“All the people rush … Into the hives where they live … With their faces turned to the ground … Nobody knows anybody …” Isn’t this ‘song’ by the legendary Nece Falk legendary? And so true if we look around us! For this reason, among others, it is not only good but essential to take time for ourselves, to strengthen our being and develop our higher nature, and thus create a better self for others. For your partner, for your family, for your friends, for society, for the world and for the planet.

I try to make time for myself as much as I can. Most recently with a yoga retreat on my home coast – although I had to end the retreat early due to special personal circumstances – which further confirmed to me the necessity of realising how important it is sometimes to breathe only for myself. To literally focus only on one’s own breath, on one’s own heartbeat, on the sensation of the body as a transient yet unique organism, and on the soul as the supposedly eternal element that wears the ‘supreme crown’ of our being.

For then I remember that man can be much more than a tiny hamster inside the wheel of a rampant capitalism, which dictates the pace, so that he often forgets where his head is – when there are still so many things to do, so many goals to achieve, so many plans to realise! When did the whip we wield against ourselves become so cruel? And why did we even think of it?!

So it is not surprising that when a ‘modern’ individual fails at something, he or she feels it as an extremely painful loss. As a failure of oneself as a living being. This identification with one’s own (failure) success is said to have started when we humans changed the cognitive question “Hi, where are you from?” into “Hello, what do you do in life?”. If in the past, when people answered where someone was from, they could infer the nature of that person – this reminds me, for example, of the description of the indigenous people of the Logar Valley and the mountains there, who were known as extremely hardy and strong people due to the harsh winter conditions – today we like to “get to know” a person when he or she answers a question about what he or she does or what he or she is doing. We judge a person by how ambitious and capable they are, i.e. how much they are really worthy of our attention. I hope that this is not true for everyone, but I fear that a large proportion of people who ask a “new person” what they do do turn on a kind of evaluation based on the answer they hear.

That is why it is essential to include ‘more of ourselves’ in our daily activities. To awaken consciousness, to activate it in everything we do, from brushing our teeth, to eating nuts, to tasting herbal tea, to taking a walk whatever the season or weather, to talking to a partner or friend, to doing yoga, or just sitting on the sofa and taking one last deep sigh before closing our eyes at night. ‘Living consciousness’ will take us away from the rushing, rushing, rushing that the yang of modern times, so to speak, encourages, and bring us closer to the stillness that the yin of the times in which we live demands. Lest we ourselves become one of those contemporaries who would dearly love to change time and place because they think their life would be incomparably better than it is here and now.

The problem of our times is that we are being shown, through retouched images of people in advertisements of all kinds, that their phenomenal images, their trendy clothes and their possessions, which, with credit, are usually beyond the financial means of the average person, are putting a smile on their face. The bigger problem is that when we see such ‘advertising foppanies’, it does not occur to us that these flashy smiles are paid for. Paid precisely for the effect they have on people, so that without critical reflection they instantly turn into consumers beyond their means. Above our means because, if we are out of touch with our higher nature, we really will be buying happiness with every next advert that comes along with the next flashy smile, and we are doomed to end up spending more than we can afford. We will never buy happiness that way. Never!

The hope remains, however, that we can approach a state of happiness through – to use a very familiar capitalist terminology – ‘successful management’ of yin and yang. Both are necessary, make no mistake. The latter because it drives us into action, and the former because it aims at calm. The problem is that in modern times, where – as our Neca sings – all people are in a hurry. Just think how quickly we demand a certain result, whether it is to watch a new series, to complete a new project, to make a start-up a success or to build a house. We’d like to have it all right away, wouldn’t we? Immediately – yesterday!

When I recently chatted to a colleague who told me about the new series of ‘Let’s Balance Our Lives’ meetings that we will be starting with a group of seven women in early November, she replied that the content sounded great, but that it was always a problem to make time for this kind of thing. True, but if we feel that we are at a point where our life is really not OK anymore, this time is a minimal investment (another capitalist term, yes! 😁) in our own future. A future in which our yin and yang will also be balanced, making us a better version of ourselves and a step closer to our higher nature. Because it’s out there somewhere, we just need to bring it to life!

To conclude, at the ‘Let’s Balance Life’ meetings we also pay attention to self-massage and self-care, which starts in our bathroom as soon as we brush our teeth and face. Of course, it can also be a loving beauty routine with NANU natural cosmetics, as in my case. 😊

And of course, let’s not forget the legendary Neco. 😊

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