The Circles of Health & Happiness...

A woman lies upon a towel on a sandy beach in the Mediterranean.  Accompanied by the gentle sloshing of low level tide and the squeals of guls and sandpipers she bathes in the occasional warmth of the sun in contrast to the shade from the palm fronds that flutter over her.  She sips a fruity drink and melts into the ground to the salty fragrances of sea mist, mangrove, and kelp.

Arm in arm the couple enter the gallery matching one another's stride.  Adorned in their most elegant tuxedo and gown with gold cuffs upon his sleeves and diamond bangles from her ears their wide smiles belie the vicissitudes in their careers.  Bravado ensues after a slight din in the natural party clamor at the announcement of their entrance.  In what seems like slow motion, lights sparkle, smiles brighten and a rush of welcomes greet their appearance.  With a whiff of champagne on their lips and light hors douvres to satiate, they dance and sing and chat the night away with a hundred of their closest friends.

High in the foothills overlooking a lush valley bisected be a stream a lone man chops wood for the winter.  Having pickled, smoked, and jarred plenty of food for the winter, his nostrils flare to the smell of pine and lilac on the wind.  His gruff skin and scruffy beard match the expected mesquite flavor in the evening air.  With a fire already burning in his little wooden shack, he retreats for the night, falling asleep to the whistle in the wind and the crackle in the fireplace.


 Each of these stories describe a person or persons in balance with their circles:

Physical

Spiritual

Material

Social

Emotional

The concept of life being separated into different intersecting components is not new.  Depending upon what priest, sage, monk or fortune teller to talk to you may encounter five lessons, four pillars, eight sequences, ten laws, or any number of other teachings that are meant to guide people toward happiness and good living.

I created the five circles because it is a concept that makes sense for me - and I discovered them before I found the teachings of others.

In the symbol:

 Each circle is equal in diameter, equidistant from the center, and interchangeable with one another.  They are open to one another letting their contents spill into the balanced center.  Independently their colors represent moods, wishes, states of being, and environments in which an individual lives.  When all colors are combined in their maximum state of balance, none shines brighter than the others and all that is left is pure white light.

It is the white balance that people should seek for happiness and healthiness, letting their own shimmering white light burst forth in a blinding expression of themselves.

It is not easy to balance your circles, and if you do, it is then not easy to keep them in balance.  Invariably your attentions will be drawn more predominantly toward one circle or another at any given time and this is okay.  The way you again achieve balance is not to fight the movement of your attentions but rather to accept them, recognize them, and then find yourself focusing on your less frequently visited circles more often.

A common example would be the disconnect many Americans experience with their Material self.  The material self, the green circle, refers to that part of us that works for a living, generates income, purchases goods and services, and takes satisfaction that our basic needs like food and shelter are accounted for and our wants are reasonable.

Many people have a tendency to spend entirely too much time and effort on their material selves.  A fact that can easily be mathematically proven by simply comparing the amount of time we spend working and consuming as compared to the time we spend socializing, or reading quietly - which would indicate focus on some of the other circles.

Placing too much time, effort, and desire into one circle forces that circle to swell - imbalancing the whole and indeed causing other facets in our lives to shrink until they become all but unrecognizable.

Like matter and energy, the self can neither be created nor destroyed, but it can be changed and morphed into shapes that invariably damage our health and happiness.

Any individual's circle structure can, however, grow or shrink as a whole depending upon the person's necessity.  The circle structure does not fall in the "more is better" paradigm, however because more is not necessarily better for all people.  Sometimes less is better.  But an individual will not have the opportunity to examine their own quantities unless they have already balanced their own qualities - hence, the balance of the circles of health and happiness...