusion is largely a case of mistaken identity. We know only a tiny fragment of the totality of ourselves and have lived our lives ignorant of our true nature. This is mainly due to habit. Who and what we call ourselves is based on a story that we keep telling ourselves over and over again. Over time, we forget that this story is only a story, and we come to believe and live in the story, rather than in the deep, vast, intense mystery of our totality. Research in the cognitive sciences suggests that we think tens of thousands of thoughts each day. Yet as many as 90 percent of these thoughts are thoughts that we thought yesterday---mindless reruns, cycling through our minds again and again and again. Habit energies of the mind programming and reprogramming themselves into endless cycles of confusion, distortion, entropy and dullness. If this is true for you, can you imagine how much creative potential and energy you could liberate if you were to live more wakefully?"

[Brenda Corrado · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was enlightening! It made me feel like I've been looking in a fogged up mirror, than wiping it clean to see my true reflection. I highly recommend it and plan on reading it again in the future.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

enjoyed it, I wish I had to read this years ago.